Free Webinar with HP on March 8th: Winning Sales, Strategic Uses for Gaming in Sales Training

Online, February 29, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Keeping your sales teams engaged in training while balancing performance expectations is a growing challenge. With ever-increasing complex product features, on-the-go training needs and diverse sales workforce, it's important to make sure your training strategy includes the latest learning trends. Games tap into our inherent competitive nature, motivating learning and reinforcing key concepts through repetition. Games can be fun and informative, but it's important to know the basics of how it will improve sales and product training before you begin. This webinar can help.

•How do games stack up against other leading sales training tactics? (instructor-led, web-based, written material, and more)
•Some ideal uses for gaming in sales training
•Approaches to measuring and monitoring game success to improve sales results
•Best practices you should know to help successfully integrate games into your sales learning strategy

When: Thursday, March 8 at 10 am PDT

Featuring:

•Carol Cohen, Learning Program Manager, Hewlett Packard
•Julie Brink, Director of eLearning, viaLearning
•Darren Megarry, VP of Sales, viaLearning (moderator)

"Gamification" is a new name for an old concept. For generations, games have been used to teach concepts, skills and knowledge. Think Yahtzee, Monopoly and math, Scrabble and spelling, Mastermind, Qwirkle and strategy, Clue and problem solving...the list goes on and on.

People like to play games. Why? Simple: they are fun. Games are also challenging, interesting and engaging. And with the ever-enhancing technology landscape, games are more immersive than ever before. Individual or massive multiplayer online games have grown exponentially in the past few years, and projections only show gaming consumption increasing.

According to the Entertainment Software Association:
• The average gamer is 37 years old and has been playing for 12 years. Eighty-two percent of gamers are 18 years of age or older.
• Forty-two percent of all players are women and women over 18 years of age are one of the industry's fastest growing demographics.
• Today, adult women represent a greater portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).
• Twenty-nine percent of game players are over the age of 50, an increase from nine percent in 1999. This figure is sure to rise in coming years with nursing homes and senior centers across the nation now incorporating video games into their activities.
• Sixty-five percent of gamers play games with other gamers in person.
• Fifty-five percent of gamers play games on their phones or handheld device.

Source: Entertainment Software Association, http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp