Where eLearning Facilitates Sustainable Growth
For modern businesses, staying adaptable is key to achieving sustainable success, and that means that staff should engage in continuous Learning and Development. In fact, research from Gartner shows that 70% of employees feel they don’t have mastery of the skills they need to fulfill their roles appropriately. That’s a lot of scope for enablement. At the same time, establishing a coherent sales enablement approach is challenging.
Sales reps often work on varying schedules and use a wide range of tools to drive revenue across multiple channels, so attempting to develop their skills using traditional methods can feel close to impossible at times. Fortunately, this is where eLearning comes into play, as it facilitates employee development in a more modular fashion, with a relatively low level of investment at an organizational level. Let's explore how eLearning can help businesses achieve true sales enablement.
How eLearning Can Help Achieve True Sales Enablement
1. Streamlining The Onboarding Process
Onboarding employees can often take months using traditional methods, and in many cases, this is time that companies simply don't have. The time efficiency of eLearning, however, can allow businesses to circumvent this issue for the most part.
eLearning software, such as LMS platforms, provides employees with immediate access to the learning resources they need to become proficient in their roles [1]. Moreover, many eLearning platforms feature user-friendly interfaces that provide real-time assessment and contextual tips as well. This is particularly helpful with complex sales tools, such as CPQ, for example, which can have a steep initial learning curve [2]. In this circumstance, eLearning tools enable sales professionals to engage in targeted learning, prioritizing the features most relevant to their responsibilities.
2. A Culture Of Self-Motivation
A shortcoming of traditional training methods is that they take control away from the employees, which can negatively impact their engagement. Conversely, eLearning puts the learning process in the hands of the employees themselves, allowing them to drive their own development. Sales professionals need to be self-motivated, and eLearning platforms can encourage this when effectively implemented.
eLearning platforms can also gamify the experience of self-development through mini-assessments, rewards, and incentives, and in this regard, eLearning dovetails nicely with the target-driven nature of sales roles. Not only does eLearning provide employees with a way of getting to grips with new software and honing their skills, but it also helps to put them in the right frame of mind to carry out their responsibilities with the utmost enthusiasm. From this perspective, we can view eLearning as a more holistic means to achieving true sales enablement.
3. Curated Learning Experiences
Since eLearning allows employees to find and utilize the resources they need most in the moments that they need them, it provides a more personalized experience that helps to bolster their knowledge base where weaknesses might otherwise be present. What's more, it has proven more effective in the long term, with research showing that eLearning can help to increase retention rates by as much as 60%. This has largely been attributed to the personalized nature of eLearning, but it is also a feature of its innate interactivity, which serves to stimulate the learner to a high degree.
4. Convenience In Learning
Time is money for sales teams, so it's of paramount importance that employees can find a way to learn and develop themselves without disrupting their schedules. Modern sales professionals often work remotely or spend a substantial amount of time in transit, so convenience, flexibility, and portability are genuinely important considerations.
eLearning offers the most useful solution in this regard, as many platforms have been optimized for mobile devices. What's more, there are a range of web-based solutions available for smaller organizations that may not have the means to utilize an LMS platform. This means there are a multitude of ways for sales staff to learn using smartphones and tablets, and they will be much more likely to do so as a result.
In addition, the modular, bite-sized nature of eLearning content means that employees aren’t required to make any major time commitment when logging on. Keeping content digestible in this way ensures that employees can learn when it suits them, while keeping that all-important sense of progression that is so key.
How eLearning Fosters Alignment
One of the key disadvantages of conventional employee development methodology is that it is often static in nature, making it difficult to use effectively in evolving situations. eLearning, on the other hand, is much more fluid. Since employees have access to a centralized knowledge base that can be frequently and easily updated using authoring tools, it's considerably easier for them to stay on top of current trends. More importantly, it allows them to keep in touch with how their organization is responding to those trends, giving them a clearer picture of their company's vision for the future.
Organizations that use eLearning to drive enablement quickly reap the rewards of their decision, as sales teams who are aligned with their company's current goals function more cohesively and are typically more agile to change, and this benefits long-term productivity. Simply put, in a fast-paced environment, eLearning presents the most fitting route to true sales enablement.
Conclusion
Enablement is a key term for all modern companies, but most importantly in sales. In such a competitive context, it's not enough for businesses to simply provide employees with the tools to succeed; they must also provide the resources and environment to maximize that potential success.
The global eLearning market is predicted to grow in value to over $167 billion by 2026, and it's easy to understand why [3]. Businesses are catching on to eLearning and the potential it has for employee enablement. By leveraging the power of eLearning, providing staff with accessible learning resources, and a structure that nurtures self-motivated individuals, companies can empower their sales teams to carry them to new heights.
References:
[1] Learning Management Systems
[2] CPQ (Configure Price Quote)
[3] Size of the global e-learning market in 2019 and 2026, by segment(in billion U.S. dollars)
