You’ve probably heard many times that it’s crucial for sales teams not to become obsolete.

In these teams, training becomes a key element, and it is usually referred to as “sales training”.

But several doubts usually arise about this concept…

Why is it so important? What tools can help me with this?

We’ll solve them all for you in this article, but first, let’s start from the beginning…

What is it?

If we use the Cambridge Dictionary to find a formal definition, ‘train’ means:

“To teach someone how to do something, usually a skill that is needed for a job.”

Since at Zapiens we love adapting words to our own style, and we’re also quite geeky-like, we are very fond of similes with tribes and with the ancient Homo-sapiens’ way of life, therefore, we have our own definition:

To provide the tribe hunters (sellers) with the weapons (tools) and knowledge, necessary to hunt (sell) and thus be able to obtain food (income) for the tribe (business).

Why is it so important?

Continuing with the comparison: All the roles of a tribe are important, but it is clear that without food, survival is difficult…

If, on the other hand, the tribe is able to get lots of food, it is more than likely it will prosper.

This is giving us a clue, isn’t it?

We set aside – for the moment – this metaphor and go to a more formal resource: this IBM study.

It explains that for every dollar invested in training, companies get a $30 return on investment in productivity.

Therefore, money is a key factor.

Is it the only one?

No!

Motivation is another key factor in sales and to maintain it, constant learning is very important.

In addition, professional development is now increasingly taken into account when choosing a new company or job.

And last but not least…

In order to ensure that the seller, and not the customer, is the expert.

Nowadays, you can find all the information about a product with just a click, so it is no longer something that is exclusively owned by brands and sellers.

That’s why it’s now even more necessary for sales teams to be ahead of the game in terms of product knowledge.

What tools can help you improve your sales?

Using again the hunter-gatherer ancestor simile: if you want to hunt a mammoth or a saber-toothed tiger you need more than your body and improvisation.

To get great returns, you need a plan, a team capable of executing it and the right tools.

We have compiled the most important hunting tools, divided into categories:

CRMs

The main tool that every sales team should have at their disposal is a Customer Relationships Manager (CRM).

There are thousands of them, the choice mainly depends on the phase your sales team is in:

Excel or Google Sheets

They have the advantage of being free and collaborative.

It’s perfectly suitable for the first steps, if you have few customers and want a simple system that allows you to identify your needs before making the leap to a professional CRM.

Trello

This project management tool «works for everything», including managing your customer relationships.

In this post you can see some recommendations from the Trello team to achieve this.

It’s the best way to start and analyze your CRM needs.

Odoo

Open source and free. Even if its configuration and use are a bit laborious, it is a very powerful tool.

Ideal if you are an open source fan.

Suma CRM

The easiest professional CRM to use, especially designed for SMEs.

The first step to automate your company’s sales process.

Pipedrive

A professional CRM, which continues growing and keeps adding new features.

It’s the halfway point between Suma and Salesforce.

Among its advantages are its large number of integrations and its reduced price, perfect when your sales team is starting to grow.

Salesforce

The giant.

Salesforce is the ultimate tool, you could conquer the world with it.

The handicap: it’s more complex than Suma or Pipe, and more expensive.

Perfect for mature teams who already know what they need.

E-learning and document management

For several years now, e-learning and corporate wikipedias, or in other words, digital document management systems, have been a revolution in the training of sales teams (and of all kinds).

These tools make it possible to reduce the logistical costs of classroom training and to organize and share information as never before.

These are the main ones:

Moodle

The quintessential SML.

It is one of the most widespread systems and with the most plugins. If you have lots of content and training on paper, this software can help you greatly, although this learning system is already a bit obsolete.

xWiki

A wikipedia for your company.

If you need to organize information and never modify it again, this is your system.

Xchool

It is a training platform tool.

It updates the moodle ideology, with a much more careful design and specially thought for the user interaction.

If you’re looking for an online training platform, you’ll love Xchool.

Neuro K

In the social networks and cooperation era, Neuro K, a collaborative training platform based on the principles of neurodidactics, appears.

It should be noted that many teamwork tools, such as MS Teams, have integrated “wiki” options to create easy-to-use documentation repositories.

Knowledge Management

Our mission at Zapiens is to ease knowledge transfer, which is key when it comes to sales teams working with new information every day.

You will be able to train your team easily and quickly with the training modules based on the microlearning methodology.

In addition, its gamification stimulates and promotes healthy competition.

Zap, our AI-based knowledge connector, will help your team to keep up to date since it is able to answer all the questions that are asked.

It learns from people, so it is constantly acquiring new knowledge, for example, of new product features or promotions.

To go further, our system has a whole set of knowledge analyses that will allow you to have a true real vision of what the people on your team know.

Do you want to know how Zapiens can help you in sales training?
Request a demo here!