Deliver Product Knowledge At Scale With Digital Retail Sales Enablement

Whether brands are launching a new product, getting new retail partners up to speed, or trying to drive retail product sales, being able to effectively inform sales staff with the knowledge they need to sell a product is of paramount importance.  While brands have traditionally relied on in-person training in order to inform sales staff about their products, we've swiftly moved into a new age of retail and a newer, more cost efficient way of training is needed to support traditional, in-person education.

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The Problem

While nothing can replace the feeling of person to person interactions, brands often face a number of challenges when they rely solely on face to face training for their retail sales associates.

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Scaling

For brands, aligning schedules with a retailer (or groups of retailers) and finding time to train tens or even hundreds of staff at once on a new product can be costly, time consuming and in some cases physically impossible.

The problem is exacerbated when retailers operate across a large geography which means that training costs can rack up quickly as brands pay for travel expenses.

A digital retail sales enablement tool allows a brand to educate sales associates quickly,easily, at scale and in a cost efficient manner.

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Knowledge Retention

Research into the forgetting curve shows “within one hour, people will have forgotten an average of 50 percent of the information you presented. Within 24 hours, they have forgotten an average of 70 percent of new information, and within a week, forgetting erodes 90 percent of new information’’.

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“Within one hour people will have forgotten an average of 50% of the information you presented”

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Face to face training imparts knowledge onto sales staff but without the ability to refresh their memories on a regular basis or on demand they’re likely to forget almost all of what they’re taught.  

A digital retail sales enablement tool allows sales associates to revisit educational information as and when they have time, meaning they’re more likely to retain information in the long term.  Additionally, with the inclusion of tried and tested knowledge retention techniques such as questions and flash-cards, overall knowledge retention is boosted.

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Engagement 

While face to face, in-person training can allow a brand to deliver knowledge onto up to hundreds of sales staff at once, it’s very difficult to measure how that knowledge is being received.  Did everyone understand what was being said? How many people were actually paying attention? 

With the use of a digital retail sales enablement tool a brand can see via the analytics  function key pieces of information including: what percentage of sales staff have completed the content; how long it took them as well as what percentage of questions were answered correctly.

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High Turnover

Finally, face to face training falls short when addressing onboarding needs. Global retail faces a notoriously high (60%) turnover rate at the sales associate level.  After a lot of time, money and effort is put into in-person training, it often only has to be repeated again months or even weeks later. 

A digital retail sales enablement tool can grant instant access to training materials for new sales associates, dramatically reducing the amount of time needed for them to be brought up to speed.  Consequently, this reduces the need for trainers to visit and reduces all associated costs.

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The Solution

The best way a brand can empower  their retail sales associates with the knowledge they need to correctly inform and help customers is to embrace a digital retail sales enablement tool.  Online training platforms enable you to roll out new training to as many retailers as you wish as frequently as you want so that every salesperson is on the same page and customer ready, no matter their location. 

Furthermore, knowledge can be transferred in both ways.  While brands spend the majority of their time focused on passing knowledge down the knowledge supply chain to the sales staff, good sales enablement platforms allow key front line insights from the sales staff to also be passed back up to the brand, thus creating a feedback loop which ultimately benefits both parties.

Digital sales enablement platforms allow brands to track and measure the engagement of sales staff using a variety of metrics.  Additionally, brands can bring new sales staff up to speed much quicker and cost effectively than with traditional face-to-face training.

The results will be tangible: more happy customers, fewer returns, more sales, and a consistent brand image.

If you would like to find out more about how Myagi can help you quickly and efficiently scale your brand training don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can click on the green circle on the right to chat with us anytime.

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