In today’s highly challenging business environment, finding ways to create and maintain a competitive edge is critical. One of the most powerful ways to accomplish this is by building a strong and knowledgeable sales team as increasing sales efficiency is key to organizational sustainability and growth.
Given this, effective sales training is essential for the development of your team. A well-trained salesperson has developed the ability to gain a prospect’s attention and influence their decision-making with regard to your company’s product, services, and industry. Through proper training, your salespeople will also have developed strong negotiation skills to help ensure that any deal they reach is in the best interest of your company.
Some of the specific benefits of sales training programs include:
Increased Sales Productivity
Effective sales training will increase your sales teams’ production in both the short and long-term. In fact, companies that invest in sales team training can expect not only an increase in revenues, but improved profit margins and happier (and more loyal) salespeople.
Faster Ramp-Up
The availability of sales training helps to bring new sales reps up-to-speed faster so they can start contributing more quickly to the teams’ production. Sales training can also help your team to quickly learn new about new products, sales strategies, and industry developments.
Reduced Burden on Sales Managers
By offering sales training, you are better preparing your salespeople for high performance, which includes the ability to navigate your company’s internal systems. This, along with increased product and industry knowledge, can decrease the need for your sales managers to lend assistance, thus allowing them to be spend their time on more strategic initiatives.
Enhanced Culture for Success
Many companies find that, by offering initial and ongoing sales training programs, they are creating a culture of success. Effective training can create a culture of healthy competition among your salespeople along with a culture of though leadership within your industry.
eLearning for Sales Training
In years past, the primary approach companies would take in implementing sales training was through classroom-based, in-person training. However, the availability of improved cloud-based technologies, combined with increasingly remote sales forces has made online learning, or “eLearning” the preferred approach to sales training and development.
eLearning eliminates many of the costs associated with classroom-based training, such as travel, venue and instructor fees, and the need to print and distribute sales training materials. In addition, eLearning-based sales training provides an element of convenience and flexibility that is not possible with classroom-based training.
An LMS as Sales Training Software
The core technology that supports all types of eLearning programs, including sales training, is a Learning Management System, or “LMS”. An LMS is the application that is used to build, deliver, manage, and track sales training engagement and performance.
While some companies choose to “stand up” an LMS on their own servers (self-hosted), they tend to be larger organizations that have the resources (both financial and labor) for this effort. It is far more common today for companies to work with third-party cloud-based LMS providers to access the features and capacity they need.
Some of the benefits you can expect in working with a cloud-based LMS for sales training include:
Cost-Effectiveness
A cloud-based LMS eliminates the need for a large, up-front capital expenditure in hardware, software and infrastructure. It also shifts the responsibility for the ongoing management and maintenance of the LMS to the cloud vendor.
Convenience and Flexibility
With a cloud-based LMS, your salespeople can conduct their training activities any time and from any place. All that is required is an Internet connection. This approach ensures that your salespeople have access to the important information they need, when and where they need it.
Self-Paced
For many salespeople, one of the challenges of classroom-based training is in the need to keep up with the pace set by the instructor. eLearning with a cloud LMS eliminates this need by allowing each salesperson to learn at their own pace.
Detailed Analytics
Another challenge of classroom-based training is in a lack of opportunity to capture detailed data regarding learner engagement and training success. Fortunately, many cloud-based LMS vendors now offer robust analytics engines, allowing you to capture, review, and report on user engagement, progress, and training success.
LMS Portals as Sales Training Software
LMS Portals provides our clients and partners with a cloud-based, multi-tenant learning management system that allows you to launch and manage multiple, private eLearning environments to support and drive your sales training programs. Each portal can be uniquely branded and customized and includes powerful tools for course development, user onboarding, learner collaboration, analytics, and more.
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