Why Sales Staff Needs Continual Sales Training And 4 Mobile Apps To Give Your Staff A Hand
Sales training may start with simulations and role-playing and move on to actual encounters with clients, often with a senior sales representative on hand to monitor and provide feedback afterwards, or to step in and save the deal if needed.
Perhaps once every year or two you agree that everyone can be sent away for a weekend sales retreat to get revved up for the year ahead, and then move off the radar.
There are two problems with such an approach:
- Research is showing all people learn better when they receive their information in small modules at a time rather than an onslaught of material at once, and that includes your sales staff.
- Although the skill of selling doesn't change a great deal once it is learned, the way to conduct the business of sales does. Every day new mobile apps come on the market to help sales representatives do the paperwork that goes with their job more efficiently.
As a Human Resources professional, if you are not staying abreast of technology advances that could make your sales more efficient, and scheduling short periods of sales training on how to use new mobile apps specifically for sales professionals, you could be hurting your company's bottom line.
For example, here are 4 great mobile apps among hundreds of variations in the market that could give your sales staff more time to sell and reduce the time they need to spend on paperwork or other tasks.
- DocScan.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad, the DocScan makes it possible for a sales representative to scan and send multi-page documents such as sales contracts, pamphlets, business cards and other items to Dropbox or Google Docs or to email them as pdfs or zip files. Instead of ending each day at the office with an hour of preparing contracts and photocopying them for accounts departments, the signed contracts can arrive throughout the day and the order can begin to be filled. - Keynote.
This app allows your sales staff to take sales presentations with them and view and edit them as needed in advance of meetings with different clients. All they have to do is plug their device into a projector of HDTV or for smaller meetings use a full-screen view on their device. - Salesforce 1 Mobile app.
This app allows sales representatives to stay totally connected to their head office wherever they are. Their whole day's activities are present along with dashboards to access custom reports and other important customer data. They can manager leads, contracts, and accounts and even collaborate with other team members by sharing ideas and information. - Slyng.
Slyng allows your sales team to share meaningful content and learn from each other's knowledge. If a sales expert finds an interesting article about different sales techniques he/she can “slyng” it to their entire sales team and get their feedback.
