For many teams, switching to a modern sales training software alone is enough to more quickly and efficiently train their sales team. These tools use techniques specially designed to improve engagement and learning retention, speed up onboarding, and improve sales performance, while avoiding:
- Monotonous onboarding training sessions.
- Lengthy 1-1 practice sessions.
- Printed training materials that can quickly be lost or go out of date.
Beyond these core training elements, new sales training software can use powerful AI-driven analysis to offer training in the nuances of sales presentations and to finesse areas such as:
- Insights and analysis of individuals’ sales techniques.
- Methods of improving verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
- Metrics on prospect engagement and potential buying interest.
- And more...
Used together, these software solutions help sales coaches get more out of each training session by cutting down on the time needed to uncover meaningful insights.
Instead of sitting in on several meetings to catch and analyze all of a rep’s non-verbal cues, for example, a sales leader can get insights in a few moments about how the rep is presenting themselves and engaging with their audience. They can then use that information to coach them more quickly and effectively in the new skills they need.
In this post, we’re going to look at three sales training softwares, which when used in conjunction, offer a complete sales training package:
- Bigtincan Learning: To handle the foundational sales training salespeople need to succeed.
- ClearSlide: To help sales professionals engage with prospects more effectively.
- VoiceVibes: To help sellers sound more natural and confident.
Together, these tools offer salespeople a complete ongoing sales training experience: They help sales reps get trained quickly on the information they need to sell, learn to present it effectively, keep prospects engaged, and keep improving over time.
To see how Bigtincan's Sales Training Software can help you train your sales team quickly and efficiently, book a demo.
Bigtincan Learning
The first part of an effective sales training stack is a robust training platform that gives sales teams the foundational knowledge and sales skills they need to sell.
In this stack, Bigtincan Learning is the core sales learning management system for your sales team. It helps sales teams avoid long, generic training presentations designed for large training cohorts, and instead helps them provide individualized and engaging learning experiences to every sales professional.
And, it does so in a way that’s aligned with how sellers work, meaning it’s optimized for mobile and can be used on the go.
Plus, sales training using Bigtincan Learning is highly effective because it’s done using:
- Microlearning, which conveys training in easily-absorbed chunks — in the form of short videos, quizzes and interactive exercises — which is proven to increase retention by 41% according to studies and keep learners more engaged than using long-form content.
- Adaptive learning, which provides individual learners with a customized route through training that can be adapted to their individual needs. This helps reps get the training that’s most relevant in the real world, giving them training only on the specific products they will be selling, or about the specific accounts or prospects they’ll be responsible for, for example.
- Just-in-time learning, which empowers users to look up the training they need exactly when they need it. It uses mobile-first design, search, and AI-powered lesson suggestions to help users find a precise answer to any question in an instant. This way, they can respond to buyers more effectively, learn proactively, and save managers time. Instead of having to recall what they learned at onboarding, or sort through dozens of documents to find an answer, they can find exactly what they need when they need it.
- Video assignments and coaching allows sellers to practice pitching and get asynchronous feedback from managers as they go through training. Video coaching gives sellers the feedback they need to improve, while providing managers flexibility to respond when they have time, rather than scheduling one-on-one meetings every time a seller needs to practice their pitch.
For more information on the science behind microlearning, adaptive learning, and just-in-time learning, and how Bigtincan’s LMS leverages that in its sales training platform to increase learner engagement and retention, see our in-depth article here.
From a usability point of view, Bigtincan Learning has also been designed so it can be accessed both online and offline, and to always have the most up to date information.
The platform can do this because of AI-powered syncing between the main content repository and each users’ mobile device, which makes sure every user has all the most important and updated information on their device on demand.
Having access to training regardless of connectivity means your sales team can pick up on training anywhere and at any time. Whether they’re out in the field, in the office, at home, or even a coffee shop without internet access, for example.
All these features mean that onboarding of new hires is faster and more efficient and ongoing training is more effective because:
- Content is more engaging — sales reps are more likely to complete their trainings in a shorter time.
- Retention is higher — learners can put training into practice straight away and need to be re-trained less often.
- Each new sales rep can be given a customized training path that is specific to their sales territory, product focus, or other criteria.
- Access to training from anywhere and at any time — therefore, trainings can be completed in a shorter time.
Train Sales Reps on the Nuances of Engaging an Audience and Positive Communication with ClearSlide and VocalVibes
With foundational training taken care of using Bigtincan Learning, sales coaches can train reps on the finer points of communicating and engaging prospects using ClearSlide and VoiceVibes.
Before modern tools like these, even when reps had a thorough knowledge and understanding of all their product and company information, training them to act and present themselves confidently was an intensive and time-consuming process.
It might take months for a trainer to get a junior rep to recognize the communication mistakes they were making and correct them.
With ClearSlide and VoiceVibes, it now takes a fraction of that time because together they tackle two of the most important aspects of interpersonal sales communication: presenting and refining verbal communication.
ClearSlide
The second part of an effective sales training software stack is making sure sellers can present effectively. This isn’t about learning information, but how the information is communicated.
ClearSlide, a Bigtincan company, helps with this by analyzing online sales calls and giving sellers feedback about prospect engagement and based on that, the likelihood of a sale.
It does this with its web conferencing platform that combines hosting online meetings with:
- Real-time analytics about attendee engagement: It alerts meeting hosts in real-time when sales prospects aren’t engaged with the presentation, giving presenters a chance to improve interaction while still on the call to recapture their interest by asking a question or using another pre-approved tactic.
- Recordings of meetings and related analytics: At the end of an online sales meeting the ClearSlide platform can automatically store recordings and log analytics and meeting details — the names and roles of the people who attended, for example, and how and when they were engaged with your trainings — within your CRM for later use (more on how this can be used for training below).
- Track levels of engagement with assets shared during, and following, every meeting: Documents and other assets like follow-up emails or attachments can be tracked for levels of engagement — who opened it, when, how long for, and if they read it to the end — for each participant in the call. This provides crucial insights into prospects’ levels of interest and gives sales teams powerful information about which prospects are most likely to buy.
How to Use ClearSlide for Sales Training
Using calls and sales pitches recorded by ClearSlide, alongside the engagement analytics for each of them, sales coaches have access to granular level information about how each of their sales reps perform on sales calls.
Without this data, coaches would have to sit in on every call to see how reps communicate, and guess about whether or not their follow-up is effective.
With ClearSlide, coaches can see exactly how and when sellers are engaging with prospects so they can find the best opportunities for improvement.
For example, one of ClearSlide’s top features is an engagement tracker that shows whether prospects are actively watching your presentation, or focusing on another task — like email — in another window.
Then all of this information is presented in a series of reports, as seen below:
A coach can look at this information, and use it to coach sellers on specific areas that need improvement.
For example, if there’s a consistent drop-off across calls as seen above, the coach can dive in with a seller and find out how to execute better during that 30 second period where they lose buyer interest.
This is much more efficient than the alternative, which typically involves a coach saying something like, “These calls aren’t working, let’s figure out how to do better.” Then listening to a series of full calls to figure out what’s happening during a conversation.
Recorded calls and corresponding data can be used in a variety of ways for sales training, including:
- Being clipped and shared internally via ClearSlide’s Perfect Pitch Library as examples of how to handle objections, or deliver correct messaging, and more.
- Setting and tracking engagement benchmarks for the entire sales team.
- Reviewing presentations asynchronously to provide sellers 1-1 feedback without having to coordinate schedules.
For a full overview of ClearSlide’s analytics features and use cases for sellers, see our article on sales engagement software.
VoiceVibes
The third part of our effective sales training software stack is about improving verbal communication through tone and voice.
Specifically, VoiceVibes, also a Bigtincan company, teaches sellers how to adjust tone of voice and overall conversation style, or ‘vibe’, to build trust with customers and make a positive impression.
It does this by using powerful voice analytics software to give sales reps, and their coaches, feedback on 20 ‘vibes’ that can be detected in the way they speak in their sales interactions, including:
- Arrogant
- Assertive
- Authentic
- Belligerent
- Boring
- Captivating
- Clear
- Condescending
- Confusing
- Confident
- Detached
- Ditsy
- Energetic
- Nervous
- Organized
- Personable
- Persuasive
- Pushy
- Timid
- Unapproachable
You can use this analysis to cut out the need for a labour intensive analysis of each sales pitch or presentation by a sales coach.
Because VoiceVibes gives clear and scientifically-driven metrics about how salespeople are perceived on sales calls, identifying their ‘vibe’ at different points of the sales call as ‘personable’ or ‘pushy’, for example, shortcuts the process of coaches identifying problem areas and suggests ways of improving.
VoiceVibes was designed in partnership with linguists and acoustic psychologists and backed up by a huge corpus of examples of professional speech, so you can rely on its accuracy.
In fact, it increases the chance of a sale 13-fold (proven by the intensive Vocal Vibes ratings process involving thousands of real people).
How to Use VoiceVibes for Sales Training
By analyzing a sales call for all of the above-listed ‘vibes,’ coaches and sales reps get a chance to see how they really come across to the people they are talking to.
They may be unaware that they sometimes sound arrogant, or boring, or even unapproachable, but those vibes could be getting in the way of a successful sale.
To remedy these problems, coaches can ask reps to upload recordings of presentations, voice messages, and other audio assets that can be analyzed for their detectable ‘vibes’.
After analysis, reps can record the same message again — as many times as they need to — with a view to improving their communication style.
In short, VoiceVibes gives coaches the chance to:
- Use the provided insights to help reps adjust how they talk and adopt new methods of communication.
- Show sellers how to better present (either in-person or asynchronously).
- Give sellers assignments they can independently work on to improve how they sound based on individual or team goals.
For a more in-depth look at how VoiceVibes’ voice analytics software works and how it can drive sales see our article on voice analytics software.
Combine Bigtincan Learning, ClearSlide, and VoiceVibes for an Integrated Approach to Sales Training
By using this stack of three sales training software, your sales team will not only be prepared with the basics of product information and messaging that using a simple sales training platform will provide, they will go far beyond that towards:
- Fast and effective onboarding and training — with proven higher rates of engagement and retention — using Bigtincan Learning.
- Finessing presentation techniques, training in sales engagement, and customized messaging using ClearSlide.
- Improving tone of voice (vibe) and confidence on sales calls with VoiceVibes to build trust and respect, and improve sales.
To see how Bigtincan's Sales Training Software can help you train your sales team quickly and efficiently, book a demo.
