Robert Dinkins: Your Learning Platform – Your Sales Enablement Machine

Keep an eye out for Docebo’s upcoming whitepaper that will outline the strategies you need to boost sales performance with your learning platform.

The way people learn is changing, a shift driven by a combination of the distractions and general busy-ness alive and well in today’s business environments. Yet, many organizations’ learning strategy have remained the same, and are not reflective of the times or the evolving needs of their employees, customers, and partners. And this lack of action is having a direct impact on their bottom lines.

The ultimate goal of any organization is to generate revenue, but doing so can be a challenge if its sales staff isn’t motivated to push the envelope and drive performance. Many sales teams juggle similar challenges, specifically those related to the fact that most learning activities remain rooted in formal and event-based training. Sales teams end up being served unstimulating, poorly-organized content that may not even be relevant to issues they’re dealing with daily, and there’s zero post-training reinforcement.

Fortunately, the solution to these ongoing issues is actually quite simple, and involves equipping your sales teams with the tools they need to succeed and enable further growth.

While meeting revenue targets sits on the shoulders of all of those within the organization, a business’s sales staff are on the front lines, leveraging the insights of other departments to secure new customers and keep existing ones happy. It is therefore imperative that your sales staff is trained effectively to ensure they’re communicating your product effectively to prospects in the field.

The better your organization’s sales team performs, the more people will know about your organization and what it does – an awareness that generates more business.

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement, which means getting the right information into the hands of sales people at the right time, remains a common issue at enterprises around the world. As competition increases and revenue targets grow more aggressive, the pressures on sales staff to perform are stronger than ever.

Sales enablement gives sales staff the content, tools, knowledge and skills they need to be effective. This includes up-to-date product information, sales best practices, how to build loyal customer relationships, effective communication skills, time management and the art of persuasion.

While the tools needed to deliver these skills have changed, too few organizations have leveraged them to improve their sales enablement activities. As your organization introduces new products, new customer demands come with them (plus new sales reps), so there will always be learning gaps to fill, demanding more ways to enable your sales teams. In the age of technology, it’s easier than ever to make learning more convenient and, most importantly, more effective. And the right learning management system (LMS) is your avenue to sales enablement success.

Why Your Existing Sales Training Strategy Isn’t Working

It depends too heavily on dull and overly-complex content. The goal of any sales training initiative is fairly obvious: to increase sales. But we must remember that change is never automatic. Encouraging sales staff to adjust the behaviours they know well will never be an easy job, but is possible when done so with the right tools alongside engaging and valuable learning content.

Sales staff struggle to retain valuable knowledge. There’s far too much reliance on formal and event-based training without much effort on reinforcement afterward.

How do you really know if the content served in these formal and event-based settings is actually connecting with sales people in a way that they can take it and apply that information in the field to close more sales?

To maximize ROI on your sales training initiatives, consider using a blended approach using a variety of learning modalities (formal, social, experiential) that consist of facilitated reinforcement, sales coaching by frontline managers, and on-demand reinforcement enabled by your learning platform.

Your Learning Platform is The Tool to Boost Sales Enablement

The modern enterprise needs training opportunities that empower their sales teams to ensure they meet their goals as they evolve. A modern LMS can bring these learning strategies to life, empowering your sales teams to achieve (and exceed) their business goals.

Your learning platform helps you reach your entire sales teams, providing critical information on-the-go, whenever they may need it most, while making learning fun. Tap into the well-known competitive nature of successful sales teams with learning content that leverages gamification, bite-sized video, inputs from internal subject-matter experts, within a learning environment based on models such as the 70:20:10 framework.

Here’s how:

Tap into their competitive sides. Gamify your sales training activities with with leaderboards, points, badges and rewards to inspire some healthy competition within, motivating staff to learn more, retain more valuable information, and deploy that information faster. When your learning content is designed effectively and is relevant to their needs, you’re equipping sales teams with the skills and knowledge they need to drive sales performance for the organization.

Establish brand message consistency. In many cases, sales teams are the face of an organization. They’re the people on the front lines meeting with prospects and existing customers. Their personalities reflect that of the organization and its purpose, ultimately having a powerful influence on the way people perceive your business.

This means that every sales representative must have a consistent understanding of the business, its culture, its products – and how they should be interacting with customers. There may, however, be issues getting that information into the hands of all of those within the sales organization, as they may be located in different cities, or even countries. Getting them all together in a single location isn’t the easiest feat, nevermind an expensive one.

Fortunately, your learning platform allows salespeople to access the same up-to-date content, no matter where they are in the world. Your learning platform is their portal to live product demonstrations and virtual ILT sessions with company higher-ups,which can be absorbed from their own desk, couch and car.

Up-to-date product knowledge training when they need it most. Healthy organizations are those that evolve with its product to emerge as leaders within their industry. But a product is only as good the sales person’s ability to sell it. That means you must be able to provide product updates to sales people in the field on the fly, outlining new features, benefits and applications. Ongoing product knowledge training is absolutely critical to any sales role, but they need a tool that enables it at the point of need. Your learning platform is the most effective way to do so easily and effectively, while saving sales teams’ time and improving their product knowledge.

Enable learning on-the-go. With a learning platform that has mobile compatibility, you’re giving your sales staff a way to learn no matter where they are, on whatever device they choose. Give them access to your library of learning content, best practices and essential product information digitally whether they’re in the parking lot before a client meeting or their morning train ride into the office.

Your Sales Enablement Machine

When the right learning technology is paired with the right content, you can turn your L&D activities into a sales enablement machine. By developing configurable learning experiences with learning technology, you’re equipping your sales people with the tools and the knowledge they need to drive performance and boost revenues – and that’s a good thing for everyone along the learning chain.

Keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for Docebo’s latest whitepaper that will uncover the knowledge you need to empower your sales people with the right mix of learning technology and content, and how you can turn your e-learning platform into a sales enablement machine.

In the meantime, download our whitepaper, published in partnership with the Brandon Hall Group, How Learning Can Drive Sales Performance. This exciting and wildly popular paper covers a number of insights, including: