Blended learning approaches aren’t new, but given the problems it includes, we’ve seen a lot of opportunities to use them in new and innovative ways. The pandemic piqued interest in already-existing hybrid models (a mix of virtual instructor-led, digital, collaborative learning, and so on) and provided a testbed for their efficacy. Thanks to the on-demand and collaborative sales training models, we’re seeing better outcomes, participant involvement, and satisfaction scores for sales training and sales management training programs.
But do these advantages apply to all types of staff training? Can we onboard new sales reps effectively in a hybrid world, especially when we require them to speed up in a complex selling environment?
In a recent webinar, Jonathan Carlson of Allego discussed what the hybrid world implies for onboarding new sales reps. He stated: “We all need to be open-minded and flexible in thinking about how we bring teams together when we’re distributed and hybrid – and how we get our new hires up and running even faster than we did with previous models.”
Table of Contents
Onboarding Challenges in a Mixed World
It’s more than just presenting content when it comes to onboarding. It entails learning about the company’s culture, interacting with coworkers, and engaging with processes efficiently. Integrating into a company’s culture and obtaining a sense of what motivates the leadership and the workers there is a vital part of working there. In a hybrid world, replicating those brief but crucial informal contacts is a massive component of onboarding.
So, how long does it take to get a salesperson up to speed? The answer is that it varies, but a decent rule of thumb is to add at least 90 days to the average length of a sales cycle. One thing to think about is how the representatives will be trained and coached throughout the ramp-up time, not just during the initial onboarding period.
According to Allego’s research, new workers took twice as long to become productive during the pandemic, and sales leaders claimed that getting new hires up to speed was more difficult. However, the sales training industry is already devising strategies to alleviate the issues and reduce ramp-up time.
Fostering a Collaborative Atmosphere
Blended digital learning integrates features that foster collaboration with material delivery and other resources. Participants can put their abilities to use in missions and field activities, for example. They can discuss subjects and provide feedback to peers and coaches in their cohort. They can also use gamified activities to troubleshoot, get performance support, display their understanding, and compete with one another.
Nothing can replace real coaching encounters after initial training for determining what new hires retained and how they are applying those abilities. Asynchronous technology (everything from email to videos) can also benefit businesses since it enables time for people to process information, ponder, and brainstorm without needing to be in the same place at the same time.
Using Peer-to-peer Content to Make Sales Training More Relevant
For the new recruits to be effective, they need to regularly be exposed to their teams. However, scheduling schedules to accomplish this in person or remotely can be time-consuming and complicated in today’s hybrid environment. Videos may be a viable answer to this problem. They’re simple to create, use, and update, and they’re versatile enough to address a wide range of scenarios.
Many businesses are building video asset libraries to share best practices, success stories, news, job aids, and examples of successful sales behaviors with their peers.
Continual Learning and Coaching to Ensure Long-term Success
Onboarding is a continuous process, not a one-time occurrence. Even the best new hire training sessions will fail if they aren’t accompanied by on-the-spot support and continued skill development.
Reps’ abilities – and hence their sales results – increase more quickly when managers provide coaching to reinforce best practices, provide feedback, and connect with new employees. They also learn how to solve problems independently, without the help of managers.
Managers aren’t the only ones who can help you learn new things. Teammates may also be great resources for coming up with relevant examples that new hires can look at their leisure. This could include libraries of win reports and case studies and playbooks for selling scenarios and other materials for skill development.
Again, the growth of internet selling has shown training gaps in the formation of virtual sales teams and the issues that hybrid sales teams confront. Let’s take a closer look at these issues and the training tactics that can be used to overcome them.
Why is an agile approach essential for sales training programs in today’s changing workplace dynamics?
Rapid advancements have changed the traditional B2B and B2C selling landscapes in internet-based technologies, such as 5G, the ubiquitous smartphone, 3D, and video technology. Simultaneously, more businesses adopt a hybrid workplace, further isolating salespeople from their cohorts, colleagues, and mentors. These advances have changed the way companies approach training their hybrid sales teams.
What are the new priorities in a hybrid workplace that empower sales teams?
The sales cycle has been drastically compressed in today’s fast-paced communications climate. This emphasizes the need for sales teams — particularly those in hybrid workplaces — to respond to any sales circumstance thrown their way. Empowering remote sales teams through customized sales training based on self-motivated, peer-generated, and in-the-moment learning allows for a more productive and efficient sales organization.
Why is it critical for sales teams to use an agile learning approach?
So, why is it vital to invest in an agile sales training program to ensure that hybrid sales teams are prepared to take on the brave new world of online selling? Instant satisfaction in two words! Whether B2B or B2C, buyers nowadays want order fulfillment in real-time. Consumers will move their business elsewhere unless sales teams are prepared to give what they want promptly.
Adopting an agile learning method is required to break down such barriers, including time, place, distance, location, coaching, mentoring, job support aids, and social networks. Only a customized sales training strategy can meet the urgent necessity of getting hybrid teams sales-ready rapidly.
Why Should You Use a Custom Sales Training Strategy Instead of Off-the-Shelf Sales Training?
While online sales have been around for at least a decade, the hybrid salesforce is a newer phenomenon. As a result, most sales-oriented companies lack a sales training program that considers this new paradigm. Because of the always-changing challenges of hybrid working and hybrid selling, pre-packaged, off-the-shelf courses cannot meet those ever-changing needs. Customizing your sales training will allow you to connect it with your company’s needs better.
How would personalization assist you in creating personalized material that is relevant to real-world selling in your industry?
Customizing your sales training will allow you to connect it with your company’s needs better. Because we live in a personalized environment, it’s only reasonable for your sales force to want individualized training and development. While generic (off-the-shelf) sales training can help with some parts of personalization, only custom sales training can generate customized content tailored to the real-world demands of clients in your sector and company.
How might tailored programs assist you in addressing specific priority areas and bridging performance and ability gaps?
Ready-made training courses approach sales training in a one-size-fits-all manner. In the actual world, however, each sales team and individual inside each team has its own set of skills, flaws, and learning requirements. A tailored sales training program can help you concentrate on performance and skill gaps specific to your team and target particular areas inside your firm.
How will customization assist you in developing engaging training that promotes learning applications on the job?
Your sales environment is unique to your company, just as each person’s DNA is unique to them. Unique peer-learning opportunities, aggregate organizational sales knowledge, and customized learning aids appropriate to your sales environment are all part of a custom-built sales training approach. It uses these techniques to provide highly engaging learning that improves on-the-job learning in your specific setting.
What Are the 10 Most Effective Sales Training Strategies for Increasing Sales Team Performance and Development?
The greatest method to expedite training in a hybrid workforce and enhance sales effectiveness is to customize your sales training to match your specific business and sales team’s learning needs. Consider the following ten tried-and-true strategies:
Starting with sales onboarding and training is a good place to start
A successful onboarding process is at the heart of a successful sales team. Custom sales training can help new hires learn your company’s culture and become proficient in your methodology and best practices.
Create learning journeys for your sales force
The duties and responsibilities of sales team members change over time as they continue to work with your company. This path is unique to each company, and pre-packaged training can’t cover everything. Ensure that your sales team has the assistance of a team of experts as they progress.
Enhance with performance-focused learning content
Training must be accessible and flexible to accelerate sales readiness and performance. This part of a training approach is dependent on a sales training program that contains topics like learning while working.
Reinforcement of training
Take advantage of immersive learning: Hybrid workers are generally geographically distributed and work remotely. Microlearning, which can be accessed anytime and from any location, is an excellent way to increase hybrid learner engagement and sales readiness.
Ad: PlayAblo’s Enterprise-Grade Micro-Learning platform is built for millennial learners. Micro-Learning, along with assessments and gamification features, ensures learning outcome measurement along with sustained engagement.
Find out more and request a custom demo!
Factor affecting continuing interaction and communication
Hybrid workers frequently feel cut off from their coworkers and support systems in the office. A good custom sales training approach includes continual outreach, blended learning, and guided practice zones, which are great for teaching and mentoring virtual sales teams.
Provide a flexible and adaptable (self-paced/blended) approach
Because not every learner learns the same way, why force the entire hybrid sales team to use a one-size-fits-all training solution?
A custom-made solution can combine self-paced online learning with guided virtual instructor-led training (VILT). This can be accomplished by combining eLearning with live workshops, interactive exams, hands-on labs, practice sessions, continuing coaching, and on-the-job mentoring during actual sales calls. Mentors and coaches at a higher level can employ role-playing and scenario-based learning to demonstrate the usefulness of sales approaches and practices tailored to an organization’s specific environment and beliefs.
Integrate social learning
Self-directed learning can be facilitated by online peer groups and virtual cohorts, which are made possible by a determined social learning strategy. These components of a sales training program give hybrid employees unfettered (virtual) access to informal learning opportunities when they need them.
Ad: PlayAblo’s Enterprise-Grade Micro-Learning platform is built for millennial learners. Micro-Learning, along with assessments and gamification features, ensures learning outcome measurement along with sustained engagement.
Find out more and request a custom demo!
Sales training sustainment planning
After salespeople leave the training session and return to the field, they must sustain their efforts. It would help if you addressed the following in a sales training sustainment plan:
- Setting expectations for knowledge retention
- Application of abilities
- Systematic support
- Preventing relapse
While skill development takes place in a controlled environment using a variety of modalities (e.g., instructor-led training, virtual classrooms, workshops, and online), skill maintenance and behavior change take place on the job in a much more chaotic environment, necessitating gradual and consistent changes over months.
Sales training that changes behavior and enhances sales effectiveness excels at three things.
- It spends around a third of its budget and devotes a large amount of effort to prepare the sales force for change and planning for a smooth transition.
- It focuses on training to improve a small number of critical behaviors.
- It focuses heavily on the long-term effects of behavior change and monitoring the impact of ongoing sales training.
Sales training ROI: Meaningful measurement and data analysis
Like any other substantial corporate investment, you must review the effectiveness of the training process. Excellent sales training will include a systematic measurement method that is firmly related and aligned with the training initiative.
The data collection methods should be qualitative and quantitative, and the measurement should be based on scientific research. It should also be configured to gather performance data at various stages throughout the learning process.
A good measurement approach should include the following elements:
- Make the value of sales training visible in the short, medium, and long term.
- Use data to help you decide whether, when, and how to change your implementation to better your results.
- Create momentum for your sales effectiveness project by keeping leaders, managers, and salespeople involved and accountable for results.
Combine sales training with the creation of a sales strategy
Developing excellent sales abilities that improve client dialogue is only one part of the jigsaw to improve performance. Salespeople must also learn to create and implement a deliberate plan for pursuing prospects.
The decision-making process of today’s buyers is fluid. As additional stakeholders and information are brought to the table, a cycle of integration, refinement, and alignment happens within each common phrase.
Sales training should provide professionals with a set of strategic thinking prompts, practices, and planning tools that will assist them in making decisions, avoiding pitfalls, and taking the appropriate actions at the appropriate time to drive the transaction forward throughout the sales cycle.
Your team will benefit from training to establish an intentional pursuit plan by:
- Recognize how and why the purchasing process has evolved.
- Recognize and impact the important elements that purchasers think about.
- Assess their situation, develop a differentiated plan, and execute with precision to complete the transaction.
- Use a buyer-centric approach.
- Create a unique purchasing experience that encourages customers to buy.
- Create a strategy for moving the agreement ahead.
It’s tough to handle these factors with ready-made, off-the-shelf training programs because they’re unique to each firm. Each part must be adapted to fit individual business objectives, which can only be done with a custom-made training program.
Most sales-oriented firms have had to rethink how their in-house sales training program fits the new work dynamics of the hybrid workforce due to the pandemic. Incorporating a sustainable sales strategy – one that’s accessible in the flow of work, delivers on-demand learning, and lends itself nicely with continuous learning cycles that adapt to changing conditions – is the ideal way to enable a hybrid sales force.
Conclusion
Businesses may empower their hybrid sales forces by providing them with all the learning resources they need to supplement formal training with a personalized sales training approach. This speeds up team development and equips remote salespeople with the knowledge to make quick decisions, cutting the sales cycle in half.
Ad: PlayAblo’s Enterprise-Grade Micro-Learning platform is built for millennial learners. Micro-Learning, along with assessments and gamification features, ensures learning outcome measurement along with sustained engagement.
Find out more and request a custom demo!
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.