How to Increase Sales Productivity with Digital Training

If you are wondering how to increase sales productivity, consider augmenting your digital training program.

Today, digital tools exist in every field of business.

These tools offer growth opportunities for organizations that choose to use them.

But they also pose a massive problem for today’s digital work environment…

The Digital Skills Crisis

Today, many research firms and media outlets are covering the “digital skills crisis.”

This crisis is hitting a variety of industries, from law to AI.

But sales and marketing are not exempt…

Any sales professional who has used sales SaaS platforms understand this.

The skills crisis is hitting businesses hard for a few reasons:

• Global, widespread digital transformation
• Rapid innovation and digital adoption
• The increasing demand for skilled employees
• A proliferation of complex digital tools across every business area

These tools are often very complicated and feature-rich.

On the one hand, this rich feature set benefits the organization.

They provide the tools needed to accomplish complex tasks in a complex work environment.

On the other hand, that complexity presents a problem for workers:

• They need to learn to use these tools
• Learning those tools takes time and energy
• To become fully productive, effective training is a must

As we’ll see later, poor training can dramatically decrease productivity.

Critically, though, we’ll learn how to increase sales productivity with digital adoption solutions.

How Digital Training Can Increase Sales Productivity

Today’s sales pipelines are complex – and the software they implement is equally complex.

Learning that software takes time and effort on the part of the employee.

But this presents a few problems:

• Without skills, employees are less confident and less productive. They can’t make use of the software to its fullest extent, which makes these two problems even worse. As a result, productivity remains consistently low … and can even increase turnover rates.
• Lack of skills can cause workers to disengage from their work. This leads to a downward spiral that worsens output, morale, and productivity.
• Employees are already overworked. Training should improve skills as much as possible. Yet it should be efficient and economical. The more seamless and compact the training, the better it is for busy workers.
• Traditional training methods can’t cope with today’s information-driven workplace. Classroom training has its place, but it simply can’t keep up with the digital world. Digital technology moves too fast, which means digital training is the only viable option.

Fortunately, we are seeing a wide range of alternative training options.

These alternative approaches offer a wide range of benefits:

• Employees can learn anytime, anywhere
• Training costs are cheaper for enterprises
• It is easier to personalize training for individuals
• Training programs can be developed and delivered more quickly

For employees, these benefits produce great results:

• Employee engagement goes up
• Productivity and output increases
• Workers can learn only what is immediately relevant
• Digital training options take less time from workers’ already-busy schedules

For these reasons – and others – organizations should examine digital training tools.

Applying Digital Training to Sales

The bottom line for most organizations is just that – the bottom line.

And the more effectively an employee can learn to use software, the better his or her output.

In short, the well-trained worker will make more sales.

We have already covered the benefits of digital training. Now let’s look at a few types of digital training methods.

Here are three of the most popular approaches being used today:

• Online teaching and training. Online teaching and training is similar to classroom training, but it takes place digitally. Webinars, on-demand video courses, or live-streaming online courses are popular formats.
• Digital information repositories. Knowledge bases, wikis, and websites can act as repositories for learners. These repositories offer advantages over other methods, in that they are searchable and easily accessible.
• Digital adoption platforms. A digital adoption platform (DAP) is an ideal approach for training employees on digital sales tools. They offer in-app guidance and tutorials, acting as a virtual tutor – when and where the learner needs it.

Of these three employee training approaches the DAP is the most sophisticated, cutting-edge, and profitable.

Here is how a DAP would be applied to sales software, such as Salesforce:

• The DAP layers itself on top of the sales platform, analyzes and understands user behavior, then offers guidance when the worker needs it.
• In-app training can be customized and optimized as needed, to further enhance training results.
• It reduces training costs, the need for human-supported training calls, and more.

Of course, the benefits make DAPs well worth the investment – increased productivity, shorter time-to-competency, and better user experiences.

Platforms such as WalkMe offer digital adoption solutions for sales and CRM platforms, for instance.

Conclusion

The digital skills crisis is a problem facing every organization today.

In order to grow, survive, and compete, organizations need a digital sales pipeline, with advanced digital tools.

And today’s sales personnel need to learn those tools.

Fortunately, digital technology is working hard to solve its own problem.

Cutting-edge digital skills training solutions – such as online training and DAPs – deliver significant ROI and results.

Businesses that want to increase sales productivity should invest in digital training solutions.

After all, in the years to come, the sales pipeline will only become more digital and more complex.