Training a sales team with extensive product knowledge is vital to your company’s selling success. But sales teams are notoriously hard to pin down, and keeping your entire team focused on the correct sales methodology and sales process can be challenging.
Investing in training for your sales professionals makes brilliant business sense. By some estimates, companies that invest in sales training courses are 57% more effective at selling than their competitors.
Ongoing training is essential to helping your sales managers and sales reps to perform. Rather than sporadic seminars, continuous sales training is associated with a staggering 50% higher net sales per individual.
In all, sales training delivers your company a 353% ROI. Research in the US showed that for every $1 invested in a sales training program, companies receive $4.53 back.
Below we’ll explore how you can deepen your sales team’s product knowledge and create a dynamite sales process. The key is to employ online training with innovative thinking and a clever, effective tool.
Choose the right format for your sales training program
That clever, effective sales training tool you’re looking for is a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is software that lets you create courses and deliver them to the right team members based on a learner’s assigned role or group.
A learning management system allows you to deliver practical sales training in any format, from video to webinar to slide decks to texts & images. Instructors can include assignments in their sales training courses like quizzes and tests.
Plus, they can monitor their sales team’s progress with reporting and analytics tools that let you create reports on learning outcomes and identify learning gaps.
A sound learning management system will include robust messaging features and allow you to create discussion forums. That way, your sales reps can ask questions and receive feedback from their colleagues and sales managers.
In an LMS, sales teams can access the best sales training to help them become sales leaders.
Include sales team training as part of the onboarding process
You’ll get more effort and engagement from your new hires when you invest in their onboarding process. Research shows that new employees feel 18x more commitment to their employees when they receive onboarding training.
New team members will get the best possible start when sales training is part of their onboarding program. And with an LMS, your new sales reps will get the training they need without taking time away from your sales team’s regular duties.
When you use an LMS to offer sales training as part of the onboarding process, you’ll know that your team members have received a deeper level of product knowledge from day one.
You can monitor their progress in the learning management system, so you’ll know whether your new sales reps need more training or are ready to deliver that first sales pitch.
Use pre-planned sales training programs
Sales training doesn’t stop with the onboarding process. Ongoing training has been proven to be the most effective sales training, and with a learning management system, you can deliver it in a few clicks.
Create learning journeys for each learner that automatically lead them through pre-planned sales training programs. Receive updates on their sales training progress and require sales reps to retake training courses if they don’t meet course requirements.
You can gate your sales training content, so learners are required to complete initial training before moving on to deeper subjects.
Plus, with a learning management system, you can use product knowledge and sales process training to encourage professional development and move from sales reps to sales managers.
Online sales training programs let them train as a team
With an LMS, you can ensure your entire team has the most up-to-date product knowledge. From a new sales rep undertaking the onboarding process to a seasoned sales manager who wants to stay relevant in their sales skills and methodology, your entire team of sales professionals can benefit from sales training in a learning management system.
When product details change, you can update the entire sales team at once and require that they complete updated product training. You can also require that they retrain periodically to ensure that their product knowledge stays fresh and accurate.
Auto-generated certificates and leaderboards make sales training more exciting. Friendly competition and goal setting brings an element of fun into your training program and keeps learners engaged.
Get them involved in customer product training
A learning management system is also a great way to deliver product training for customers. Customers can log in and learn when it’s convenient for them. Product information is always at hand, and your company saves on staffing customer service hours.
But using an LMS for customer training allows you to involve your sales team in customer training. You can deepen your sales team’s understanding of customer pain points by asking them to help guide customer product training.
The team can strengthen their customer relationship by taking a leadership role in their product training. That stronger relationship will lead to more repeat contracts and referrals from existing clients.
And when your sales team can deepen their customer relationships and better understand the problems that your company solves, they’ll be an unstoppable sales team.
Get the LMS that makes sales training a cinch
LearnRight’s learning management system allows you to easily create sales training programs with a simple-yet-powerful course builder, but we don’t stop there.
We’re known for a best-in-class analytics and reporting system that lets you monitor the metrics that matter. You can create and download customised reports so your sales training stakeholders can see your progress and measure learning outcomes.
Take a LearnRight tour to see how an LMS can make engaging and effective sales training part of your sales strategy. Talk to our team today to schedule a tour of LearnRight.
