How Protect-A-Bed Uses Knowledge Guru for Better Product Training
Our customers frequently use Knowledge Guru to train sales reps and other employees on product knowledge. The spaced repetition, feedback loops, and detailed reporting all contribute to a more effective solution when it comes to getting your employees to learn and remember facts about your product.
I recently interviewed Miguel Marrero, the National Training Manager for Protect-A-Bed, about his product training and how he used Knowledge Guru to help “train and motivate” salespeople. Read on to see his comments and insights.
Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and the work you do at Protect-A-Bed?
My name is Miguel Marrero, and I am the National Training Manager for Protect-A-Bed. Protect-A-Bed is the worldwide leader in mattress protection and innovation. I work with members of our Training & Development Team to develop and distribute our training materials as well as performing presentations and training sessions.
Who are your Knowledge Guru games for?
We have used Knowledge Guru to help our accounts learn the differences in our products and to help train and motivate salespeople to learn more about our products. We have also used it internally to help our Training Team learn about new training techniques and procedures.
How does Knowledge Guru fit into the overall training? What are you using Knowledge Guru to teach?
The Guru is great because it can compliment our existing training. In one case, we expanded our product line for an account and wanted to make sure each salesperson knew the differences in the product range. We designed a Guru game that highlighted the differences and used it as a ‘recap’ to our training sessions.
What results are you seeing from use of Knowledge Guru? Any specific stories to share?
One thing that we really like are the reports. There was a specific question that was getting answered incorrectly more than others. Using that information we were able to tweak our presentations to make sure we highlighted the information that was getting missed. Future results showed that people were more likely to get the question right, so by changing our presentations based on the feedback from the the reports made our presentations more effective.
What have been the keys to successful implementation for you?
The two things that we have discovered will make people want to play a game are the relevance to what they are learning and the ease of use. If the information is of value, we get more people participating – whereas if the ‘players’ feel like it is too simple or too much of a review, we get less ‘buy in’. Additionally, making it easy to sign up (which the Guru does) makes participation much more likely. The fact that people can play from an iPad or Mac or PC or whatever makes it very easy for anyone to participate.
What advice would you give to others on creating their first Guru game?
Use a spreadsheet! When we design games, we put all of the questions together up front (along with all of the answers and images) so we know that we have all the questions we need and that we have asked them the right way. It also makes it fast to cut and paste the info and quickly post the quiz. Also, make use of the feature that lets you add feedback to an incorrect answer. This can be a great opportunity to reinforce the information you want the learners to grasp.
Anything else you’d like to say about Knowledge Guru and your experience using it?
Knowledge Guru is super easy to use and has been a great tool for both internal and external training. We are happy to partner with them to supplement our training methods and tools.
