Why Traditional Sales Training Is Broken - And How We Can Fix It

Today's post is by Yuchun Lee, CEO and co-founder of Allego.

 

 

In our digital world, traditional sales training and enablement techniques are broken. Salespeople simply can’t maximize their learning and retention of information when they’re brought into a conference room and pumped full of content they won’t use right away.

Research has shown that more than 60 percent of people are visual learners. In fact, we tend to process visuals 600,000 times faster than text. For younger business audiences, video is king. According to a Forbes Insight report, 30 percent of executives under the age of 40 indicated that they prefer video for reviewing business information.  

Historically, the technology to leverage video content has created bottlenecks for sales organizations. But, after two years of hard work honing the technology in the platform, Allego has formally announced the global launch of its mobile, just-in-time (JIT) sales learning platform, which successfully harnesses the power of video.

Allego’s solution securely manages large volumes of compressed video. This gives companies the ability to transform the way they create, collect, curate, and distribute content from the field. This enables managers and sales reps to maximize their collaboration through role-play and video-based practice, promoting continuous learning and improving sales performance.

We’re seeing that most organizations’ work forces are continually on the road. Allego was built mobile-first, so it can be easily accessed anywhere, anytime – with or without a network connection. With the power of video to communicate large amounts of information, Allego simplifies JIT learning and real-time collaboration so the best ideas from the field are captured and shared quickly throughout the broader sales team.

The platform also incorporates coaching and feedback, so sales managers can focus their attention on specific deals to ensure sales reps are prepared ahead of their meetings. Allego defines JIT learning as the combination of:

• just-in-time content

• practice

• assignments

• field knowledge

• collaboration

• traditional certification and live training.

There’s currently no other platform available that offers this combination of these components.

Mary Charles, sales enablement director at Demandware, has said that the Allego platform has “completely transformed” their global approach to sales training and enablement. Demandware has found the platform to be a critical asset in onboarding new hires and helping them ramp up faster – executing sales certification and enabling representatives in the field to quickly and easily share best practices, success stories, and winning strategies wherever they’re doing business. They’ve seen more effective collaboration across the team and more consistent messaging.

The Demandware experience validates the need for an easy-to-use, video-optimized solution that enables sharing, collaboration, practice, and feedback among distributed sales teams.

Comments

[plus.google.com/110186837031616367043]

The biggest issue with sales training that there is a lack of coaching reinforcement. If you don't have your sales managers on board and ready to coach the training, we all know it dissipates.

Steven Rosen
www.starresults.com

[MarkLindwall]

Mr. Lee, your points are also well supported by research that I conducted at Forrester Research earlier this year in the report i wrote there titled "Overhaul Sales Training To Win And Retain More Customers" (http://bit.ly/21cqC0q).