The sales team is widely scattered across locations, cities, and even time zones in any multinational organization. Therefore, organizing a training program in unison for all the sales staff can be challenging. Organizing separate training sessions for different groups can prove to be very costly.
Moreover, sales professionals will have their sales targets to achieve and have their own sales pipeline to focus on. Their schedules hardly match and coalesce to attend a training session together.
Hence, online sales training is becoming increasingly common for companies with large and distributed sales teams. If you have been holding instructor-led classroom training programs for your employees, switching to the online mode can be daunting at first. Here are some compelling reasons why you must consider online training for your employees:
Cost-Effective
It is no secret that classroom training sessions are costly. There are several overheads, like instructor fees, travel, accommodation, venue, infrastructural arrangements, etc. Not to mention the cost of lost productivity while the employee is away on training.Online training brings down these costs dramatically because there is no venue booking, travel, or accommodation arrangements. Participants can undertake the course from their home or office as per their convenience, so there is no commuting involved. Also, there won't be any productivity loss either as they can take the sessions during weekends or after office hours.
Logistical Challenge
For a classroom session, both the instructor and the participants have to be available at the same place at the same time. This can be a challenge. Online training programs do away with this hurdle.Flexibility
One of the biggest benefits of an e-learning format is that it offers complete flexibility to the participants. They can take the course from anywhere anytime. There is no restriction. All they need is a computer and access to the internet.Self-Paced Learning
Online sales training may suit everybody. Not everyone can sit in a classroom-like environment for hours at a stretch. People begin to lose concentration. Moreover, not everyone's learning ability is the same.Online courses are especially suited to those who find it challenging to grasp lectures. They can take courses at their own pace and go back to lessons they didn’t quite understand without worrying about other people. This leads to a better understanding of the subject.
In the classroom sessions, participants have to go at the trainer's speed, which may be too fast, in which case, trainees can miss out on important bits or too slow, leading to a loss of concentration.
Scalable
Instructor-led classroom sessions need to limit the minimum and the maximum number of participants it can accommodate. There is no such capping on the online training courses. Anyone can access it from anywhere any number of times. You can train as many employees as you like regardless of their location.Further, with physical sessions, you can never measure the effectiveness of your program. Online sales training sessions give you an insight into user engagement, content retention, and adoption.
Accordingly, you can edit or modify the content to suit the needs of the participant. So, if you haven’t considered online training for your team, it's high time you do!
