Sales are the lifeblood of a business. Organizations create sales teams to take care of their business and generate revenue. Sales training is an essential element of the growth of any sales team. Whether it is a B2C or B2B business, the burden of sales results resides on the shoulders of the salesperson.
Good salespeople should be able to convince the customer of the value of the products or services that they are selling. Information about market trends, products, services, and company policies can be understood or memorized, but selling skill is an art. It needs proper training and guidance from experienced professionals. Therefore every organization needs to train existing and new employees with different technical and soft skills to boost sales team performance.
Sales training is the first step to increasing the revenue of any company. It is an endeavor that helps an organization improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention when done right. In return, the organization receives increased sales and higher profits.
The sales training funnel is a challenging and complex process. The ever-changing sales environment faces many challenges while training like:
- Evolving market needs
- New products to sell
- New Audience to target
- Sales employee engagement
- Up-scaling
- Cutthroat competition
These challenges in the sales training funnel make it grueling to plan and implement successful sales training on a large scale. So, sales training should evolve in an organization.
What is an LMS?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a perfect solution for all these problems that sales teams face while training. An LMS enables organizations to create engaging content, assign courses and track the progress of their sales team members. An LMS’s integration with existing business solutions like CRM. The advanced features of an LMS can help the trainers and learners get information on sales training effectiveness and access reports on various aspects. Yet the question remains, how?
How LMS can uplift sales training in an organization
Here are ways in which an LMS can help organizations improve the sales training process:
1. Training as per each learner’s need:
Different learners have different needs and different learning styles. To cater to those needs, an organization must offer various types of sales training courses. This can include soft skills, training as per B2C and B2B industry demands, and business needs.
An LMS is an online platform used for training purposes all over the organization and beyond. An LMS can also be utilized as a central content management system for the whole organization and extent enterprise. It contains content in different formats to suit the needs of employees, such as videos, audio, pdf, ebooks, and case studies. Employees can access it whenever they want, so long as they have Internet access.
- Employees can leverage the content through libraries whenever the trainer or learner needs it on the job.
- LMS comes with built-in content libraries with a plethora of sales-oriented courses for busy sales departments. It eliminates the need to recreate the wheel.
- LMS can assign and automate learning pathways. It can include everything from cold calling and prospecting to bargaining to more effective listening, problem-solving, and communication may drastically increase sales effectiveness.
- If an organization wants multitasking salespeople to remember the material, it needs to be brief, micro-video-based, and entertaining. An LMS content can be leveraged through micro-learning videos to maintain the brand image, element, and consistency all over the sales training program.
2. Integration with existing systems: Increased acceptance
From the time they start working until they finish, most salespeople are hooked on CRM. It’s their virtual link to consumers, allowing them to keep track of recruiting, pipeline, transactions in progress, and more.
The LMSs can be integrated into the existing CRM solution. This method of sales training is relevant, related to goods, and administered at the point of need. Learning pathways may be timed to coincide with the closing process, making it easier for salespeople to progress through the phases.
3. Easy collaboration: Better communication
Sales training is an integral part of any organization. It is an important part of the successful onboarding and development of sales team members. But, sales training can often be a drag for both staff and trainers if the training is not collaborative. Sales and marketing departments are always on the go and busy with their tasks, and it can be challenging to coordinate the entire process effectively.
- LMSs can help your organization in improving the sales training programs with easy collaboration features.
- Every salesperson will be able to gain information and sharpen abilities by accessing content at his or her speed and convenience through the LMS.
- With the help of LMS, the salesman can ask inquiries and clarify any ambiguities through chats, inquiry corners, whiteboards, and discussion forums. Salespeople may communicate with instructors and other learners in today’s LMS systems in digitally hybrid environments.
- LMS’ collaborative features allow salespeople to readily comprehend various ideas while communicating and talking with other salespeople.
4. Real-time feedback and rewards: improved motivation
Salespeople’s productivity cannot be improved, without evaluating and synchronizing the effectiveness of numerous sales training programs. As LMS has built-in reporting and analytics capabilities, organizations can evaluate the effectiveness of particular sales training programs. You may also use real-time data to figure out what the salespeople are learning and how they are learning.
- The analytics will assist you in synchronizing your sales training programs by identifying flaws and areas for development.
- You can also reward the sales learner with digital leadership boards, online scoreboards, digital credit badges, with the certification gamification feature of LMS.
- This motivation not only increases the engagement of sales learners but only inspires their way to real-life sales lead competition.
5. Mobile support – learning on the go
More than half of the population prefer to use mobile devices, as they use different apps nowadays for business and personal use. And with a rising percentage of salespeople working remotely, sales agents, business development managers, account managers, executives, and territory sales managers are among the most common work-at-home occupations. An efficient LMS can support mobile devices to enable salespeople to get information while working remotely or from home. With the Mobile support of LMS, learners can learn on the job without sacrificing their work hours and targets.
Conclusion:
Salespeople are the face of a company and are very crucial for the growth of the organization. If sales employees are not trained properly, it can harm an organization’s brand and revenue opportunities. An effective LMS (Learning Management System) can help in accelerating the sales training funnel of an organization in a positive direction by providing impactful training to sales employees.