Five Reasons to Adopt Mobile Sales Training

Sales Performance International reports that new sales reps lose 84 percent of what they learn in sales training within 90 days. Trainingindustry.com says U.S. companies spend on average $5,000 per sales rep on sales training annually.  The same report also shows that it takes 381 days to get new hires selling at the same performance level as a tenured sales reps. With those staggering numbers, the next logical question is, how can I quickly, conveniently and inexpensively get my sales reps-especially my new hires-hitting sales quota? 

The answer lies in your hands, literally.  Mobile applications. Online sales training continues to grow in popularity, and with salespeople living on their smartphones, mobile applications provide an easy, convenient and inexpensive way to turn any mobile device into a powerful sales training tool. Here are five reasons to adopt mobile sales training.

Cost
Mobile sales training refers to making sales training content available through mobile applications.  Making sales training content available to salespeople via mobile application is far cheaper than traditional instructor-led classroom training.  Not only is mobile sales training cheaper to deploy (we deploy our sales training content through the MindTickle app) but it is quicker and easier to deploy than hosting an instructor-led classroom training event. IBM discovered 40% of their training costs were spent on travel and lodging expenses so they moved to an eLearning solution including mobile learning. Mobile sales training is just one way in which online sales training reduces cost and saves time.

Accessibility and Convenience
70% of executives under the age of forty use third party apps at work which makes it very easy to access high quality mobile sales training through.  Using a mobile application for sales training allows for consistent and seamless training that your sales reps and recruiters can do from anywhere, anytime.  A study conducted by Fast Company showed that 25% of smartphone users between the ages of 11 and 44 can’t remember the last time their phone wasn’t next to them. Need I say more?

Collaboration & Social Learning
Adopting mobile sales training is a great way to encourage reps to communicate and share information and promote tribal knowledge and best practices. For instance, our sales training which is made available via a mobile app enables knowledge sharing between reps by watching each other’s recorded video role plays. This encourages feedback and communication which drives adoption and improves sales productivity. When all your reps have access to sales training materials on their phone they can review it and discuss together at their desk, at meetings, at lunch or while out after work. Collaboration plays a huge role in driving training adoption and the mobile device is the delivery mechanism of choice. 

Enables Your Sales Reps in the Field
Imagine your sales rep, veteran or rookie, out in the field and about to go into a sales meeting. But wait, it’s been weeks since they went through sales training on how to open and run a face to face sales meeting. Will they remember what to do or fall back into their old habits?  With mobile sales training your sellers can quickly and easily access sales training videos to get a quick update or refresher on relevant content such as customer case studies, recent industry trends or how to reference recent sales triggers. The challenge for staffing leaders is giving their sales reps access to the right information at the right time. Mobile learning makes it quick and easy for sales reps to access the right information at the right time ensuring your sales reps are “sales enabled.”  

Improved Retention & Completion Rates
Content presented in mobile apps are “bite-sized.”  This means mobile offers learners flexibility by breaking the content down into smaller “bite-size” pieces which enables learners to complete courses quicker and improve retention.

What do you think of the five reasons to adopt mobile sales training? How do you think mobile sales training would impact your sales team?  Let's start a conversation in the comments section below.