How e-learning leads to better outcomes for Sales and Marketing teams in real-time

• The sales and marketing departments of companies work together to minimize conflicts (chasing common leads) and maximize growth ie the sales.
• To reach such results, companies are increasing their efforts to integrate online training to visibly enhance their sales and marketing functions, writes Pradeip Agarwal, VP -Marketing, Stratbeans.

Sales and marketing training have always been a tough hurdle for companies. With the changing product scheme and new recruitments, it is a constant challenge to train the employees quickly and effectively. The prioritized result of any such training is a faster and felicitous skill development. According to a report by ASTD, as many as 48% of sales people learn by trial and error method where error is of high or very high degree throughout the learning phase.

The marketing department, on the other hand, has the responsibility - at its core - to provide support to the sales department by advertising, generating, and chasing high quality leads. The two departments work hand-in-hand to minimize conflicts (chasing common leads) and maximize growth ie the sales. To reach such results, the companies are increasing their efforts to integrate online training to visibly enhance their sales and marketing functions.

E-learning is the finest solution any company can opt for to boost the product knowledge, which greatly impacts the sales. Let's take a look at some of the advantages of e-learning over other training programs for Sales and Marketing professionals:

• Learning on-the-go - E-learning also allows sales and marketing employees to gain knowledge about a subject matter anytime they require. This is highly beneficial for sales and marketing professionals as they come across new customer requirements, trends, so it is imperative for them to keep themselves updated on everything and that’s where the 24*7 support provided by e-learning helps.

● E-learning requires less investments- Online or e-training packs are cheaper on the pockets as they reduce the costs of having physical classrooms and travel costs. They are robust and only require the internet as the delivery channel.

● Improves productivity and performance-Sales and Marketing teams can learn quickly through e-learning courses. These are time efficient and also offer the privilege of learning anywhere; both of which are common drawbacks of traditional courses.

● Documentation- The availability of the resources and materials helps employees visit back and go through the parts they missed the first time. Post this, it also reduces the usage of paper while providing better learning experience.

● Convenient and flexible- The most crucial advantage of e-learning is the convenience of learning from the place and time of choice. This potentially extinguishes the time and money spent on coordinating the course according to everyone’s availability. Since each employee works through an online course, there’s an added ability for each member of the sales and marketing team to catch up on the information they need to know whenever they have a free moment.

● Personalizes the training experience- The courses are first hand broadly categorized based on what skill is needed to be learned. Further, different kinds of training courses are also provided to help an employee choose the one that best fits him.

● Improved retention- Through the audio-visual method, it is easier to make courses interesting and fun to learn. Many courses are even interactive so as to make employees more focused. These courses also include timely feedback and certain events to track learning outcomes.

● Allows timely feedback for better outcome-E-learning delivers visible results very quickly when it comes to sales and marketing functions. The platform provides automatic and evaluation to employee performance. Through this, employees can learn at their own pace without feeling overburdened with the information. And because everything is connected online, management can also get real-time analysis on how courses are performing, and can easily track the progress of individual employees.

It is quite evident that while traditional training techniques have been around for a long time, e-learning is quite new and is adapting as per employer-employee needs. In time, it will take over most of the other training courses.