8 Essential Elements of Virtual Sales Training
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s no secret the world has gone digital. More people are working from home than ever before, and now it’s by choice, not a necessity. Pew Research found that 59% of Americans are working from home all the time, and 18% some of the time. The fact of the matter is the world has changed, and your sales training may need to catch up.
You may be an incredible sales training coach, but do your skills translate in the virtual world? Selling Power found that only 25% of salespeople use virtual approaches well. This is because virtual sales training is notably more difficult than in-person training. You already had to worry about listeners tuning out, however now you add in the distractions of dogs, kids, spouses, and cellphones! You have to be able to navigate these distractions in order to allow teams to train, coach, and collaborate effectively. Here are the key aspects of running a successful virtual sales training program.
Include Pre-recorded Video
Adding recorded videos to your sales training programs allows your team to work at their own pace on their own. Avoid the hassle of scheduling real-time meetings for every training program. It also gives viewers the ability to pause or rewatch something they have missed or misunderstood.
Must Use Presentations
During in-person training sessions, you can command the attention of the room with your presence. You cannot do that as a tiny little square on someone’s screen. Attractive slideshow presentations are imperative to complementing your voice and maintaining viewers’ attention.
Encourage Collaboration
Enable groups to work in teams and feed off one another. This not only takes some demand off of managers, but we work in a collaborative industry, and let the training reflect that.
Emphasize Points of Weakness
Like any good training, it’s about building on strengths and attacking weaknesses. Focus on your lowest-performing salespeople, and find out why and how they are struggling. Showing off your strengths is comfortable, but being pressed on your weaknesses is where the real growth occurs.
Make Key Takeaways Clear
The virtual world is full of distractions, and you cannot expect listeners to remember everything that you say. Make the main takeaways of your lesson appear early and often. This way the broader idea of what you are telling them gets ingrained in their mind.
Allow Spacing
We all know that when people are forced to cram a bunch of information in one or two days very little of it ends up getting remembered. Virtual training and pre-recorded videos allow you to spread training lessons out across weeks, only assigning a little at each time. This spacing allows for people to fully digest each message at a time, without rushing to the next.
Test Knowledge
Post-lesson assessments are helpful to everyone. They let you know if your team truly understood and comprehended the material. Assessments also hold your team accountable for actually watching the videos that you give them. Nobody wants to be the only person that flunks the easy quiz.
Make Lessons Entertaining
The ability to make material fun and people engaged is the best skill any teacher can have. Utilize tools to your advantage. Tap into salespeople’s competitive and social personalities by gamifying your lessons. Incorporate polls, chats, contests, and scorecards to get your team more involved.
As the best sales training company, we have already created a top-tier virtual sales training program utilizing the elements above. Find it on our website or, contact us at (866) 833-9939 to learn more.
