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4 Key Sales Enablement Platform Features Your LMS Is Lacking

4 Key Sales Enablement Platform Features Your LMS Is Lacking

In today’s competitive sales environment, up-to-date and engaging sales training, information, and coaching are increasingly essential to overall sales strategy. Sales reps need the latest tools to ensure they’re fully prepared for every kind of customer interaction, and sales organizations need the ability to monitor their team’s performance and provide any required coaching. This goes beyond new hires and sales onboarding- sales leaders need ongoing learning and development and sales training programs to build an effective sales team that is more likely to close deals.

To accomplish these goals, you must have a sales training and enablement platform that is flexible enough to rapidly and securely deliver up-to-date information, training courses, coaching, and certifications engagingly, accessible by anyone from any device, anywhere in the world.

While many sales leaders have turned to Learning Management Systems (LMS) to attempt to use automation for some of these tasks, they eventually realize that a traditional corporate LMS is not a practical solution.

If you’re considering implementing a sales learning platform into your organization to jumpstart your sales enablement program, be aware of the key missing functionality from most corporate LMSs.


1. Dynamic Learning Capabilities

A traditional LMS provides little more than a static list of resources, like a college course catalog, typically designed for basic employee training. Search capabilities are minimal, and there’s little in the way of direction or suggestions on what content to consume next.

Unfortunately, this isn’t how we, as users, interact with technology anymore. Learning is seamlessly incorporated into the workflow rather than being a separate, designated activity.

When we need to learn something, we search for specific topics and find information and answers through videos, webinars, blog posts, graphics, and other online content.

Platforms like Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify learn our habits and interests and then suggest more content for us to consume based on our past activity.

In the same way, your sales reps should be free to select the courses and pieces of content that are most relevant to their individual goals at that specific moment in time. They should also be able to skip around inside courses to find the exact information they need in whatever order they prefer.

Your sales reps need a sales training and enablement platform that provides them total freedom and control, making learning exciting, engaging, and helpful. The right content management is necessary to streamline the learning process.

sale enablement training

Unfortunately, a traditional LMS fails to provide these “dynamic learning” features found in other tools:


Flexible, Open Content Creation

A traditional corporate LMS is a closed system that does not allow you to incorporate learning resources outside the organization. Admins on the sales enablement team are limited strictly to the training resources created by administrators within your organization.

Because it is tough to constantly create a vast amount of up-to-date content, traditional corporate LMSs are extremely limited in the value they can provide learners.

In a fast-paced business environment, you must quickly provide up-to-date information and bite-sized training. Having all of the up-to-date product information in one place ensures that sales reps can effectively sell and that brand messaging stays consistent across sales teams.

To achieve this, you should have the flexibility to create and share training and day-to-day information in whatever length and format you choose rather than being limited to the long, rigid, traditional course structure of an LMS.

In addition, sales leaders and reps should be able to add relevant and valuable content from any source, both within and outside the organization. Learning options expand drastically when content can be sourced and curated from a wide array of sources.

Instead of creating initial training on a new methodology or tactic, for example, you should be able to add an existing YouTube video, slideshow, template, or blog article from a third party directly into the platform for learners to review. This ensures your team uses the latest and most effective selling strategies and tactics.

In addition, high-performing reps should be able to share their insights, tactics, and best practices with the rest of the sales team. The best submissions can then be turned into formal training content.

The right corporate learning tool should support any content you already have and allow you to upload content in any format, such as PDF, video files, Google docs, blog posts, YouTube videos, HTML packages, SCORM packages, and more.

Unfortunately, a traditional LMS will rarely, if ever, provide this kind of flexibility.


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Recommended Learning Based on Past Activity

In a recent article, Josh Bersin describes what the experience of using a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) is like:

“Imagine if you opened up the corporate training page and it showed you ‘Mandatory courses to complete this week,’ ‘Recommended based on your current role,’ and interesting categories like ‘Programs to prepare you for promotion’ or ‘Tips and techniques for your current role.’ All, including much more sophisticated recommendations based on your prior learning experience, your job role, and what other peers in your company are taking.”

If you’re using a traditional corporate LMS, this probably sounds like wishful thinking. Finding the right content in a conventional corporate LMS is often confusing and time-consuming. 

Your sales training platform should provide intuitive navigation that clearly shows users additional content related to courses they are taking, recommended courses based on their previous activity, and personalized content tailored to their training needs.

These personalized suggestions provide clear “next steps” for users, reducing confusion and maximizing usage and ROI.

 

live sales coaching

 

Live Video Coaching

When training sales reps, they must demonstrate that they have fully understood the course material and gained the necessary skills beyond simply filling out a multiple-choice quiz.

Your sales training and enablement platform should allow leaders to assess their team members in real-time and provide one-on-one video coaching so they can continue to create top performers across the sales process. 

This kind of quick, one-on-one feedback ensures you can get reps up to speed and in front of real customers closing sales in less time.


Custom Curriculums

To maximize user adoption and retention of information, you must be able to send your sales reps down pre-defined curriculums or “learning paths” according to their individual needs. A cluttered, one-size-fits-all solution won’t cut it.

You must provide the right content, to the right people, at the right time.  This requires that you be able to organize your content based on roles, topics, categories, skills, products, etc.

Some organizations, for example, use their sales training and enablement tool to create curriculums that include live video classes with two-way interaction, classroom learning, practicing pitches on video with feedback, live practice, and a final assessment to determine whether new sales reps are ready to start talking to customers.

This kind of dynamic training isn’t possible with a traditional LMS.

training gamification


2. Gamification

With a traditional LMS, there’s no added incentive to encourage users to continue learning and acquiring skills. It’s simply a linear, monotonous series of lectures and quizzes. Because of this, it’s often a painful, uphill battle for managers and leaders to get their employees to complete the training and pass the assessments.

To solve this problem, many organizations are starting to implement “gamification” into their sales training, with surprising results.

According to TrainingIndustry.com:

“In any learning context, students often feel overwhelmed and unsure of their ability to understand and master the material. A system of progressive rewards presents learning in a more inviting and less demanding context: a game.

People gravitate to something they expect to be fun. Sitting and listening to someone read a story is far more attractive to the average second-grader than sitting by themselves and filling in a worksheet. Being asked to earn five gold coins by working out the answers to five introductory questions about themselves is often a better alternative to new students than sitting through a two-hour lecture followed by an intimidating test.

This phenomenon has been documented already. Deloitte saw a 50 percent reduction in the time requirements for training and has also experienced much better retention than before their training was reorganized.”

One example of gamification in sales training is providing dashboards to sales reps so they can see how far they’ve come and how close they are to completing a course and receiving their next certification.

In addition, you can spark a little competitive spirit among your sales team by providing leaderboards so they can compare their progress with that of their peers.

Points, badges, and trophies further incentivize continual learning by recognizing sales reps for their hard work and progress.

Look for a sales training and enablement tool that provides these gamification features.

mobile-devices

 

3. Mobile Options

According to Google, 80% of the global workforce comprises desk-less workers. While these workers may not be working in an office from a desktop computer, most of them are working and receiving communication from their employers using a mobile device.

A traditional LMS requires sales reps to access training from a computer in the company’s office and only on the company’s local network.

What modern sales reps need in an on-the-go, the globally-connected world is the ability to quickly access bite-sized knowledge from their mobile device, as they are used to being able to do with virtually every other service in their daily life.

As a sales leader, you need to be able to give your sales team access to your library of content (latest sales techniques, best practices, and up-to-date product information, etc.) whether they’re waiting in their car before a client meeting or on their morning commute into the office.

mobile learning sales enablement


4. Advanced Reporting

For your sales training and enablement tool to be successful and provide positive ROI, it must help you achieve these key outcomes:

  • Ensure new sales reps are prepared and competent to handle all kinds of sales scenarios.
  • Help existing sales reps continue developing their skills and knowledge to close more deals.
  • Help sales managers monitor the progress and accomplishments of each sales rep and step in to provide sales coaching when needed.

Unfortunately, a traditional LMS is not outcome-oriented. The sole purpose of an LMS is to provide knowledge through training initiatives.

While a corporate LMS may provide simple reports on test scores and display the number of users who completed a course, they cannot typically create in-depth, customized reports on metrics like:

  • What impact training is having on specific business objectives
  • How much time a user spends on any given course
  • What content was accessed by users (and which content is unnecessary)
  • Which sales collateral reps are sending to prospects to win more deals
  • Where in a course, users are getting stuck or confused
  • How many attempts it took for a user to pass a quiz or exam 
  • What skill gaps do users have, and where is additional training needed
  • Data visualization to help administrators identify patterns and trends

These are the kinds of advanced analytics and reporting capabilities you need to see the direct impact on performance that your training is having and to make any necessary adjustments or improvements.

Instead of a traditional LMS, your organization truly needs a sales training and enablement tool built specifically to improve these outcomes.


What Should My Sales Team Use Instead of an LMS?

Unfortunately, most LMSs lack the flexibility to place the sales rep’s goals at the center truly. Just because your company purchased Salesforce or other high-functioning CRM doesn’t mean your sales enablement journey is complete.

On the other hand, a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) like Raven360 allows youRaven360, gives you the ability to help sales reps build a flexible learning path that fills in the gaps in their professional skills.

Typically, sales reps only use their LMS when required. In contrast, an LXP is a valuable resource that sales reps rely on for answers, helpful information, acquisition of new skills, and career advancement.

When your sales reps are more skilled at their jobs, performance across the team improves, revenue increases, and the entire organization becomes more successful.


Raven360 Provides the Sales Enablement Capabilities Modern Organizations Need

Raven360 is an enterprise-grade, scalable platform with specific sales enablement tools that helps fast-growing companies with high-complexity products painlessly train sales teams.

Raven360’s secure sales enablement solution allows you to onboard faster, train better, coach harder, and close more deals with these powerful features:

  • Flexible training methods: set up Instructor-led Training, Virtual Instructor-led Training, and On-demand Learning Environments

  • Self-paced Labs: create sandbox instances of your sales enablement software that users can test, tweak and explore without breaking

  • Your content, accessible 24/7: let your customers use and engage with your product at their pace, anytime and anywhere

  • Generate extra revenue: sell subscription-based training through a simple e-commerce platform.

  • Speed up your reps’ training: get them in front of real customers and close sales quickly.

  • See what collateral drives sales: make it easy for reps to know which prospects need to receive which content across the sales cycle.

  • Create top performers everywhere: quickly assess your team members and fine-tune their pitches using video.

  • Inspire the next generation of sales leaders: build a coaching culture that motivates your best salespeople to pass on their experience.

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