7 Perks Of Mobile Learning For Sales Team Training
Driving sales involves more than meets the eye. It’s not just about having a friendly chat with the clients and knowing one thing or two about the products. Sales require thorough product knowledge, mastery of sales techniques, and excellent social skills. Not to mention a fair amount of resilience to bounce back from low sales numbers or grumpy clients. For high-ticket products and services, the requirements rise even higher. Counting on your employees’ sales DNA alone is an outdated and erroneous tactic. Comprehensive and regular sales team training is the norm for businesses that stand out. Sales training is easier said than done. Delivering training to a dispersed team, who is additionally constantly on the move, requires a flexible, modern-day approach. This approach is mobile training. This article explores in detail the benefits of mobile learning for sales team training. Let’s dive in.
1. It Doesn’t Disrupt Their Schedule
The workday of a sales employee is nothing like the workday of a traditional office-based employee. Sales reps are always on the move and busy. They also work in shifts, which are often not even stable, since last-minute changes in the schedule are a fairly common phenomenon in retail. Trips and client meetings are also on the menu for external sales representatives. If the job is fast-paced and mobile, how can sales training be otherwise? On-site training is less than optimal for your sales team. In all honesty, it’s an additional burden on their already loaded schedule. Mobile learning is a 100% flexible option for training remote sales employees, as it brings training right to their fingertips. Your sales team can visit their course and advance with their training in between meetings or while commuting.
2. It’s Ideal For Quick Consumption And Easy Digestion
Mobile training addresses busy, deskless employees, who have a lot to learn but very little time to do so. For this reason, it’s developed on the premises of microlearning. What good is having mobile access to a one-hour course, anyway? Using a mobile sales training software, like TalentCards, your global sales team has access to short bursts of knowledge that target one topic at a time. For the sake of facilitating knowledge retention, the microtraining resources are visually clear and presented following a logical sequence. Think infographics and short demo videos. The clean presentation and simplicity of the content make it easier for sales reps to memorize information like product specifications or the points of their upcoming sales presentation. So, mobile learning delivers its promise and provides training that is both effective and fits right in.
3. It Provides Assistance At The Moment Of Need
What happens when a sales rep needs information here and now? Remember, these employees are deskless and on the move. Accessing information on a laptop is usually not an option—or definitely not a quick one. Whether on the sales floor or on their way to a client meeting, sales reps might need to dust up their knowledge to answer a question or to feel more confident and better prepared before a sales pitch. That’s when mobile learning for sales team training comes in.
Mobile learning and microlearning are an unbeatable combination for Just-In-Time training. Because the content is short and to the point, your sales team can instantly find that missing piece of information that could make the difference between a failed and a successful deal. Using a mobile learning app for this purpose makes on-demand access to information even easier. It requires minimum browsing while also enabling offline access when an internet connection is weak or not available.
4. Streamlined Content For A Consistent Sales Approach
A determining factor in sales is brand consistency. Consumers have certain expectations from the service they’ll receive based on the brand image you’ve built. And although your brand image is the result of your marketing strategy developed by your marketing team, it’s your sales reps that have the last word. Whether in B2B or B2C sales, your global sales team needs to align with your image and advertised vision to provide a consistent, positive buying experience that lives up to your reputation.
Mobile sales training courses are ideal to safeguard brand consistency and streamline your sales approach since all employees access the same learning material. Streamlined training content doesn’t mean one-size-fits-all, though. More experienced employees can still choose more advanced courses and new employees entry-level ones. To determine their knowledge level and assign each employee the most suitable course, consider conducting pre-assessments.
5. It’s Easy To Update
The key to staying relevant and maintaining your competitive edge is being attentive to your—ever-growing—consumers' needs. The constant changes in the market call for the frequent release of new products or updates, which translates into regular retraining for your sales team. Developing and distributing digital sales training material is substantially more cost-effective and involves less hassle compared to setting up live training sessions. It’s also a lot faster, which means that your global sales team will always be up to speed. All you need to do is create the content and upload it on your mLearning app. Then, send notifications whenever an update or a new course is available. It can’t get much easier than that.
6. Better Assessment And Reporting Options
The proof is in the pudding. But since disappointing sales taste bitter, why not gauge your sales team’s readiness before sending them on the field? So, another advantage of deploying mobile learning for sales team training is that you have several assessment options. Quizzes and branching scenarios will reveal who is ready to go "up and at them" and who needs more time. Your reporting tools will also tell you how your learners engage with the content.
Finding out what works and what doesn’t will help you modify your sales training course for the best. That said, be proactive and provide your sales employees with a variety of content. The concept of learning styles might be rejected by many. Yet, there’s no denying that different learners favor certain types of content over others. In some cases, it’s just a matter of convenience. For example, auditory content like podcasts is easier to engage with than visual content when you’re on the move.
7. It Creates A Motivating Learning Environment
Mobile training presents an amazing opportunity to leverage learning methods that not only enhance learning but also increase motivation and encourage participation. It’s safe to assume that sales employees thrive in—reasonably—competitive environments. The very essence of their job is a race to high sales numbers and deals closed. What if instead of tracking their sales numbers, they tracked points and levels? Or instead of breaking a sales record, they landed first on the leaderboard? Gamification? Yes, please! By using a mobile sales enablement strategy, you can additionally introduce social learning opportunities through social media groups and course discussions. If your sales reps are anything like the average person, who currently spends well over two hours daily on social media, integrating social learning into training will yield positive results both in terms of engagement and knowledge retention.
Conclusion
We live in an era of digitalization and high dependence on mobile devices. Is mLearning just a continuation of the hype? Not really. Mobile learning for remote sales training is a flexible, effective training solution for a workforce that doesn’t have the time or means to sit down for traditional training. If you haven’t done so already, give it a try.
