8 Ways to Effectively Train Retail Sales Reps on Product

Knowledge is power in any industry. Sales efforts are much more successful if sales reps are well-versed with the product and how effectively they can pitch it to their potential clients. In the days of the Internet, the customers are more aware than ever, and basic knowledge will not suffice — the sales personnel have to know the product inside out to convince the customers and make a sale. In this direction, recent research shows that 79 percent of Gen Z and 91 percent of Baby Boomers agree that knowledgeable store employees greatly add to their shopping experience. The second aspect to keep in mind is that knowledge and technology are constantly evolving, as are customer tastes and needs. For businesses, this means that they have to constantly innovate and upgrade their product lines. This in turn means that they have to constantly train their employees on the new launches or upgrades. Sales employee training is thus an absolute necessity in this business environment.

Now there are two ways to conduct this training, one is in-house and the other online. In-house or onsite training is the traditional form of classroom training where all the employees and the instructor are present onsite at the scheduled time. This may prove difficult in case your sales personnel are located in different cities. Secondly, given their busy schedules, they may have to cancel an important client meeting, which could be crucial to the company. Then again, there may also be the associated travel and accommodation costs to consider, which would add to your budget. Further, in-house training may also not be feasible in the current COVID-19 scenario, where work from home has become the new norm.

These problems can be best addressed by online training, which is delivered using an appropriate content delivery platform. Learners can log in to the platform and gain access to all the training materials. A content delivery platform that is cloud-based is an ideal solution because all training content is stored in one central repository and people with rights to access can access the content anytime and anywhere and take the training at their own convenience and pace. Besides, this platform also provides tools for communication and collaboration, enabling constructive engagement and sharing between the instructor and learners. In this backdrop, we look at some ways how you can effectively train retail sales reps on the products they represent using a content delivery platform.

• Create tutorial videos:

Video training is a great way for training retail sales reps on product. The sales reps can see all its aspects and use. They too can create a video of their own and share it with the rest of the team on the content delivery platform. For instance, one employee can play the role of the customer and ask questions while another walks them through how to use the product. Tutorial videos are a great way to allow your retail sales reps to practice what they are learning and how they should interact with the customers and tell them how the product will meet their unique needs.

• Simulations:

Simulations allow learners to practice their knowledge and skills in a simulated environment that is an enhanced version of the real-life environment. To explain this with an example, you can have a simulated scenario in which a sales rep interacts with the customers and identifies their needs through simulated dialog. The rep has to answer a series of questions and then guide the customer in selecting a particular product that best meets their needs.

• Personalized sales plans:

Both the manager and the sales rep must be on the same page right from the start in terms of the goals, the resources available and the expectations. Accordingly, there should be a personalized training plan for each rep with a product roadmap to allow them to know the product inside and out.

• Create a knowledge base:

With a content delivery platform, you can also create a knowledge base of past tutorials and use cases for retail user information sharing. Besides, you can also add related material. With comprehensive educational content available on their fingertips, sales reps can access all the information they want conveniently located and indexed in a cloud-based repository. During retail sales rep training, your employees can also refer to this online library for any information they require to address a question about the product.

• Provide refresher courses:

Product training should be a continuous process more so because your products are constantly evolving adding new features and capabilities. Also, your sales reps should be aware of product updates that are coming up. A great way to ensure this is to send notifications to the sales reps via the content delivery platform.

• Document and share product knowledge:

It is generally observed that sales personnel are so engaged in the process of selling that they may lose focus on the finer details of the product. You can leverage tools such as notifications and product-related emails to groups to keep your sales reps informed and sell better.

• Gamification:

This game-based method is a fun and challenging way to impart sales training. The game represents a scenario with various levels and reward points to encourage the sales reps to gain knowledge by doing and learning the finer details of the product.

• Mobile learning:

More and more people are consuming their content on their smartphones. Ensure that your training content is in the form of small videos, graphics, infographics, etc., which your sales reps can download or directly access on the content delivery platform while on the move.

• In conclusion

Your sales reps will make great sales if they have in-depth knowledge about the product they are selling. At a time when consumer awareness is on the rise, the retail sales reps have to be one step ahead to anticipate and provide satisfactory answers to all customer queries. To ensure this, companies must invest in continuous sales reps training. One way to achieve this is to deliver online training via a content delivery platform. One such platform that you can leverage is Kytes. This content management platform is a cloud-based solution that allows you to deliver online and blended training to your workforce, anywhere and anytime. You can authorize access to the employees to access the training content. Kytes allows you to store and index your training content in one central repository. Once your employees log in they can access all the content they require in one location. Kytes also provides cutting-edge collaboration and communications tools to share files, collaborate on a project and work as a team in a virtual environment. Besides, it also offers analytical and reporting tools to measure the success of your retail sales reps training.