Customers have endless information at their fingertips, and they expect more of salespeople. They expect them to be subject matter experts and advisors. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen easily. The onboarding process for your salespeople is a key step to competency, and blended learning has made that process much easier. But the user experience design is critical to success. So, how do we best enable our salespeople to drive business?

This is where sales enablement training comes in. Forbes reports that 95 percent of customers buy from salespeople who provide content at every stage of the sales process, so providing a platform for salespeople to easily access content is critical for your business goals. For salespeople, finding that information for their customers can be time-consuming and costly. Forty-seven percent of organizations say that sales reps spend at least 20 hours per month searching for or managing content.

Effective Content Management

Salespeople need access to content, but they need that information to be relatable, not overwhelming. For a sales enablement content management (SECM) plan to be effective, it needs to be dynamic and centralized.

To build a dynamic SECM, you need diversity in your training content modalities as well as the technical infrastructure to support it. A learning management system (LMS), learning portal, or performance support platform can ideally house all of your assets (such as, micromodules, interactive videos, 3-D models, infographics, or FAQs) within a seamless organizational model. Moreover, if your technology accommodates customization like bookmarks or asset folders, then you can enable salespeople to personalize their training material to the assets most relevant to them.

Effective SECM plans are also centralized, allowing sales teams to share information and communicate quickly and effectively. However, a centralized SECM should entail more than simply putting content in one location. Your content platform should also serve as a method of communication between salespeople. Consider building sharing and feedback functions so that salespeople can send their preferred presentation deck or product model. With performance support technologies like Siteline, you can easily track consumption and performance as well as analyze training data. This kind of data is crucial for gathering performance improvement insights.

Encourage Exploration

Akamai, a CDN and service provider, needed to create an effective, user-friendly sales enablement program. Their solution included interactive video and gamification to keep their salespeople engaged throughout the training process. By the end of the training, Akamai’s sales reps were able to articulate Akamai’s value statements and describe the benefits of Akamai to customers. They were also able to better identify new customer opportunities. Akamai’s training solution was effective because it had easily accessible content and encouraged salespeople to practice and refine their skills and stay engaged with their training.

Conclusion

The best way to support your salespeople is to ensure they have effective training but accessibility is tantamount. By building an SECM plan that is dynamic and centralized, your salespeople will be better equipped to have the kinds of customer interactions that boost business. As you're putting together your award-winning training content, keep user experience in mind.