How NovoEd’s Video Practice Can Save a Sales Pitch Under Pressure

NovoEd’s video practice capability integrates simulation-based training with peer feedback. This form of directed performance support helps learners practice and build muscle memory around critical communications skills in specific workplace situations with time-stamped video or text-based input from the co-workers with whom they would be communicating in these scenarios. 

Imagine a situation where your account executive has three minutes to pitch a member of the C-suite at a primary top target. This is a meeting that you and other members of your team have been working to land for months — and the receiving leader communicates that they have to leave the meeting early for a personal emergency! Even if the sales representative is well-versed in your product and has strong soft skills otherwise, what type of training can prepare them for this type of surprise, last-minute situation where the stakes are so high? The answer is training delivered via NovoEd’s video practice feature.

How does video practice work and how can it enhance sales training?

Video practice provides learners a safe space in which they can learn from their mistakes before making them in the real world at significant cost. This type of active, scenario-based training is particularly effective for sales training scenarios as described above. Practice scenarios with prompts intended to mimic a real-life selling situation – like the abbreviated sales pitch – can be integrated into the flow of a greater learner experience or exist in the form of a “practice room” outside of the learning experience. Learners then review scenarios, which can be delivered via video or text, and respond with their own video recording. 

Using video practice, administrators and instructors can also create conditions around these responses – like time and attempt limits (e.g. “three minutes” and one attempt only for the situation described above!) – to simulate the real-world pressure that a learner might feel if the scenario played out in reality. Upon submitting their video response, a learner can then review and repeat their practice, and also receive text and video-based feedback from their peers that is timestamped to the relevant moments of the video. This socially situates what would otherwise be a solo exercise, and helps learners develop greater understanding and awareness of their own thought processes relative to those of their team members.

Course administrators and instructors can then feature multiple practice videos in a video gallery, so that learners can not only reflect on feedback around their own videos but also provide and observe feedback around others’ videos. It is this multidimensional, metacognitive approach to sales training that will distinguish your salesforce and enable them to thrive in even the most challenging situations.