Training Millennials: What You Need to Know About Their Learning Styles

As the Baby Boomers retire, the corporate sales forces of the world are starting to be turned over to the new generation of Millennials. The problem that sales trainers are having is that this generation communicates and utilizes data in ways that are drastically different than Baby Boomers and other generations. If you want to be able to train Millennials to be sales professionals, then you need to learn how to present sales training materials in ways that they will appreciate and understand.

Pharmaceutical Sales Training in a Virtual Classroom

Millennials grew up in a virtual world, which means that a virtual classroom is a great way to reach them. Pharma sales training tends to be rigorous because it often requires training people who have little or no experience in pharmaceuticals. As a trainer, you must offer insights on the best ways to sell those products. Keeping the attention of modern learners, such as when covering the side effects of certain medications, is not always easy. But a virtual classroom environment with a good lesson plan will get members of younger generations the information they need in a medium they can understand.

Use Technology to Your Advantage

The Millennials are the first generation to be tech savvy the moment they hit the workforce and BusinessBee.com suggests that you should use that to your advantage. There are many powerful training tools that your company may not have utilized in the past because of the training curve just to teach your workers to use the technology. But this generation already has that technological ability, which means you have more flexibility when it comes to using innovative training tools.

Adapt to the Millennials’ Needs

According to HawaiiBusiness.com, the Millennial generation consists of around 74 million people, which is almost as large as the Baby Boomer generation. Trying to push the old ways of training on a new generation is not likely to be effective. Trainers need to adapt to meet the needs and styles of trainees. Even leading companies such as Google have made changes to accommodate this talented new workforce. Your company can benefit from doing the same.

Use Visuals

SweetRush.com points out that younger generations have grown up with interactive multimedia in the form of video games and Internet content. If you want to train these groups to be sales successes, then utilize visuals and gamification to help enhance your point. A good how-to video to go along with one of your training topics will relate to trainees in a way that other training methods will not.

Whether you want to launch a new training program or just update your existing materials, contact us! We can be your source for creating sales training materials that every generation will utilize and appreciate. CLD can develop training materials that can be used on a variety of platforms, which allows you to train your sales professionals no matter where they are. We can help you use technology to your advantage and get your message through to the newest generation.