Your new employees have completed their onboarding and now their training is complete, right?
The answer is always no.
Sales training can be a tricky thing to tackle, particularly because it involves not only skills and knowledge but the development of soft skills and critical thinking that will allow sales professionals to appropriately respond in a variety of situations. Sales training also tends to be something that needs to constantly evolve because of changing products and the introduction of new products and services.
When delivering sales training, while the initial onboarding process is of course vital, so is what happens post-initial sales training. There are several reasons reinforcement and post-sales training follow-up are absolutely necessary. One of these reasons is to simply ensure employees retain the knowledge they gain during their initial training. Reinforcement and post-sales training is also important because it’s a way for employees to show they not only retained the information from their initial training, but that they comprehend it and can apply it appropriately. Finally, reinforcement-style sales training is a valuable way to develop employees over time, helping them hone and refine their skills and also build onto their existing skills to continue to improve their performance.
Here are some real, attainable ways to reinforce initial onboarding and sales training and ensure your employees always remain at the peak level of performance:
Implement Post-Sales Training Discussions
Once you deliver sales training it’s a valuable idea to organize conversations or debriefings that let business leaders review exactly what trainees are taking away from a session. This can be done either in-person or in a virtual setting at the completion of an e-Learning sales training course. During this time ask sales employees what they feel they learned and what they felt the objectives of training were. The training manager can build on this conversation by asking questions that will challenge the trainee to delve deeper into the training process.
Personalize Ongoing Training
Following any training session it’s a good idea to include quizzes and assessments. This is a simple process, particularly when you’re using e-Learning to deliver sales training. You can then automate the tracking and reporting of the results to develop and implement personalized training beyond the initial onboarding, based on where employees are in terms of knowledge and ability.
Launch Regular Refreshers
Not every online training course has to be long and in-depth to be effective—in fact quite the opposite is typically true.
Build on your employees’ sales knowledge by launching refreshers with byte-sized bits of information that are short, to-the-point and relevant. Make these refreshers available on-demand and through the use of a tablet or smartphone so your employees can access them anytime and anywhere.
Include Simulations in Online Training
Onboarding and initial sales training can be vastly improved through the use of simulations. e-Learning is a valuable way to deliver these simulations. One example of using a simulation to reinforce sales training is by providing employees with a case study and then asking trainees to respond to it either verbally or through the use of audio or video. You can then provide them with feedback post-response.
Host Live Webinars
Using technology to your advantage when you’re reinforcing sales training. Choose topics that are of particular importance from within training modules and then build on them in a deeper way by hosting webinars on a given topic.
It lets employees explore the topic in a more in-depth way, share their opinions, ask questions and hear the opinions of others.
Link Coaching to Your LMS
If you’re using a learning management system it can actually be a great tool to build on sales training coaching.
Use your LMS to provide tools for communication, tracking and accountability between coaches and sales trainees. You can also use an LMS to send out notifications and reminders about weekly coaching meetings and sessions, and using automated reporting features will let you easily keep track of all coaching-related activities.
What are the top ways you reinforce and provide post-sales training to your employees?
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