Do you think Nick Saban shows up every spring and starts coaching his team with a new style, new drills, and different set of expectations?

Quick answer: No.

Like world-class coaches everywhere, he drives the power of process and consistency to coach his team.

Similarly, it will be ineffective to train your sales team by relying solely on once-in-a-while classroom training - they need continuous training to perform at their peak.

75% of training programs fail to deliver results. A primary reason for this failure is that 1-2 days of tactical learning is not effective in bringing lasting change. Since 70% of learners forget what was taught within 24 hours after the training, we need continuous reinforcement to get results.

**When sales training is done right, it accelerates revenue and provides 50% higher net sales per employee. **

Today many organizations realize this fact and are moving towards implementing more continuous and structured training programs. An up-to-date and continuous training that addresses your sales team’s challenges gives you a competitive advantage. So, how can you create and implement a continuous training structure?

Here are some techniques to help you with that.

Continuous Learning Techniques

Curriculum learning: This technique can be used as an initial step to mastering the subject. Generally composed of corporate training material, this type of training includes classroom training, video-based courses, and tests. This plays an important role in imparting fundamental knowledge.

Reinforcement learning: While Curriculum learning is good for introducing the concepts, reinforcement learning helps in retaining those concepts. Reinforcement learning uses tools such as flashcards, quizzes, and bite-sized content to refresh sales reps knowledge each day for a few minutes. This type of learning fits well into the sales rep’s busy schedule as it is presented in small chunks. It can be effectively delivered through mobile devices.

Mobile learning is a great way to engage learners. 80% of corporate learning professionals say mobile learning will increase their corporate engagement. 90% say they would complete training if it were presented in the mobile format.

Just-in-time learning: Just-in-time learning provides highly relevant, easily searchable and continuously available content to the sales reps on their mobile phones. Reps can access this information whenever and wherever they need it. This type of learning follows the psychology that training is most effective when reps actively seek out new information.

Just-in-time learning comes in handy when the learners are most motivated to learn - typically during closing a deal.

How to implement continuous learning techniques?

You can create a mix of these three techniques to make an effective training structure. For example, for a quarterly training, curriculum-learning can be used to provide foundational knowledge. Reinforcement learning can be used to send out reinforcements every week on what sales reps have learned. Just-in-time learning helps the sales reps while closing deals. It provides information about the account, type of business, customers and more.

Benefits of continuous training

Increases productivity of sales teams

Continuous training plays a key role in increasing the productivity of your sales team. As they constantly engage themselves in honing their skills, they eventually become efficient at their work. This enables them to have better and meaningful conversations with their customers. As a result, they will be able to close deals faster and make more sales.

Increases revenue of your organization

The final goal of any sales training initiative is to make more sales and increase revenue. Continuous training helps you in achieving just that. It makes your employees smarter, knowledgeable and more engaged with their work. As a result, they will perform their job better and make more sales. Therefore, the net sales of the organization also increase.

Increases employee engagement

Continuous training increases the overall employee engagement in the organization. With continuous training, your employees improve their skills and contribute to the success of your organization. This makes them feel more valuable at work and increases their engagement at the workplace.

Continuous training truly has the power to significantly improve your workforce engagement, knowledge retention and productivity of your employees. In order to get good results from it, design your continuous training program in such a way that it truly fits your training needs and the way your reps prefer to learn.

Want to gamify your training? Check out the below articles which explain how to best gamify your training

Improve Employee Engagement of your Remote Teams with Gamification

30 60 90 Days Gamified Sales Training Plan

‘Work from Home Warriors’: Sales Training Game for Remote Sales Teams

Looking for a sales training software that takes your sales training to a whole new level?

Explore SmartWinnr’s Learning and Gamification features. Learn how to run fun and engaging sales training and sales coaching for your team through SmartWinnr.

Curious to learn more about it? Book a demo today!