Professional Education

Recently, my colleague Paul Terry was featured in TrainingIndustry.com to discuss how to effectively leverage training for sales. In his article, Paul describes how companies are only beginning to understand the ways integrating sales training into an existing customer relationship management (CRM) solution can simplify and enhance the learning process.

By bringing together training and the CRM, he argues, sales teams will better align sales training with business goals and account needs, while maximizing retention of critical information. What’s the end result of this integration of training and the CRM, Paul asks? Better preforming sales reps!  Below is an excerpt from the article that focuses on measuring sales training effectiveness:

Measurement should be meaningful and demonstrate improved sales performance. With this insight and ability to tailor training, a company can train better prepared sales reps in the field. Sales managers can measure the affect of training on sales growth, certify reps on new products, deliver training to geographically dispersed or traveling teams, and create targeted courses for reps needing improvement. Let’s take a closer look at training within the CRM compared to traditional training:

Traditional Sales Training Programs	CRM Optimized Sales Training Programs
Rarely measurable	Correlated to business goals
Data Dumping	Ongoing Learning
One-to-many training	Social & collaborative
Check-the-box training	Retention focused
Classroom one-size-fits-all training	Strategically assigned training based on CRM data
Success is completion	Success is improving CRM numbers

Whether your goal is onboarding new sales reps, pipeline and account management or general sales skills development, there is a smarter way to provide sales training, and that’s within the CRM. As a result, sales reps improve their skills and are better prepared to make and close deals and increase sales. After all, the more sales reps know, the more they sell.

You can visit TrainingIndustry.com for continued reading on workplace learning, and to access the full version of Paul’s article, “Know More. Sell More. Sales Training through CRM.” About TrainingIndustry.com TrainingIndustry.com features industry news, articles, case studies and best practices to an audience of business and training professionals. The site aims to provide high quality insight into managing the business of learning. Training Industry is organized by industry-specific learning communities, such as the Sales Training Learning Community, and also publishes Training Industry Quarterly.