Sales personnel are either always on the move or are adjusting their everyday work routine to accommodate interactions with potential customers operating in varying time zones. If it’s not the constant traveling that makes them mobile, it’s the constantly changing working hours that make them mobile. While being mobile may have its fair share of advantages and disadvantages when it comes to closing new deals, the biggest challenge of them all is training such a team that’s everywhere at once.

Expecting your sales team members to convene for a training session at the same time is very easy if it’s a one-time activity. But sales training cannot really be a one-time activity because there are many constantly changing parameters that every salesperson must understand in order to correctly represent their company and services. Constantly changing service offerings, updates in pricing, changes in business models, and the ever-evolving nature of marketing tactics make sales training a constant rollercoaster.

Needless to say, training a mobile sales team isn’t easy. When your people are working in multiple locations and time zones, you’re expected to manage multiple hurdles while trying to keep your team engaged and empowered.

As a training facilitator or even a sales team manager, it’s your job to keep the sales teams informed about upcoming training sessions. While it’s simple to effectively communicate with team members who you meet face-to-face every day, the same can’t be applied to mobile employees because of their schedules.

According to a study by Zogby Analytics, 38% of  sales personnel report the lack of information from management and the delayed availability of that information as the biggest obstacles to working remotely.

Since employees collaborate best when they have personal connections with each other, a reliable communication medium is essential for sales teams to virtually connect with one another as well as other teams or departments. In a study by Salesforce, 73% of sales teams said that collaborating across departments was absolutely critical or very important to their overall sales process. Efficient communication processes and tools like shared storage and cloud-based project management software could help a scattered mobile sales team work together efficiently.

The takeaway here is for sales training facilitators and team managers to create a direct and efficient channel of communication with their sales team members. Invest in a learning management system that supports internal communication between groups of learners or create messaging groups with all your sales team members in it to keep them in the loop at all times.

With so many smartphones and software solutions in the market, effectively delivering training to your mobile sales team should not be too complex. But if your current software is not built to deliver mobile eLearning-based training directly to your learners’ smartphones or the eLearning course itself is too outdated for a modern smartphone, there’s nothing you can do but update your delivery systems.

With some estimates that mLearning is expected to become a $70 billion industry by 2024, sales training courses compatible on any device and from anywhere in the world are the way to go.

Courses with beautiful interfaces and rich visuals are amazing at engaging learners and filling their knowledge gaps, but striking a balance between aesthetics and functionality on a mobile device is not easy. A mobile eLearning course for your sales team is built to deliver information anywhere at the drop of a hat. Your eLearning needs to accommodate factors such as a small  device screens, low bandwidth, inability to hear training audio and so on.

You need to partner with an experienced eLearning vendor who knows about these challenges from experience. There are no compromises to be made here.

Empowering your sales team to sell better and faster may require the need for one-to-one coaching, something that is difficult to achieve with a remote team. Sales being a one-to-one activity to begin with is best learnt when watching others in the act of selling or by interacting with experienced sellers to understand their approach to training.

A good method of communicating with your sales teams in a one-on-one manner without actually doing so is by recording your in-person training sessions and load it onto the LMS. Another method is via personalized eLearning course, however, this method is slightly more time-consuming and may even appear to be inconvenient when looking to train large sales teams.

Personalized eLearning courses are great for sales staff interested in one-to-one coaching via their remote computer, tablet, or smartphone from anywhere in the world. Personalized eLearning courses are designed to deliver tailored knowledge and specific learning for sales professionals at all levels and make sales enablement more efficient.

In the business world, change is the only constant. Organization culture evolves, consumer behavior changes with time, and products and services have to adapt to changing market dynamics.

Mobile sales teams must be equipped to accept change in order to survive. If a company is unable to communicate the latest information on time, the performance of its sales teams is impacted. This is where mLearning comes in. mLearning courses are the need of the hour for modern sales teams with erratic schedules and mLearning can help mobile sales teams stay updated in real-time .

A Burrus Research study revealed that 72% of companies embracing mLearning noted that their sales teams were more responsive to market changes. Since training and resources can be instantly updated and changed to suit the needs of the role and market situations, sales teams can simply take out their smartphone and complete the most recent and relevant training module and get all the information they need for quick deal closure.

When leaders can’t personally see and meet their on-the-move sales teams every day, tracking their sales team’s productivity can be difficult. While many remote workers are truly motivated individuals, there my be others who may take advantage of the fact that there’s no one looking over their shoulder. Tracking the productivity of mobile workers is always a challenge.

With a productivity tracking app, you can track a remote worker’s productivity just as you would with the rest of your team; since such apps have established metrics and goals, they highlight exactly the impact each mobile sales employee has delivered and the contribution he/she has made. But it does not end here. What matters is how you interpret this data to take meaningful decisions to elevate your sales teams.

Working with underperforming sales team members is difficult when you do not really know the problem. Are they not reaching out enough? Are they not following up with prospects? Is it their product knowledge? The root cause of their problems can be many, what matters is how soon you identify and fix them.

Concluding

Although the benefits of having a mobile sales team are many, leading and managing sales employees is easier said than done. Offering an enabling ecosystem with regular and timely learning, and personalized training ensures that the mobile sales staff is always updated on new products, promotional campaigns, customer needs, and market trends. Effective mLearning and eLearning courses allow sales teams to get all the information they need immediately. This allows them to spend more time focusing on pursuing opportunities and achieving more sales. And isn’t that their primary role?

If you would like help with enabling your high-performing mobile sales team, please do drop us a line at contact@enyotalearning.com or fill a form our Sales Team will get back to you! You can also test our Learning Management System here.