How to Leverage Peer Learning for Sales?
Terminologies such as peer learning, peer review, peer discussions, and peer instructions are often associated with academic scenarios and educational research. However, when you properly dissect the term ‘peer,’ you’ll understand that its use is not limited to the classroom or higher education cases.
A peer is an individual with a similar background, qualifications, abilities, and social status to another. A peer can be likened to a co-worker or teammate in the workplace. Now, replace ‘peer’ as found in peer learning, peer review, peer discussions, and peer instructions in the opening paragraph with ‘co-worker,’ and you’ll begin to see the bigger picture clearer.
There’s more to peer-to-peer learning in the work environment, and this article will shed more light on its meaning and benefits for sales organizations. From this post, you will also learn how to leverage peer learning in the workplace to improve performance for both new and existing salespeople.
What Is Peer Learning?
Peer learning is a teaching and learning technique that promotes knowledge sharing and acquisition among peers. In sales, peer learning could refer to a learning technique where one or more employees teach their colleagues. It often involves tenured employees teaching or sharing sales knowledge and ideas with the new hires or younger salespeople.
The main objective behind peer-to-peer learning is to ensure the exchange of great ideas among salespeople in the same organization to foster productivity. It’s a kind of ’employee-to-employee’ method of education, and it could be done either in-person or virtually via a learning platform.
Benefits Of Peer Learning In The Work Environment
While the transfer of knowledge, ideas, experiences, and processes is the most apparent thing peer learning could help you accomplish in your workplace, several other benefits could stem from this learning process. The following are the benefits of peer-to-peer learning:
#1. Peer Learning Promotes Salespeople Collaboration
Peer learning offers opportunities for salespeople to interact and hold sales conversations with one another in the same place. This cooperative learning allows for back-and-forth conversation and sharing of sales ideas that could impact the entire sales team member.
This way, your salespeople can learn to work together as a team rather than individually. This develops into the positive workplace culture of transferring skills, knowledge, and processes that could help improve sales performance generally.
#2. Peer Learning Could Help Raise Your Salespeople’s Morale
Most times, salespeople prefer to receive training from co-workers in the same place whom they consider more knowledgeable and experienced. This is because they believe the ‘teachers’ (co-workers) are also part of the team. This type of training environment presents them with ample opportunities to ask questions that can improve their skills and give constructive feedback without the fear of ridicule or dismissal.
This helps boost the self-confidence of all participants and makes learning more fun, especially for younger salespeople in the team.
#3. Peer Learning Is A Great Way To Boost Salespeople’s Engagement
The best way to develop positive peer pressure in the work environment is to encourage collaborative learning. This leads to a willingness to continue to learn and engage more in meaningful activities that challenge the status quo of the sales organization and push salespeople further into developing critical thinking that could help solve a problem. It’s also the most effective way to hold your salespeople accountable for their own learning and their colleagues.
#4. Salespeople Are More Likely To Retain Information Better
There’s one thing with peer learning in the workplace, experienced co-workers who have been in the job and understand other salespeople’s concerns are usually the facilitators. In this learning environment, the facilitators ensure timely exchange of meaningful knowledge, ideas, experience, and successes, while giving the learners more time to absorb shared information. As a result, salespeople’s ability to retain sales information increases.
#5. Peer Learning Encourages Proper Onboarding Of New Salespeople
New hires are more likely to feel more comfortable at their latest work when they get information from co-workers who have been on the job. The onboarding program is perhaps the first chance given to salespeople to participate in peer-to-peer learning.
Collaborative learning allows these new salespeople to connect with experienced colleagues to gain the knowledge and experience they need to perform in their new roles. This learning method also gives new hires more freedom to ask questions and challenge common assumptions with their colleagues. This develops into proper salespersons’ integration and adaptation to the new workplace.
#6. Teaching and Learning Process Helps Reinforce Salespeople’s Existing Knowledge and Experience
The best way to boost your existing knowledge is to teach it to someone else. Studies have revealed that students who teach their peers what they have learnt tend to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge than those who fail to teach what they know. This is also true for the work environment.
Employing teaching their colleague is using a stone to kill two birds simultaneously. You sharpen your knowledge, skills, and experience while transferring them to your co-worker to help your sales team perform better as a single unit.
How to Implement Peer Learning In The Work Environment?
Peer learning should come early in the onboarding process of new salespeople. That way, your new hires get to establish positive relationships with expert salespeople who have been on the job for years.
You can quickly implement peer-to-peer training into your onboarding process in just three ways. These ways are:
- Assign an experienced peer mentor from your sales team
- Leverage a peer-to-peer learning platform for your onboarding program
- Invest in an online workgroup to encourage teamwork
Conclusion
The benefits from peer learning are enormous, and sales organizations should leverage this learning technique to empower salespeople. This learning type is ideal for connecting experienced sales professionals with new hires to cultivate essential workplace relationships.
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