The Importance of Sales Training
Sales training should actually increase sales. With NetExam, it does. Use NetExam to launch a best-of-the-breed, impactful sales training that salespeople will actually use.
Salespeople notoriously struggle with retaining training content. So give them a training tool that is easy to use, is gamified, and has features like just-in-time training and microlearning optimized for salespeople. As a result, they will be trained and ready to not only sell but also close the deal.
You can even use NetExam to quantitatively measure the differences between your high-performing sales stars and poor/average performers. Subsequently, you can prescribe the appropriate training to fill the gap and make it a team of all-stars.
Channel Partner Sales Training Feature List
Customize Sales Training
- Design learning plans for each specialty for your team’s sales training.
- Create Sales Readiness programs and track sales team progress.
- Offer challenges like a “Sales Pitch Challenge” where salespeople record a video of their sales pitch for review and grading.
Recommend
- Recommend or assign training to team members and track their progress.
- Suggest content such as whitepapers, video, news, and help guides to your sales team. NetExam bases these recommendations on an AI algorithm that looks at trends, peer usage, and ratings.
- Display relevant training to users through NetExam’s just-in-time training. For example, when a salesperson looks at a prospective lead in Salesforce.com, show training about lead prospecting.
Incentivize
- Test, certify, and badge your sales team using NetExam’s testing and certification features.
- Offer points, badges, gifts, etc. to learners.
- Use leaderboards to show their relative ranking.
Team Manager Access
- Sales team managers have access to team reports in order to view individual and as well as group training goals.
- Set up coaching activities for sales team members using NetExam’s manager app.
Social Integration
- Use NetExam’s Social Learning to allow salespeople to subscribe to topics and exchange information with one another.
- Follow sales leaders and mentors. Get recommended content and advice from them.
Track Sales Training Data
- Capture informal activities such as role-play, mentor meetings, conference attendance, ride-alongs, and lunch-and-learns.
- Track external courses and certifications your sales team has completed for their sales training.
- Send training completion data back to HR or other internal systems.
- Give attendees participation credit through NetExam’s Informal Learning mobile app.
- Track sales-readiness of your entire organization using NetExam’s roll-up or drill-down feature.
- Measure the correlation between training and sales performance through NetExam’s Learning Impact Analysis.
- Pull sales data through built-in integrations with CRM systems such as Salesforce.com, MS Dynamics, and Oracle Fusion.
- Access analytical reports to compare pre- and post-training performance.
- View training patterns of your best performers and recommend that training to others.
- Track your sales team’s competencies using NetExam’s Talent Management. View competency gaps between required and assessed competencies then prescribe activities.
HR Integration
- Connect with your HR system to receive data such as new hires, termination, etc. using NetExam’s built connectors or API.
- Send training completion data back to HR or other internal systems.
- Onboard new sales employees by auto-enrolling them in learning plans.
Providing The Right Training
First, take an honest assessment of your sales staff’s skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Do they need general sale effectiveness training in consultative sales skills, prospecting, cold calls, negotiating, and closing the deal? Or are they good at moving through the steps of the sales funnel but not following up after close? Would they benefit from customer service sales training?
Or maybe their sales and client maintenance skills are great, but they need a deeper understanding of newly-launched products. If you are getting into software sales, you need to initiate technology sales training. Or you may have channel partners who need product training and guidance on how to represent your brand.
Once you decide what to teach, the next step is choosing a format. For a few staff, in-person one-on-one or small groups may still be ideal. For larger sales force training, sales training online is necessary. Online sales training courses may be pre-recorded or conducted as live, interactive virtual sessions provided by qualified instructors.
For staff who learn better through reading or visual presentations, PowerPoint presentations, white paper info sheets, or eBooks are effective. For all staff, creating an online resource library of videos and written materials that they can access at any time allows them to train on an as-needed basis. Developing a social site where colleagues share questions and ideas with each other is another way to make as-needed training available.
Once you have a content and format plan, you need to develop and implement this sales training. Do you have the resources to create the necessary training modules or teach the courses? Once training is provided, do you know how to measure sales training effectiveness? Or would it be more efficient to hire a learning management systems company who specializes in meeting training needs?
Trending Needs in Sales Training
Beyond traditional sales force effectiveness training programs, today’s training modules must cover topics and skills that are specific to today’s digitized and global economy.
- CRM TRAINING
Some sales staff are born salespeople but lack the administrative and CRM skills to keep their funnels and data organized. Providing quality sales force CRM training is critical to help these staff perform competitively.
A small business that experiences significant growth may struggle as sales staff attempt to move from tracking sales processes with a spreadsheet or small, off-brand CRM system to a more sophisticated CRM system.
A larger business may hire salesperson from another company who are used to a specific type of CRM and have trouble migrating their skills to a new CRM. They need program-specific training such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM training, Oracle CRM training, or Salesforce CRM training.
Without strong CRM skills, salespersons get bogged down in details, lose track of important information, or waste time struggling with data entry. They are more difficult to supervise since data and insights into their sales funnels and close ratios are lacking. CRM sales training can improve efficiency and job satisfaction for both sales and management.
- CHANNEL PARTNER SALES TRAINING
Channel partner sales are critical in the global economy. Although these sales partners are not technically your staff, you still need to train them about products and how to represent your brand. Effectively onboarding them with quality product training can increase sales and profits by up to 20%. The more they know, the more they’ll sell.
Without training, you risk brand damage and poor presentation of your products or services. And you will spend more time handling their ongoing questions and customer complaints that you would have spent training correctly. Or channel partners will neglect presenting for you at all, pushing what they don’t understand to the back burner in favor of things that are easier to sell.
- SOFTWARE SALES TRAINING & IT SALES TRAINING
In today’s digital and SaaS-driven world, your team is more likely to be selling software, tech services, or software as a service than a tangible product that they can hold in their hands. If you are still wondering how to get into software sales, ramping up your sales team’s knowledge with information technology sales training is a big part of that process.
If you are already an expert in this vertical, you know that your sales team needs unique training. You must provide your sales force software training and end-user development training. They need to understand the constantly changing technology well enough to sell its attributes and differentiate it effectively from competitor services. And they need to understand the end-user client’s concerns about implementation, integration with current systems, and ongoing support.
Plus, SaaS and IT sales are more likely to be handled through the growing channel partner sales system, which adds another layer of complexity to your SaaS and software sales training.
NetExam Can Help
If you are struggling with this added complexity of channel partner training, NetExam can help. NetExam will create a precise training program specific to your needs.
Whether your partners need basic customer service sales training programs or a higher level of SaaS, software, or information technology sales training, NetExam’s experience and professionalism will make a difference in your bottom line results.
Our training experts guide you from the first step of developing a training roadmap through the final stages of measuring training effectiveness. We will track your partners completion and sales training certification. Our system even enables you to funnel leads according to training completion.
NetExam is also one of the first Learning Management Systems to integrate with Salesforce and can provide Salesforce software training. We are also integrated with Oracle CRM and provide MS Dynamic CRM training and integration as well. Integrating with your back systems and ensuring that your partners are fully trained in using them is just one more way that NetExam makes your life easier.
But most of all, NetExam understands how to measure training effectiveness. Plus, we go far beyond just measuring training effectiveness. We make this data continuously available to you, enabling real-time decisions. If one region or channel partner has a higher ROI than others, you will know. Our LMS is revenue driven; improving your ROI through training is our passion.