Sales professionals are famously (or notoriously) high-energy individuals, and frankly, we admire them.
But sales managers trying to keep their teams organised and on-message can find their jobs exhausting. Without clear communication and a well-honed sales training process, keeping your sales team selling with the correct product or service data can feel like herding cats—exceptionally motivated and determined cats who decisively don’t take kindly to herding.
So before we go too far down the herding-cats-analogy rabbit hole, let’s talk briefly about how you can centralise your sales training and focus your sales team with online sales training programs.
What tool is best for online sales training?
A learning management system (LMS) is generally considered the edtech product that meets every sales training requirement. In an LMS, you can:
- Create sales training courses with a variety of media like text, images, video, slide decks, and more
- Combine several sales courses to make learning journeys
- Assign courses to team members based on group or learning journey
- Include assignments, tests, and quizzes to ensure knowledge retention
Because sales teams are often motivated by competition, you can gamify your sales courses with leaderboards, certificates, and points.
When the training’s complete, an LMS offers tracking and reporting tools showing who completed their courses and how they scored. You can also download customised reports to share with stakeholders.
Onboard sales representatives more effectively
Using an LMS for your new sales reps allows them to start selling from a stronger place. New employees will better understand your product and sales processes so they can sell more effectively right from the get-go.
But a centralised, online training platform continues to give even after they’ve completed their new employee training. When you use cloud-based software for sales training, you provide your team with an always-available library of sales strategies and product/service information.
Your sales courses can be accessed anytime, no matter the team’s location. If they need to download sales materials at 5 am before an early-morning sales breakfast, they don’t have to wait for the office to open to get them. If they have a question about a product’s features or functionality, they can find the answer without waiting for a reply from their colleagues.
Refresh the sales teams’ essential sales skills
You may have a seasoned sales team replete with sales skills. But a refresher on sales basics never hurt anyone – even your veteran sales representatives.
You can create as many sales training programs as you need on any topic using an LMS, and you can require that your sales team take the courses and pass quizzes or exams to be allowed to download a certificate or move on to the next training. You can also gate new content with a quiz or exam, so learners aren’t required to retake old courses but are required to refresh before they start the next lesson.
Ongoing sales training keeps your entire team engaged. It helps them learn the newest product features and keeps them abreast of new sales tactics. It also helps them refocus their energy on key sales goals, even if they’ve been in the game for decades.
Unify your sales team’s brand voice
Your team may have stellar sales skills, but if they’re not singing from the same hymnbook, your brand message won’t be harmonious.
In the heat of a sale, it’s easy for sales professionals to forget brand messaging. When they want to close a sale, they may overlook a small-but-crucial product detail or feature nuance.
An LMS allows you to ensure all of your sales reps are working with the same brand language recommendations, the same feature descriptions, and the same use case examples. That way, you don’t have tools being misunderstood or yet-to-be-developed features sold as out of the box.
Offer a solid path to sales management
Offering online sales courses with an LMS lets you set a clear path to sales management for those who wish to refine their sales techniques and move up the ladder.
In an LMS, you can give your sales professionals access to a world of courses on various sales topics. You can include training on inbound sales, making effective sales calls, or the latest sales techniques. Sales reps can learn how to hone their sales pitch, attract customers, or identify quality sales prospects. Sales management can create learning journeys that guide excellent salespeople to become excellent sales managers.
Not only does all of this training make a stronger sales team, but it also empowers your reps to progress in their own careers. It makes them more satisfied in their roles and happier to stay working longer (and more productively) at your company.
Solidify customer relationships with customer training
Client training in an LMS can support account management and simplify your sales team’s job. They don’t have to ask your sales team to answer every little product question. Instead, they can access their training library – created within a customer-specific portal and customised for their branding – to find solutions and answers without ringing their sales rep.
Customers who receive training on your product or service are more likely to use it and see its benefits. When it comes time to renew your contract, trained clients will have no misgivings about signing. They may even recommend land-and-expand opportunities within their organisation if they’ve had access to high-quality product training via an LMS.
An LMS should integrate with existing sales processes
A good LMS shouldn’t disrupt your existing sales processes. It should integrate with them so seamlessly that your team can operate SalesForce, Zoom, Zapier, or any other software as smoothly as ever. Your team should be able to access training from a computer or mobile device, giving them freedom and flexibility in how they consume their training.
The right LMS supports your sales goals with a fluid user experience and elevated in-app tools. Features like tracking and reporting should also serve your sales success goals, allowing you to see where your sales training is making an impact and where it may need to be tweaked.Book a tour of LearnRight, and you’ll discover an LMS that delivers ease of use, smooth integration, and powerful reporting tools – all in one dynamic software.
