It goes without saying that if you don’t know your product well enough, you can’t sell it. Here, I am talking about a complex product, rather than simple ones that don’t demand any great explanation of their workings or have become so common place that everybody knows how they work.

So, if you take, let us say, a toothpaste or a safety pin or for that matter even a cycle or a two-wheeler, now people have used them so much that you really don’t need great product knowledge to sell them. But there are products where you need product knowledge.

I think product knowledge is one-third of what a salesperson needs to sell a product. The first third is product knowledge; the second third is how he sells his product or the psychology of selling he uses and last third is the knowledge of his company’s sales procedures and processes. I don’t mean they are of equal importance or more or less important, I am just making some generalizations. But, if you just have product knowledge, it is not enough because people don’t buy features. Product knowledge is mainly knowledge about features. For example, while buying a PC, people are not interested in specific features like screen resolution or battery backup and so on. They are more interested in the benefits of each feature.

I remember reading about a salesperson who was trying to sell lorry tires to a very large transportation company but wasn’t able to make a breakthrough. He was “selling” on all types of features on cost, on technology they use, on the kind of rubbers they use, the long life they give and so on, but he was never able to make a breakthrough. After deep thought, he changed his strategy and tried to find out the benefit that his buyer would seek. When he made a call to that customer again, he found out that the customer was interested in the safety aspect of tires. So, he immediately translated the feature into the benefit for the customer and made a sales pitch for the treads of the car’s tires on the plea that they were scientifically designed and have proved to reduce skid rates and thereby enhancing safety. Not surprisingly, he got the order.

Here is the lesson for everyone in Sales-people don’t buy products, they buy benefits. A carpenter is not interested in drill bits but in the holes they make. He buys two-inch holes, not two-inch drills bits. Thus, people are not interested in the physical products. From this, the lesson to be learnt is that just having product knowledge is only half the story. Being able to convert them into benefits which the customer wants is very important. A successful sales person translates features into benefits very well and always talks in those terms.

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1. Making Product Trainings for Sales People Relevant
2. Empowering Sales Forces with Product Training
3. Sales Training – How Important Is It?

It’s a human tendency to like someone to take us through at times, whether in one’s personal or professional life, because this makes things easier for us to be guided and to learn new things. This is applicable to us all, children or adults. And, in the case of e-learning, it is an advantage if we have an avatar to make our learning effective.

Avatars are the characters that guide learners through a course. As Jeanette Borzo said, “By using avatars, companies find they can combine the best parts of both face-to-face training and computer-based learning.”

Avatar can be used with a number of motives and ways in an e-learning course. A few of them are:

• To personalize learning: When we see a humanly figure, though virtual, our minds start following him and listening to him. Avatars provide a kind of human touch which helps reinforce learners to take the course. For example, in product training, products can be made in the form of avatars to give the training a realistic look and feel.
• To form a relationship with learners: Avatars do this and motivate learners emotionally. At certain stages when the learning becomes heavy for learners, avatars prove to be a great help in engaging learners and help them participate in the course. The way they engage learners in terms of soft greetings and reinforcement helps learners connect with them.
• To retain knowledge gained: By incorporating avatars while explaining and assessing the learning, avatars help retain knowledge gained and make for easy recall of content.
• To make learning fun and interesting: Avatars are found to create interest and fun. Various interactivities can be created using avatars that make learner to have fun and develop interest.

Considering various learning models of e-learning, avatars are seen to be the most effective in scenario based learning.

Recently, product training on a “Checkweighing” machine was developed for sales personnel of a manufacturing industry. Sales personnel are basically taken to be hands-on learners. If they are given product knowledge as chunks of content, full justice will not be given to their style of learning.

So, to make the course more engaging, interesting and realistic, using avatars is a good idea. As the core of the course content revolves around the importance of one gram in any manufactured product, a gram is created in the form of an avatar which takes the learner through the course. It motivates learners and engages them emotionally to remain connected to the product knowledge.

I have tried jotting down a few of the best possible ways to use avatars effectively in e-learning. Do you have more to add?

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Over the weekend, I went shopping at a supermarket with my family. On my way out, we were cornered by a sales rep from a well-known travel company. Not wanting to sound rude, we listened to him present his travel packages to us. To sound a bit interested, we asked him few questions.

Finally, we told him that we are not interested and walked away. When I replayed the conversation in my mind, I realized that despite being polite with him, the sales representative was nervous and fumbling while answering our queries. It made me wonder if he was trained to answer questions other than those mentioned in his list.

A sale is the single most important part of any business. Hence, it is imperative that a business should have a well-trained sales staff. And, what other way than sales training to make sure that your sales people know and understand all the methods and approaches to gain sales?

During the training period, the company should explain minute details about itself, its products and services offered. The sales person should be updated with features, benefits and the competitor’s products or services, et al.

Using scenario-based and role-play approaches, he should be asked to make a sales pitch to a prospective client… The sales people should also be trained on verbal and written communication skills, computer skills for basic reporting, soft skills, dress sense, etc. They should be made to realize that a confident sales professional is bound to create a lasting first impression on potential clients.

Sales person should be trained to be an effective listener and should be prepared to answer and act accordingly. When a customer answers, he can restate it for clarity, try to gain insight into the customer’s need and wants by asking the right questions.

Customers buy not just the product or a service, but a solution through the product or service. He should be able to identify those solutions. While talking about the features and benefits of the product or service, he should allow the customer to see the benefits, solutions and results offered through the product or service.

Customer loyalty, ethics and integrity are important components of sales. An ethical sales person will be honest and tell the customer that he does not know the answer to a specific question, unlike making up an answer just to create sales.

Some companies may think training sales staff is a waste of time and money. However, trained sales professionals have an edge over their untrained counterparts.

However, in today’s competitive business environment, any advantage, businesses give their sales staff pays rich dividends. Online technology has created an entire new way of conducting sales and it is important that business and sales personnel train themselves in these methods. Businesses should consider sales training for everyone, be it the front desk receptionist, customer service or office boy that has direct contact with customers.

Do you agree that sales training really pays-off?

Thank you for reading my blog and look forward to your comments and opinions.

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This month’s big question in Learning Circuits “What are your Predictions and Plans for 2010?”

My crystal-gazing revealed certain expected trends in learning. I do not know if they would come about in 2010 but things will surely move in these directions.

Learning Management Systems (LMS/LCMS): Organizations will move more toward adapting open source LMS/LCMS like Moodle, ATutor or Ganesha rather than going in for proprietary systems like SABA, SumTotal and so on.

Also, they would be more interested in the basic features rather than all the frills (and expenses) that go with the current systems. So, it will be more ‘back to basics’. It augurs well for organizations that offer customization and maintenance of open source LMS’ or offer their LMS free like TLN and change for maintenance.

Duration for Training: In 2009, CommLab has developed more than a 100 eLearning courses for 25-30 organizations in 7 countries. The trend is clear. The customers/learners want “capsules” or “pills” of learning – the more concise, the better. Gone are the days of 3-5 learning hours for a program. Now, the average seat time is less than 1 hour. I think this will further come down to 30 minutes or even less. It poses a challenge to Instructional and Learning Designers to come up with ‘precision’ learning. Again, to cut the bells and whistles. The learners are becoming very mature. They want more training and less entertaining. They want both effective and efficient learning – better learning in less time.

Harnessing Social Media: I am sure all of you have learnt something useful through social media in the past year. I have personally learnt substantially by just reading various discussions in LinkedIn, leave alone posting and participating in them. I think Social Media is the next big wave in learning. The challenge here is to channelize and manage this revolution. I really don’t know how. Any ideas?

Just-In-Time (JIT) Learning: Reading about learning delivered through mobile phones (m-learning) and other PDAs makes me wonder that a time is near when learners want to acquire learning just before they need to use it. For example a sales person may want to brush up his product knowledge just before a crucial sales call or an operator wants to run his eyes down a checklist just before starting a new machine or a custom service executive goes through the latest analysis of a particular customer’s behavior before taking the call.

Boom in Cross-Cultural Learning: When we started CommLab in 2000, without any physical representation outside India, trying to do business virtually, we knew pretty little about the cultural aspects of our markets. Today, after 9 years, we feel that we know so much about these cultural nuances. The world is really a global village now and we will continue to learn so much about each other, wherever we may be physically living. I foresee a boom in learning about each other’s cultures. The day is not far that a common, basic culture evolves. Maybe it is too grand a vision, but it is exciting to think about it!

Great time to be alive!!!

RK Prasad

CEO

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Sales Training can comprise product knowledge, sales procedures & reports and selling skills.

We have been developing sales training courses for automobile major in Europe, with market presence in Europe and Asia. During the development, we realized that this client company is using a blended approach by addressing certain aspects of training via online delivery and certain others in the classroom.

For example, the procedures and reports that need to be followed and filled in respectively are quite amenable to be put online. So the company went ahead and asked us to develop a 60-minute online course to teach their sales people various procedures to be followed which included the sales planning process. The course presented adequate opportunities for the learners to test their understanding.

Products in this case were automobile spare parts; there was nothing much to be learnt about them as they fell in some kind of consumable category. Had the product been an automobile itself, product training could have been attempted through eLearning, with ample use of 3-D animations and voice over.

Coming to the controversial component – selling skills. Can it be done effectively via an online course? As a former sales person and also a training professional, I classify learning how to sell under experiential learning – learning by doing. Usually, selling skills training is either done on-the-job (OJT) along with a senior sales person for providing guidance and feedback or in a classroom where typical sales situations are simulated for the learners to enact the role of a sales person while another learner takes on the role of a buyer. Feedback is generally given in the form of a video shoot of the process.

Given this kind of training, I think eLearning or online mode of delivery is not very suitable for selling skills training.

What do you think? Thank you for reading my blog and I welcome your comments and sharing of experiences.

RK Prasad

CEO

Want to explore how the e-courses can empower your workforce to succeed?

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