Summary: Continuous training is crucial for sales. Microlearning is ideal for providing sales training since it offers just-in-time information and at-your-fingertips support for your sales teams. This article looks at 5 ways to use microlearning for sales training.

How To Use Microlearning For Sales Training

Studies indicate that continuous training provides higher net sales per employee when compared to a “no training” scenario. Therefore, enterprises must provide regular sales training to their sales workforce to ensure that their salespeople learn something new, update themselves with the latest information on products, services, and recent developments in the industry, and move forward in the competitive market.

Microlearning offers focused and practical information to help your salespeople achieve specific, actionable objectives. Microlearning modules enable you to educate the learner on a concept or train the learner in a specific skill/task. Salespeople are always on the move with their busy schedules, and they need to have the latest information on products and services at their fingertips. Microlearning can provide such information quickly and effectively.

Also read my previous article that explains"examples of using gamification for sales training"

Here are 5 ways to leverage microlearning in order to provide sales training to your sales teams:

1. Use A Focused Approach In Your Microlearning

Your sales teams should know every detail about your products or services, changes, upgrades, and more. They must explain the features and value of your products to the prospects. Your sales teams always need to perform various tasks repeatedly. Therefore, they must be meticulous and diligent in performing these tasks. They also require day-to-day practice to perfect them.

With the help of the latest authoring tools, you can design and develop microlearning modules as part of your sales training to address all these learning requirements of your sales teams. Focused sales training always empowers your sales employees, leading to high-performance outcomes.

2. Include Tools Like Memory Boosters And Job Aids In Sales Training

You can also provide different tools like memory boosters, job aids, infographics, PDFs, interactive PDFs, etc., to your salespeople as part of sales training. A job aid is a graphical representation of a process, method, or solution and may be developed as a static or interactive tool. Memory boosters help your salespeople recall key concepts learned through the microlearning training at the moment of need. With memory boosters, information recall will be made easy, anytime and anywhere, as part of their day-to-day work.

Infographics are another creative visual approach that helps your salespeople recall and retain information on specific sales concepts. You can use engaging and visually appealing images to highlight the key points. It makes it easy for your salespeople to review again if they forget specific information. All these could be used in sales training to provide “how-to” guidance, for example, how to overcome a prospective buyer’s objection. You can offer all these tools as part of your microlearning.

3. Include Brief Videos In Your Microlearning

You can use brief videos as part of your microlearning to train your salespeople in sales skills, methods, techniques, and strategies. Sales training videos can be developed with lectures from industry experts, sales managers, business leaders, etc. You can include short videos at appropriate places throughout your microlearning modules, where the learner can click on the video and learn a specific selling skill or a sales concept.

For example, you can use two- to three-minute videos covering essential sales skills and techniques, such as:

• How to establish rapport with the prospects
• How to handle the first meeting with the prospects
• How to decide whether a person is a prospective buyer or not
• How to handle the customer’s objections
• How to successfully close a deal
• How to follow up after the sale
• How to do upselling and cross-selling
• Practicing presentation skills
• Practicing listening skills
• Presenting the right product or service to the right customer

You can also depict real-world selling scenarios with the help of real characters, animated characters, and graphics. You can even include stories from the real world and past sales experiences. Remember that every TV show or movie we like is based on an interesting story. Salespeople can also use stories while explaining a product or service to a prospective customer to motivate them and positively encourage them to buy it.

4. Implement The “5 Moments Of Need” Framework For Effective Performance

Mosher and Gottfredson defined and popularized the concept of “the 5 moments of need.” The 5 moments of need are new, more, apply, change, and solve. In “new,” the learner learns something new for the first time. In “more,” the learner wants to learn more about something or expand upon previous knowledge. In “apply,” the learner applies learned knowledge and skills on the job. In “change,” the learner adapts the knowledge to new trends. In “solve,” the learner solves new problems when they arise. You can implement this “5 moments of need” framework to help your employees achieve effective on-the-job performance.

Formal training sessions generally fulfill the first two moments of need. You can support your employees with performance support tools for the next moments of need. Examples of performance support tools can include PDFs, interactives PDFs, quick reference guides, or quick reference cards covering certain procedures. You can offer all these tools as part of your microlearning for sales training. But you are required to keep the performance support documents up to date because your employees will use them in these four moments of need: more, apply, change, and solve.

5. Include “Try-Me” Features To Create Enthusiasm

You can include interactive “try-me,” “show-me,” or “try-it” type of content in your sales training to create enthusiasm in learners. These typically include scenario-based questions that require learners to choose how to respond to a particular situation.

You can also include questions based on a process like the steps of a sales process, sales methods like SPIN selling or SNAP selling, etc. Your salespeople receive immediate feedback to learn whether they understood the concept or not or if they completed the process correctly. You can offer these questions as part of microlearning modules.

Conclusion

Microlearning can help your sales workforce stay up to date with the latest developments, sales techniques, strategies, trends, and consumer insights. Thus, you can use microlearning in your sales training to consistently align your salespeople with your business goals.