Did you know that only 13 percent of customers feel that salespeople understand their needs?

We can all agree that this is a shockingly low number - one you wouldn’t want to be associated with your company, right?

Yet, with 55 percent of employees lacking basic skills they need for effective sales, it’s no wonder that businesses are struggling to satisfy customer needs and are not fulfilling their sales goals.

It’s common knowledge that sales are the most important part of business. That’s why most companies have a dedicated sales team that spends every day trying to grow their customer base, generate more leads and convert them into a return.

But despite the crucial role that the sales team play in a business, companies are ignoring the importance of sales training for their employees. There’s often an assumption that people working in sales already know what they’re doing…

You can even have the best products or services in the world, but they won’t sell themselves. It takes more than just an extroverted personality to sell – it’s about making a connection with customers and understanding their needs, as well as asking and answering the right questions.

Sales aren’t easy and the whole process requires skill and technique. No basic script that you provide your employees with will make sales happen. It’s all about salespeople knowing what they’re doing, talking and listening to customers.

In a competitive business world, it’s more now more important than ever to make time for sales training. There’s no point in rushing your employees into contacting and dealing with customers – they’ve got to know what to do first for effective sales.

It’s important to remember that customers buy from your sales team – they are the face of your brand. So, why wouldn’t you want to invest in sales training to make your business better?

Let’s have a look at some of the benefits of sales training for your company.

Sales are all about the numbers. Every company wants to boost productivity and increase leads and their return. So, what the best way you can have higher win rates? Well, it’s through training your staff in sales.

Using successful sales techniques that are common in the industry, you can make sure that employees are beating the competition and growing your customer base.

Training will provide your employees with the skills they need and learn how they can use these techniques themselves.

You want to get your new products and services out there and the better trained your employees are, the more success you’re going to have.

Sales training leads to higher win rates - it’s that simple.

There’s no point in trying to sell products and services to customers that don’t need them. This is a waste of their time and yours, as it will likely result in no sales.

Thus, sales figures will be higher when you are aligning the solutions that you offer to those that your customer needs. Through training, you can make sure that your employees understand customer needs and are able to identify what they want through recognized sales techniques.

At the end of the day, customers don’t want a generic sales pitch. They want someone to listen to them and understand what they want, rather than simply pushing a product or service on them. You can make sure your sales team know how to build meaningful relationships with customers through training.

In return, you not only generate sales, but you also build foundations of loyalty that mean customers are more likely to buy from you again and even talk about their experience and recommend your company to other people.

Training not only makes your sales team more knowledgeable and prepared to do their job, but it also helps to increase employee confidence.

When employees know what they’re doing and feel they’re confident in their role, this leads to a more natural flowing conversation with customers. They know what questions to ask and how to answer queries properly, which are important for sales.

This all leads to increasing the chances of closing a sale successfully.

Plus, when you’re confident in what you do, this gives you the motivation to carry on what you’re doing and this also leads to higher job satisfaction in the long run.

Sales can be stressful, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing. But, with sales training, you can make sure that your employees receive all the support they need and feel knowledgeable about their role.

Plenty of statistics show that companies who have good training in place for their staff are more likely to have a lower turnover. That’s because employees look for more than just a big paycheck – they want to grow personally and professionally.

Providing sales training means you can continue their education after induction. We all know how expensive it can be to recruit new employees, so the last thing you want is to have to complete the process again and again because you aren’t supporting your staff properly. Sufficient training is economical and less time-consuming.

In addition, it takes new employees an average of two or three months to become an asset to your company. But, by providing sales training from the beginning, you can speed this up and make sure your new employees are valuable straight away.

With sales training, you can make sure your whole team speaks the same language. By providing materials that allow employees to learn new sales techniques and skills, you can improve the efficiency and sales effectiveness of your company.

This means that you can not only create sales goals, but you can actually achieve them. So, what are you waiting for?

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Why you need to make time for sales training

Did you know that 40 percent of employees leave their job within the first year because they don’t receive the professional development training they need?

It’s easy to assume the most important people in your company are your customers and they should come first. But, the best asset you have is the people working for you – your employees. When you look after your team, your customers will also be happy and your business is successful.

Yet, a lot of employers overlook professional development training and see it as a luxury they don’t have to provide for their employees. But, employees now expect ongoing training in their workplace. It’s no longer something that can be ignored.

Of course, we don’t want to sound like providing professional development training is a burden or something that’s going to drain your business. In fact, it’s the complete opposite – you should be excited about providing professional development training because of the benefits it will bring to your business.

The obvious benefit of professional development training is that it’s going to teach your employees new skills and provide them with the materials they need to understand their job role. Knowledge is always key and will make sure that employees perform well.

Whether your employees work in food handling or sales, training is important for performing your job to the best of your ability and in order to be a productive team member. That’s why training shouldn’t just be an induction when you’re new, but an ongoing process.

Plus, never underestimate the power of professional development training when it comes to keeping employees happy. Providing opportunities to learn has proven to increase job satisfaction and we all know that a happy employee is more motivated, workers harder and creates more success for your company.

In today’s society, employees want to learn and feel like they have the opportunity to grow personally and professionally in their workplace. When you provide professional development training, you offer them the chance to grow with your company.

This will mean that you can enjoy having more skilled workers, as well as making sure they stay at your company for longer. So, don’t give your employees a reason to leave – give them a reason to stay.

Not to mention, when you create a company culture that promotes professional development training, you can attract new talent and this will be an element of your business that influences millennials to join your ranks.

So, now you know the benefits of professional development training, the next question is how much should your employees be completing?

Well, what we say is that professional development training should be a regular part of the workplace and ongoing for your employees. This way you can make sure it is effective and memorable. After all, who is going to remember training that takes place once or twice a year?

Just like your business should never stand still, neither should your training.

Ongoing training means that your employees can keep up with the latest changes in your industry. Regulations and strategies are constantly changing and the worst thing you can do is fall behind.

With regular professional development training, you can make sure that your employees stay up-to-date and are compliant with the rules that apply to your business.

Like anything, if you don’t keep practicing your skills, you will eventually lose them. Ongoing training makes sure that everything an employee needs is fresh in their head and allows them to perform their jobs better on a daily basis.

In addition, there is also the opportunity to advance their skills through regular training and even gain certificates and qualifications that will allow them to advance within the company.

Of course, regular training also means you can stay ahead of the competition in your industry. You have got to keep moving forward and making sure your employees are productive and knowledgeable will make sure that you do.

When you pair your professional development training with ongoing performance management, you can make sure that employees are doing well and keeping up-to-date. You will be able to identify any weaknesses in your team and work on those weaknesses, as well as fill any skill gaps that exist.

After all, if you catch problems and issues quickly, then you can stop them becoming a problem later down the line. Whether it’s a lack of time management or there’s poor bookkeeping, you will be able to adjust your training appropriately to make sure these problems are fixed.

So, do you think it’s finally time to invest in professional development training?

A lot of people don’t provide professional development training because they think it’s expensive and time-consuming. Sure, there’s some short-term expense when you buy e-learning courses, but this is an investment that you will always see a return for.

The last thing that you want is to lose employees because you aren’t providing them with the opportunity to learn through professional development training.

Ultimately, this will cost you the most money because the everyday efficiency and productivity of your business will suffer, as well as employee turnover costing you more time and money.

Of course, it’s not only important that you have professional development training, but also that it’s provided on a regular basis. This will make sure that there’s a continuous opportunity for employees to learn, progress and succeed with your business.

How much professional development training should you be completing?

To kick off the second quarter of 2018 we have added more Content Partners to our growing list of providers, each adding more high quality and valuable learning content to our platform. So you can understand more about our recent content additions we ran a webinar to walk you through all of our new providers and how their content can help you.

We understand that not everyone can always make it along to the webinars, so we have a video recap for you below to check out. You can also learn more about some of our recent additions,  including content from Skillsoft, Inspired eLearning, Skillboosters, and more in this update.

At Go1 we understand that having the most up to date and relevant content for your team is a priority, and we want to help to make staying up to date as easy as possible. By using Go1 you are getting access to the best content from top providers worldwide thanks to our Content Partners, and as our partners add more new content – everything is passed on directly to you!

Remember, the Go1 team are here 24/7 with live support. So if you have any questions about what we covered in the webinar, or need help setting up your portal, please get in touch as we’d love to help you out. Also, if there are any topics that you would like to see us cover in our next episode, let us know!

Webinar catchup: Go1 Content updates for April

Do you REALLY know if your employees are taking your training program seriously?

The face of learning has changed during the last few years, especially in the workplace. While there used to be big training events and dedicated days for skill learning, there’s now a shift towards more interactive and online e-learning courses.

There’s no longer a debate over whether to use traditional teaching methods or switch to e-learning courses. We all know that online training is valuable for employees and teams and offers huge advantages to businesses in terms of efficiency and costs.

In a nutshell, e-learning is a tremendously effective form of employee training.

Yet, there is still the question in business about how we can make sure our content is the best it can be for our employees. Everyone wants maximum engagement and maximum learning opportunities and this all originates from quality training content.

After all, we want to move away from boring interfaces and heavy learning materials, don’t we? It’s all about making learners want to learn and look forward to training rather than dreading it. Plus, nowadays with so many different media inputs in our day to day lives, content has to be both memorable and easy to absorb.

But, the most important thing is that you create a learning opportunity for your employees that they trust.

What we mean by this is that your employees must realize the training program that’s in place is good and going to teach them everything they need to know. You need to create a relationship of respect when it comes to training.

Now, you’re probably thinking, how on earth do I do this? Well, it all starts with communication. Introduce your employees to your new training program and show them how you’ve invested time and effort into making it the best it can be.

In addition, let’s have a look at how you can also improve your training content itself to reinforce this message to your employees.

The best way to make learners trust your approach to training is to provide them with content that’s going to teach them something new and relevant to their job.

There’s lots of off-the-shelve e-learning courses that can help you with this that are designed by experts. This will make sure the materials they have are worth their attention and going to benefit them in their daily working lives.

Employees shouldn’t be questioning what they’re learning or why they’re there – they should be focusing on what the training is about and learning new skills and knowledge. So, it’s up to you to provide them with these e-learning courses.

Also, bear in mind that it’s all about quality over quantity. Your employees don’t need 20 courses to complete when one or two can do the same job in less time. Concentrate on making training valuable and your employees will think so too.

Time is precious and nobody likes wasting their time on something pointless. This is exactly the same when it comes to employees. Training may be within their working hours, but they don’t want to complete pointless tasks that have no meaning.

The last thing you want is employees completing training and thinking it was a waste of time. This will bring down morale and this negativity will be brought into future training programs.

Remember, employees want to learn, so it’s your duty to provide them with e-learning courses that are interesting and make good use of their time at work. You want your workforce to be more productive and knowledgeable, right?

Now, we don’t mean choosing courses that are short so you can get employees to rush through them and back to work. Again, it is down to the quality of the content. Courses can be any length, it’s about what’s in them that counts.

Employees can even work through training at their own pace, as long as they’re learning from the materials. Your team will trust your training program if you provide them with content that is worth their time.

In order to hold your employee’s trust when it comes to training, you’ve got to make sure that the e-learning courses allow new skills to be brought into the workplace.

Employees want to be able to use the new knowledge they’ve attained in order to know that the effort and time they’ve dedicated to learning has been rewarded.

You should think about the key skills that your employees will need in the workplace. Whether it’s learning how to increase their personal sales or finding out how to offer better customer service, there’s lots of courses you can choose from to fill in the skills gap in your workplace.

There you have it, how to build learner trust in your business. It doesn’t have to be complicated and fancy – all you have to do is improve the communication with your employees and provide them with quality content that is valuable and worth their time.

When you have trust with your employees, this is going to boost the morale in your workplace and provide them with the ongoing training that they desire. This will improve overall employee satisfaction, which means skilled workers want to stay with your company.

In addition, productivity in the workplace will increase with the use of new skills and knowledge and this creates more success for your business.

Remember, as Richard Branson says – ‘employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients’.

So, why aren’t you working on building this trust with your employees?

Do you know how effective your online training program is?

We’re always told about how important it is to provide employees with ongoing training. Sure, consistent and effective training is absolutely vital to teach your employees new skills, stay informed about new policies and improve their confidence.

But, there’s no point in having an online training program if it’s not actually teaching your staff anything of value. A lot of businesses focus on getting some form of online training up and running and they think the job is done, but this isn’t the case.

The truth is that this is only the beginning. You can’t achieve the results you are looking for without evaluating the program you’ve created. After all, how do you know if your program is really worth the time or effort if you don’t check?

Of course, there’s lots of elements you want to incorporate into your employee training program. It’s got to be educational, yet easy to understand so everyone can build their knowledge and skills, whether this is on how to manage their time better or learning about the newest regulations in their industry.

So, just like you examine and evaluate how well your systems and processing are working in your business, you’ve got to do the same with your employee training program on a regular basis. This will make sure your employees are learning and growing with your company.

You can find out what content is working well and what employees are responding to, as well as understand what areas are in need of improvement.

Yet, to be able to evaluate your training program, you’ve got to know how to do properly. Perhaps this is the reason why a lot of companies aren’t examining their training – they simply don’t know how to do it effectively.

Well, don’t worry – you’re in the right place to learn! We’ve set out some questions and strategies to follow that will make good evaluation easy, yet informative and reliable. So, let’s get started!

Before you start your evaluation, it’s important to keep in mind what you’re aiming to achieve and your end goal. Keep this in the forefront of your mind moving forward.

Then, you’ve got to figure out what you’re wanting to measure and evaluate, whether that’s employee response to a single e-learning course or an entire online training program for new staff members.

Ask yourself these three questions before you begin:

Always think about what your evaluation should achieve and what purpose it’s going to serve for you. So, in most cases, it’s going to be the team in charge of employee training that will benefit from the findings or a design team.

Saying you want to find out about the effectiveness of training is a little vague. You’ve got to break it down and think about what’s the whole evaluation about.

For example, do you want to learn about employee satisfaction, if the training is good for teaching new policies or if the content is suitable for all learning types? There’s likely to be a few goals in mind, so rank them in order of importance.

Of course, you need to know how you’re going to collect your data and the answers to your questions. So, think about how you’re going to collate them. This can be through observations and grades from online courses, interviews with employees and even questionnaires.


There’s two ways you can carry out your evaluations and this is through quantitative research or qualitative research. So, let’s have a look at these types of evaluations in order to choose the best one for your online training program.

Quantitative research lets you take larger samples and normally concentrates on making conclusions by numbers and analyzing them. In this way, you can use questionnaires and collect the answers to come to your conclusions.

In addition, you can look at the outcome of your training program and try to find out whether it’s directly related to this content, or from other influencing factors, such as poor team work or ineffective support. This can be done by creating a control group and comparing them to another team.

Qualitative research allows you to achieve a more in-depth analysis but will take longer to conduct. This evaluation will focus on what’s happened and why through case studies. There’s often concentration on what individual employees say and their opinions.

This human element of qualitative research means that employees can have a direct say on their online training program and ways it can be improved. Often you can make conclusions with this method that you weren’t expecting to achieve.

There’s no right or wrong way to evaluate your online training program. The most important thing is that you actually do the evaluation. Most of the time, a thorough evaluation will involve using elements of quantitative and qualitative research together.

So, once you have carried out your evaluation on your online training program, you can analyze the results. With your findings, you can make sure that your online training program is up-to-date and succeeds in teaching new skills and keeping employees satisfied.

It’s never too late to start evaluating your online training program. In fact, now you know how to do it, now is the best time to start!

We've been working on some new features, and want to show you how they can help you!

We’re excited to announce the next webinar to walk you through our latest updates to Go1 will be taking place on May 3rd at 8:30am AEDT (May 2nd 3:30pm PST).

We have a new dashboard called my team which allowed managers to improve the ability to track the learning of their team

Updates to search and tag filtering to allow for learners to search for and find training content relevant to the requirements of their organisation more easily

Improvements to Notifications and Alerts to be used to alert users of the upcoming important dates relating to their training and qualifications

A closer look at our new Zapier integration tool

There will also be more information on visibility on a learners previous enrolments, tags on Awards, improvements to course cards for courses with multiple events, and adding custom profile fields on portal registration.


To round out the session we will be opening up the floor for Q&A, so if you have any questions about any of our features - new or old, we will be there to help you out.

Our Go1 Update webinars take place every month and covers everything you need to know about the latest updates to our platform, including a Q&A session where you can ask any questions you might have around anything to do with Go1.

Want to be involved in our Early Access Program? Register today!

Webinar: Go1 Platform end of April updates

As of the start of April 2018, we have made some changes to the pricing for GO1 Platform and GO1 Premium. The biggest change has been our decision to make the GO1 Platform free.

We strongly believe that everyone should be able to create and deliver training. This is why we now provide our content creation and delivery tool at no charge. We hope that more organisations will embrace training and incorporate it into the their daily routines.

The free version of GO1 Platform is aimed towards assisting small teams to get started with e-learning, and then assisting them to upgrade as they grow, and provides access for unlimited users.

For users looking to access enterprise features with service level agreements and other features, we have plans for $2 per user per month. An enterprise plan is needed to access features such as Single Sign On, custom domains, custom account fields, integrations, and access to a dedicated Customer Success Manager alongside our 24/7 support team.

It’s also easy to start with our free version of GO1 Platform, and then upgrade to access the enterprise features.

To set up your free GO1 Platform click here

We have also updated our pricing structure for GO1 Premium to allow more teams to access the training content that they need at a lower price.

For only $25 you can now add up to 20 users to your GO1 Premium account, giving them access to more than 1000+ courses instantly. This is ideal for small businesses or teams wanting to take the next step with their training, but who might have a limited budget.

If you have 21 to users or more, it’s $8 per user per month, and if you have more than 100 users, contact us so we can create a custom quote for you and your team.

To set up your free GO1 Premium trial click here

Still not sure about which product is the best fit for you? Let our team help you. We have a training specialists on hand to help you make the best decision for your business - and to make sure you get the lowest possible price.

Remote work teams are increasingly commonplace thanks to the prevalence of technological tools to facilitate this type of work structure. Many employers love the fact that they hire remote workers from a much larger pool. This makes it easier to find qualified candidates, and it may be more cost-effective to hire individuals who live in areas with a more affordable cost-of-living. Overhead related to office space, supplies, technology and more may also be reduced.

In order to take full advantage of the benefits of an efficient remote team, you need to pull together the right combination of tools and applications for them to use. Each team has unique needs for collaboration, communication and more, so there is not a top collaboration tool that all remote teams should use. Instead, review the features of some of these excellent options to determine which ones may be a good fit for your remote team’s needs.

RealTime Board is a well-designed collaboration feature that lets each of your team’s members contribute in different ways. For example, some individuals may post pictures to the group board, and others may use spreadsheets, graphs, charts and more. It has a whiteboard design with robust cloud-based storage, making it functional for most group needs. The base level subscription is free for up to three users, and it gives you three boards. With the base level subscription, the program can be integrated with Slack for improved functionality. A team membership for five users and unlimited boards is $40 per month, and a company subscription is available on a quote basis. There are also special memberships that are ideal for collaborating with clients or others outside of your firm.

Slack is another collaboration tool that is widely used in smaller and larger companies. You can link all of your remote workers together, and they easily communicate and share files in real-time. This program boosts transparency, allowing everyone to see what their team members are working on at any given time. It can notably be integrated with Salesforce, Zoom, InVision, ZenDesk, GoogleDrive and Jira Cloud for improved functionality and practical applications in many remote work settings. You can also create your own integrated applications as needed. Basic features in Slack are available for free and for an unlimited amount of time. The standard membership is $6.67 per user per month, and the advanced membership is $12.50 per user per month.

LeanKit is a group collaboration application that is design with Lean management principles in mind. It allows you and your team to visualize the entire work process and to monitor progress of projects through the process. It works with all methodologies, and this includes Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban and others. The application is customizable, flexible and scalable. Through its unique metrics and analytical features, you can learn about new ways to address inefficiencies and bottlenecks. There are three membership plans available, and these are the Select plan for $19 per user per month, the Advanced plan for $32 per user per month and the Premium plan that has pricing available upon request.

Asana is a collaboration resource that works well for remote teams. Each worker will have access to real-time data and updates on all projects that they are linked to. Conversations related to each project are visible on a well-designed dashboard. For each project, you can also see items that have recently been completed, that are scheduled to be completed immediately and that are planned in the future. It can be integrated with more than 100 other collaboration and communication apps, and it also is accessible on your smartphone through an app. The free version is available for up to 15 members, and a premium membership with more robust features is available for $9.99 per user per month with no limit on the number of members that you can have.

OneDrive is a Microsoft application that lets you store your documents in the cloud. You can access them from your mobile device, and you can share them with individuals who are linked to your account. Through the file sharing application, this becomes an excellent collaboration tool for remote teams. You can search for files, edit them, annotate them and more. The cost for this application is based on the amount of storage space you need and if you need sharing functionality. For example, you can enjoy this service for free with up to five gigabytes of storage space and no sharing capabilities.

MindMeister is a free team collaboration tool that offers mind mapping functionality to an unlimited number of users. You can see updates in real-time for instant collaboration. In addition to the mind mapping function, there is a sidebar for chatting, communications, voting and more. It has mobile functionality, and it is designed for both Apple and Android functionality. Its ease-of-use is a true benefit. For example, you can drag and drop items into the mind map, and you can easily create graphic images from the mind map for use in slide shows, reports and more.

AgreeDo may be a great application for remote teams that have frequent meetings or if you feel that your meetings are longer than they need to be. This application makes it easy for you to take meeting notes, create and share agendas, create task lists, generate attachments and more. There is a free basic version available with unlimited usage, but you will need a paid version for integration with Lotus Notes, Google Calendar, Outlook and other applications. The premium version is $7.9 per month per user, and the upgraded version is $12 per user per month.

You understandably need your remote team to be as efficient and productive as possible. When collaboration and communication issues are holding your team back, implementing the use of one or more of these exceptional tools may be a smart idea. Try out several applications soon to determine which ones have the right features and platform to meet your team's needs.

Joe Peters is a Baltimore-based freelance writer, marketing consultant and an ultimate tech enthusiast. You can find the longest content he’s ever written here. Feel free to contact him . Feel free to contact him @bmorepeters

7 collaboration tools for efficient remote teams

How would you decide, do you go with your gut?

It’s not uncommon that we make decisions on whether we trust on some instinctive level which is difficult to articulate. If we go with our gut this makes it difficult for us to then establish what we can do to ensure that we can in turn be trusted.

Trust is important, not just in our personal relationships but also in business.

I am sure you are familiar with the old saying, ‘trust takes years to build and seconds to break’ but in today’s business world we don’t have years, we might only have moments.

As gut instinct provides no clear definition of trustworthy behavior or attributes, how do we learn about trust and how can we apply this to ensure that people will be willing to trust us?

Skillsoft’s course “The Building Blocks of Building Trust” breaks this down into some basic tools that we can use in any business setting to help understand and build trust.

Skillsoft outline some key indicators that will help you evaluate a person’s trustworthiness.
Are they: truthful, honest, accountable, respectful, authentic and competent?

Being able to identify these factors will help you recognize people with whom you can build trust and in turn exhibiting these attributes will increase your chances of being trusted by colleagues and associates.

With these basic building blocks, we can then look to demonstrate and develop trust with our colleagues, simple right?
It’s never that simple!

We go on to learn that whilst you might think it’s the complex cognitive brain that would assess a person’s trustworthiness, on first interaction it’s not. It’s actually the primitive brain that first decides if they are a threat or danger. What this teaches us is that to make a trust connection body language and demeanor are also essential, or that gut does play an unavoidable part on the trust assessment.

An objective of this module is to provide you with strategies that you can adopt which should help people open up and engage with you. Once the connection has been made, you’ll have a foundation from which you can build trust.

The course covers concepts on building and demonstrating trust. It looks at how trust can be broken and what you can do to rebuild trust in a business environment.

I am not going to give it all away as I do recommend that you take the course.

I will say that whilst some are basic concepts sometimes it’s the simplest things that are the most difficult to define and the great thing about e-learning is the repetition and reminding us about important elements of business that we can often forget to use.

If you struggle with developing business relationships or would like to 30 minute refresher on what’s important in developing trust it’s worth setting aside 30 minutes of your day to complete ‘The Building Blocks of Trust’ by Skillsoft and let us know if you feel it added value to your working relationships.

I recently did Skillsoft’s course – “The Art of Staying Focused” and it gave me some great pointers on how to be more efficient at my workplace by implementing a few simple practices. High levels of productivity are directly proportional to focusing on a task as opposed to doing multiple things at once.

The art of staying focused all day is not an easy task. The human brain is frequently on over-drive, thinking about several things at once. Meditation is something I personally do to help me keep a calm and collected mind. In a workplace environment, there are quite a few different forms of distractions that can hinder your efficiency. I’ll attempt to cover a few here and also go over Skillsoft’s solutions (which I heavily agree with) to those problems and how to get more stuff done within limited time frames.

Almost everyone is guilty of procrastination. One way to overcome this is to set up simple rewards/motivators at the end of each task. For example – If you have 60 minutes to get a task done. Break your time into 2 slots. Consciously work hard for the first 25 minutes and then take a small/coffee break for 5 minutes. Repeat this again and you’ll notice that by applying the focus-reward principle, you will have achieved more.

Prioritize your most important tasks first. The 80-20 rule states that 20% of your activities account for 80% of your results. It’s important to realize what your 20% is and assign more priority to those tasks. Another factor that might hinder performance is fatigue which can be countered again by taking small breaks. Get some fresh air, walk around the office space if you have a job in front of a computer screen.

Turn off notifications for all your social media applications. Attempt to physically move away from busy/noisy areas in the office space. Grab a meeting room when doing tasks of high priority. Set a ‘Do not disturb’ status within your company’s internal chat/communication channels when you’re doing something important.

Exercising is great. Even if it’s for 30 minutes, taking a break to go out and work out has been known (and scientifically proven) to make you more energetic in your workspace.

It’s okay to say no sometimes. If you’re over-worked and your colleagues keep piling on more stuff for you to do, there are ways to decline it in a polite way. If it’s your manager assigning you a task when you have other high tasks priority going on, it’s good to ask your manager “Do this task take priority over the other tasks I’m currently engaged in?” Telling your colleagues that you’re over-committed helps you from adding additional pressure on yourself

These are just some of the tips you can easily integrate into your work life. Personally, I’d also recommend taking 20 minutes off during the day to practice some simple breathing techniques or meditation practices. Find some quiet place outside where you’re not likely to get distracted and focus on nothing. Blank your mind and just breathe. I’ve seen great results from that. All the practices mentioned above and easily be implemented. It might take a little bit of practice. However, the results are worth the minimal effort you put in 

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The art of staying focused is not an easy task. However, with strategies like meditation, exercise, and more, you'll be able to master the art of staying focused.

The art of staying focused

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