Sales training is extensive and encircles many topics and areas of learning, including effective and efficient utilization of tools that enable sales, process training, skills training, product training, and many more. When corporate trainers seek to impart knowledge, skills, and training to sales personnel, their main goal is to assist them in developing new behaviors that are more effective, learning new methodologies and techniques, and honing new and advanced skills. To attain as well as to maintain a professional and competitive edge in this day’s highly evolving and fierce business environment, sales training can help significantly by developing the required competencies. All these objectives and aims can be achieved through mobile learning which is a highly efficient and effective mode of delivering corporate training and learning material.
The Edge Mobile Learning Offers
There are several different digital e-learning methods that are applicable in corporate training. However, a highly versatile as well as cost-efficient one is that of mobile learning. It offers enhanced learning flexibility to employees and allows the salesforce to carry out their learning endeavors at any time and from virtually anywhere. This results in better and improved knowledge retention and engagement. There are a number of different formats available for helping in the creation of mobile learning courses and modules. These include infographics, quizzes, animations, interactive videos, image or video-based presentations, etc.
One of the biggest benefits of leveraging these formats is that the modern workforce is already familiar with them due to their frequent use of them on their smartphones and other digital devices. Corporate trainers would know that salespeople are different in a number of ways from employees of other departments and have unique learning and training requirements. One of the factors that have to be considered and catered to is that they are always on the move and need to have the latest and up-to-the-minute updated information about the services as well as the products that their business offers at their fingertips at all times. Mobile learning is an efficient way of providing relevant sales training in an effective and quick manner.
In this article, we will take a look at four ways in which corporate trainers can and should leverage mobile training learning for top-of-the-shelf sales training. But before that, let us look at some basic tips for engaging sales reps in corporate training effectively. Combining these ways with the mobile training tips that we will discuss later in the article can help you help your sales personnel become extremely productive for better business growth.
Learning Methods for Increased Sales Reps Engagement
It is common for sales reps to not pay full attention to their end-to-end sales training courses and zone out pretty early on. One can blame the prevalence of social media, smartphones and smart gadgets, and other disruptive technologies for that, but the inefficiency of the sales training material is equally at fault. It is natural for the brain to start getting distracted and kicking in the cognitive backlog when it is not able to process huge amounts of incoming information at quick speeds. Here are some of the methods that mitigate these issues and challenges and allow the trainees to be fully engaged with their corporate training modules:
Telling
You can tell your sales reps what is effective and what is not in several different ways. However, telling them in a manner that makes them attentively listen is the key. E-learning allows corporate trainers to leverage different formats while delivering training that offers better retention. Tests, quizzes, and knowledge-check assessments are efficient in this regard, along with showing pieces of evidence and statistics about different things. You can present a detailed step-by-step guide about the execution of the prospecting call, for example, and justify why the approach works better than other different techniques and methodologies through stories. Also, Microlearning allows the brain to process the information it receives before more information is thrown its way. It does so by delivering learning material in small chunks and at the preferred time of the trainees when their brain tells them it is ready for more.
Showing
Ride-alongs, demonstrations, and peer learning videos that show high-performers at work are ways of making your trainees experience what ‘great’ looks like. Learning through observation allows sales personnel to learn how to put the theories they already know into action. Showing is critical as it helps trainees put pieces together and enables them to practice greatness and gradually get better at it, which brings us to the next methodology.
Practicing
Learning by doing is always effective for gaining relevant skills and knowledge. Corporate trainers can design their sales training modules in a way that enables the trainees to bank on the opportunity of practicing their learning in a controlled and safe environment. This allows them to master their skills of selling before they actually take on the endeavor of engaging a real buyer. Reps can video themselves and share the recordings with their peers as well as instructors for additional feedback for improvement.
Reinforcing and Applying
Constructive feedback in real-time and its application there and then to get closer to perfection works wonders. Field observations and coaching enhances the performance of sales reps in humungous ways. Studies indicate that the average retention time of knowledge after the first 30 days is only 30% and can only be improved through reinforcement. The practices of real-time observation and in-field reinforcements allow managers and corporate trainers to gauge and rectify the ability of the salesforce to apply its learning while actually being in front of buyers.
These sales training methods and techniques can be applied through e-learning modules, whether with the offering of mobile learning or on-site training. However, integrating them with mobile learning along with the incorporation of the following tips can improve your sales training at scale:
Using Scenarios for Developing Skills
Integrating your sales training mobile learning modules and courses with scenarios that are interactive for skills development is something that all corporate trainers should consider. This allows the members of your sales team to learn and master a number of different beneficial skills, including team building, problem-solving, listening, critical thinking, communication, and leadership skills. Furthermore, when you include real-life stories, situations, experiences, and scenarios in your mobile learning modules for sales training, your trainees understand in a much better way how their learning can be applied to their job roles, and they are also able to identify insight within the content and better relate to it as well.
As we discussed earlier, brief quizzes, as well as knowledge-check activities, are efficient for enhancing the engagement of sales trainees. However, engagement is not the only function they perform as such quizzes and activities that are based on hypothetical situations can also provide the trainees with opportunities to actively think through common challenges and obstacles and complex situations and problems pertaining to sales that they often find themselves facing. So, quizzes and tests can help in knowledge retention, improve engagement, and assist the development of problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
Put a Sharp Focus on Personalized Learning
A mobile learning program directed towards a sales team can become effective tenfold when you equip it with the parameter of personalized learning. Relevant skills, knowledge, and content incite modern learners like nothing else and motivate them in a significant manner. Learning management systems (LMS) or learning experience platforms (LPs) are highly useful in this regard as many of them offer real-time reporting and monitoring of different KPIs as well as key sales metrics.
Corporate trainers can easily create personalized sales training modules and courses by analyzing the data and analytics that such software offers. The custom reports enable you to identify the strengths, weaknesses, level of knowledge, application skills, and skill gaps of each of your sales individuals. This allows you to design unique and specific training courses that are separately relevant to all the trainees and feature precise targeting.
Integrate Gamification
Gamification allows your sales trainees to attain a thrilling experience out of the e-learning modules you present them with. Simple gaming components, such as progress bars, multiple levels, badges, points, and stars, are enough to motivate your trainees and allow them to engage with their e-learning endeavors more intensely. These elements are very effective at triggering the basic human instinct of collection. Gamification also enhances learning among the trainees by sparking competition as a gamified sales training program is very likely to tap into the need of the members of your sales teams for recognition.
When there are leaderboards, and the best performers get their names on top of them for everyone to see, a healthy race automatically expedites. Completion of training modules, scoring high on a quiz, efficiently applying the content on the job, etc., should all earn the trainees a badge or a star, etc. You can also reward the best performers of the year with real-value gifts or monetary benefits or bonuses for increased engagement, participation, and interest.
Embed Short Videos
When it comes to equipping your sales personnel with skills that are in demand as well as with updated knowledge, brief videos are highly effective and serve as the go-to resort. Short videos can be embedded throughout a mobile learning module or course in relevant areas and places for sales trainees to click on them to learn a specific concept, technique, tip, skill, or methodology for selling. Videos are especially useful for topics that are extensive, as presenting them in long paragraphs can trigger a cognitive backlog. A video allows you to deliver and impart high volumes of useful and relevant information in a short period of time without the risk of disengagement or distraction.
For example, instead of a 20-30 minute video covering each topic below, create multiple shorter videos that are only two minutes long – each which can cover the following processes and skills pertaining to sales:
- Closing a deal in an efficient manner
- How to handle a customer’s concern, query, objection, or feedback
- How to guide prospects across the whole process of sales
- Tips for a masterful sales pitch
- Going about approaching different prospects
- Things that prove helpful in creating impact
- How to determine which service or product is right for a specific kind of customer
- How to present a service or product to a customer
There are several tools and resources that can aid corporate trainers in the creation of videos, or they can even use different relevant videos that are already present on the internet. A short video for sales training can feature images, animations, graphics, infographics, animated characters, or real-life characters for effectively depicting different real-life or probable selling scenarios and situations.
Our Final Thoughts
Mobile learning, if utilized effectively and in an optimum manner, is a great way of delivering efficient and result-fetching sales training. Corporate training that leverages mobile training can make a huge contribution in the increase of sales success that consequently leads to business growth that is lasting and long-term. The above-mentioned e-learning and mobile learning tips can make your sales training be efficiently-positioned to support your sales representatives in closing more and better deals.
Mobile learning gives way to innovation and reinvented approaches when it comes to corporate training. Personalized learning, roleplay, gamification, real-time monitoring and coaching, and other methodologies that corporate trainers can now incorporate in sales training were not possible without the technologies that underpin e-learning. Today’s digital world is full of learning and training resources that we can leverage for better performance and higher productivity, especially in the sales sphere.