5 Ways to Use Game Shows Outside Your Training Classroom

Game shows are effective training tools inside your classroom, but they’re also extremely versatile. We’re always amazed at the new ways trainers find to use Gameshow Pro (and other game show products) in their businesses—and even their daily lives. Game shows aren’t just for entertainment anymore—but they’re also not JUST for training in the classroom!

1. Large Events
Game shows are a wonderful, “show stopping” element in a large event (like a large annual sales or training meeting). Use a game show after keynote speakers/presenters to both perk-up the audience and cement the presentation content in their heads, preparing them for what they’ll hear next. We’ve done large events where we’ve had a game show running throughout the day (or multiple days). The element of competition keeps audience members engaged, and being divided into teams to play the game show prevents them from getting lost in a sea of attendees. Game shows are also fantastic as a stand-alone element within a presentation or as part of a breakout session.

2. On the Web
If you frequent our site, you’ll notice our webinars. We use game shows in webinars to keep attendees engaged and to review webinar content. (In fact, if you’d like to see an example of game shows being used in this way, sign up for a webinar!) If your company does online training, using a game show over the web can have the same positive effect as using a game show in your training classroom—engaging all participants, increasing content retention, and motivating trainees to pay attention to the rest of the training. Game shows can also be used in a sales webinar for your company’s product to review benefits and features or to recap the sales presentation in a unique and inventive way that your customers are sure to remember.

3. Co-worker Gatherings
We’ve had customers send us their stories about using game shows for everything from annual corporate retreats and company holiday parties, to employee orientations and fundraisers. Game shows can be an opportunity to let your company shine by incorporating company information into a just-for-fun game show. Your employees learn more about the company and get to network and interact with their peers all in a low-pressure game show environment. A game show is the hit of a party, and it’s a fast and easy way to create an entertaining event.

4. Sales Presentations
Put a game show in your sales personnel’s toolkit and they’re ready to sell in a way that is unlike anything else your customers will have seen. You can do a little bit of research on a client and create a game show around their company to break the ice. You can also use a Classroom Feud-type game to create curiosity and a sense of need around your product. For example, if you were selling printers, you could have customers answer the question: “What are the top 5 complaints that most companies have with their printing service?” This can lead into a benefits-selling strategy for your salesperson based on how the clients have answered the question.

5. Family Events
As long as you’re already familiar with game shows, you can take them outside the corporate world and into your family events (including reunions, weddings, baby showers, etc.). For instance, a colleague of ours was getting married. He wanted a unique way to engage guests at his wedding reception so they would have fun and learn more about the happy couple. In each invitation to the wedding, he and his bride-to-be included a survey with questions like: Where do most couples meet, how long are couples together before they get married, etc. They compiled all the responses they received and put them into a Classroom Feud game show. Guests had to guess the top answers from all the questions. At the reception the bride’s family was pitted against the groom’s family, and the game show was played without a hitch and with only minimal cheating on the groom’s side.

Bonus Use: Almost anything.
You’ll find that when you start using game shows, you’ll love them so much that you’ll be able to find uses for them anywhere. We had one trainer who had his class build game shows to sharpen their computer skills (importing and exporting graphics, files, pictures, sounds, etc.). At the end of the course, they had a game show that they could use in their OWN training class with their own content. You can also have your trainees build games to use with the other trainees in the same class—further emphasizing the training content.