Digital Learning Day: Why eLearning Should Be A Part of Your Telesales Training Program

Tele­sales can be an intense envi­ron­ment, and tele­sales teams are often on the move, in and out of the office. Ask­ing your team to stay abreast of the lat­est prod­uct changes and to keep cur­rent on their train­ing can be a has­sle – yet tele­sales train­ing is essen­tial. Your sales staff needs to stay well-versed in any prod­uct and indus­try changes.

If you strug­gle with keep­ing your tele­sales team trained, con­sider mak­ing eLearn­ing the cor­ner­stone of your train­ing pro­gram. Since Feb­ru­ary 5^th is con­sid­ered the national “Dig­i­tal Learn­ing Day,” we thought what bet­ter time to out­line some of the advan­tages that eLearn­ing offers for tele­sales teams. First, though, con­sider the fol­low­ing statistics:

• Com­pa­nies that employ eLearn­ing for train­ing pur­poses gen­er­ate rev­enue that is 26% higher per employee
• eLearn­ing typ­i­cally requires 40 – 60% less employee time than it takes to employ class­room learning
• eLearn­ing increases pro­duc­tiv­ity by 50% — every $1 spent on eLearn­ing results in $30 of productivity

Sound appeal­ing? Read on. Here are fur­ther ways that eLearn­ing can help your tele­sales team offer world-class cus­tomer ser­vice and top-notch sales skills.

eLearn­ing is flex­i­ble for tele­sales teams

eLearn­ing allows sales team mem­bers to learn on their own time. Set dead­lines for your employ­ees, but give them the option to learn at their con­ve­nience – in-between sales calls, first thing in the morn­ing, or per­haps after they wrap up their calls at the end of the day. Employ­ees don’t have to travel to train­ing ses­sions, sav­ing them time. Addi­tion­ally, stu­dents can move through the mate­r­ial at their own pace, let­ting them spend longer amounts of time on mate­r­ial that is more com­plex, and allow­ing them to move quickly through mate­r­ial they find easy. One study found that stu­dents have a 60% faster learn­ing curve with eLearn­ing mate­r­ial, sup­port­ing the idea that the added flex­i­bil­ity that eLearn­ing pro­vides helps stu­dents work through the mate­r­ial faster and retain more.

eLearn­ing is portable

eLearn­ing can be com­pleted on tablets, lap­tops, or even on mobile phones. Your tele­sales team can log on to their portable devices when they’re on the road, if they are on a call and need to quickly ref­er­ence mate­r­ial, or even from the com­fort of their own home. An added advan­tage to mobile eLearn­ing? It increases moti­va­tion. One study found that 70% of stu­dents reported increased moti­va­tion to work on eLearn­ing when they were able to do it on mobile devices.

eLearn­ing allows employ­ees to review and revisit the infor­ma­tion when needed

In a lec­ture or tra­di­tional class­room set­ting, stu­dents may miss impor­tant points, not take thor­ough notes, or wish to review some­thing at a later time. eLearn­ing allows the infor­ma­tion to be stored in pod­casts, pre­sen­ta­tions, or on doc­u­ments, so employ­ees can flag infor­ma­tion and revisit it if nec­es­sary. They can even re-watch video lectures.

eLearn­ing is con­sis­tent for organizations

In large orga­ni­za­tions, ensur­ing that your sales team is learn­ing the same mate­r­ial is vital. Class­room learn­ing may use the same book, but lec­tur­ers can present infor­ma­tion in dif­fer­ent ways. With eLearn­ing, you’ll use the same mod­ules and present the same mate­r­ial, across the orga­ni­za­tion, and on the sched­ule you choose. Main­tain con­sis­tency in your train­ing, and have a way to doc­u­ment where your employ­ees are at by mon­i­tor­ing where they are in the coursework.

With eLearn­ing options, have con­fi­dence that your tele­sales team will stay up-to-speed

Take the stress and has­sle out of mak­ing sure your sales team keeps cur­rent on their train­ing. eLearn­ing has greatly improved and expanded the tele­sales train­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties that orga­ni­za­tions have to keep their team cur­rent and up-to-speed. Improve your tele­sales team’s cus­tomer ser­vice, upselling and cross-selling skills, and con­fi­dence level – eLearn­ing pro­vides a more flex­i­ble, portable, and con­sis­tent option for mas­ter­ing new material.