Before scheduling your next in-person training session for your sales team, you may want to research the success rates of virtual sales training programs first. It’s not to say that in-person training programs are ever bad. It’s just that nowadays, virtual sales simulation training is proven to be a whole lot more effective.
More and more companies are moving to virtual training programs for their employees than ever before. These companies are reporting that their salespeople are becoming more productive and retaining new information longer. Plus, the company itself is saving more time and money than they do with in-person training sessions that only last a few short hours or days.
There are several reasons why the success rate of sales simulation training continues to grow. Many of them are a direct result of salespeople having more time to complete assignments, more practice with the learning materials, and more detailed feedback from the instructors.
With an in-person sales training session, a group of salespeople gather at the same time and place as their peers and listen to an instructor presenting new information to them verbally. When they break out into small-group sessions, they often role-play sales scenarios with the few people in their group, but they have a limited amount of time to complete the assignment together. Due to time and space constraints, they may or may not receive detailed feedback from the instructor.
But with a virtual format, salespeople are able to access the training sessions at any time, to complete the training from any location, and to move through the materials at their own pace. The information is presented to them both verbally and visually leading to significantly higher retention rates of the new material. Salespeople are able to complete the sales simulation training without waiting on their peers, and they are given more time to prepare for their role-playing recording assignments. Lastly, the instructor is able to give each salesperson detailed feedback and coaching to improve their skills.
The beauty of sales simulation training is that each salesperson can have their own unique educational experience. They can move as slowly or as quickly as needed, they can go back and review information at any time, they can take breaks to prepare for assignments, and they can use their role-playing recording to watch themselves in action, seeing what they already do well and what areas they can improve upon.
There are benefits to businesses that switch from in-person training sessions to sales simulation training as well. With virtual selling programs, businesses no longer have to coordinate the schedules of multiple team members, and they never have to send all of their salespeople to training at once. That allows them to keep members of the sales team in the office at any given time doing what they do best ‒ selling.
Virtual sales training programs are proven to deliver better productivity from salespeople because they provide an educational opportunity that is unique to each learner. And the companies that use sales simulation training are saving more time and money on training than ever before.
