Every business wants to hire and retain top talent. In a competitive, ever-changing job market, investing in their learning and development is one of the best ways to create a powerhouse sales team.
Sales training software can help you make and distribute personalized training content at scale for new hires and longtime employees. Providing high-quality, relevant, and accessible training materials will boost your reps’ performance and encourage them to stay with your organization.
In this post, we’ll explore what to look for in sales training software and review the best solutions to help you make a more informed decision.
Essential features to look for in sales training software
Not all sales training software is created equally. If you’ve decided to invest in better training, don’t settle for a solution that doesn’t come with these essential features and capabilities:
Enables content authoring
New updates to training content can take what seems like forever to implement — and this presents a significant challenge to fast-paced product, marketing, and sales teams. To train your sales team effectively, you must ensure that your training material stays current with the latest product updates and strategies.
This issue can be solved with what’s known as content authoring. Content authoring allows anyone in your organization to create dynamic, easy-to-navigate walkthroughs that contain the most up-to-date information. An agile, flexible sales content platform is absolutely necessary to meet the demands of the modern, fast-paced workforce.
Supports just-in-time enablement
Long or one-off training decks and videos are plagued by what’s known as the “forgetting curve.” A salesperson can forget up to 90% of an hour-long training after only three days.
Your organization can beat the forgetting curve with just-in-time enablement, which presents your sales reps with the right information whenever they need to reference it.
Just-in-time enablement allows you to break up your training into smaller, more specialized lessons, making it faster and easier for your team to watch and learn — even during a jam-packed day on the job.
Accessible across applications
Your sales team likely uses a combination of several websites and applications to get things done (a CRM, email platform, LinkedIn, HR software, etc.). Certain sales platforms allow you to make your training accessible across any web application via your web browser. Your sales team can access all of their day-to-day tools as usual but in tandem with the most relevant training available.
Streamlines change management
It’s more important now than ever to have tools to notify your team when changes arise. Change management lets you send critical in-app updates when there are product changes, system outages, and staff announcements.
Integrates with existing tools
Sales training software that integrates with your most-used sales tools does even more heavy lifting. Look for platforms that seamlessly integrate with popular tools like Salesforce and Outreach. That way, your training material will be accessible from within the tool itself and will automatically sync whenever you make any edits — and no technical know-how is required.
The 6 best sales training software platforms
With a clearer understanding of what to look for when choosing an online sales training software platform, you’ll be better equipped to pick the best option for your team’s needs.
Here is a breakdown of six of the best sales training software platforms and their standout features:
1) Spekit
Notable customers: Southwest, Invesco, Snowflake, Equifax
Platform overview
The leading platform for remote sales enablement and training, Spekit allows employees to easily access bite-size, highly relevant training modules during their day-to-day work. Rather than having to log in to a separate training hub, Spekit allows teams to access answers, resources, and guidance directly from the applications they’re in every day.
Spekit offers direct integrations with popular tools like Salesforce and Slack or you can use the Google Chrome Extension to automatically surface your sales playbooks, coaching, and support in any application your revenue team works in.
Key sales training features:
- Content authoring: Give your team the power to create dynamic, engaging training materials using any combination of videos, slides, and voice recordings.
- Just-in-time learning: Training sessions are accessible where and when needed — instead of being housed separately behind a different login or tab.
- Ubiquitous integrations: Integrates with Salesforce, Slack, Outreach.io, Google Chrome, HubSpot, and more to provide even easier workflows.
- Instant edits and notifications: Push updates and give your team a heads-up via in-app alerts or emails.
- Remote knowledge sharing: Access training content from any device, anywhere.
- Out-of-the-box training content: Modify existing content from seasoned sales professionals and successful companies to quickly build a training library.
- Real-time feedback and visibility: Let your employees give feedback as they move through your material, allowing you to stay on top of what needs improvement or change. See who’s working on what at all times.
- Spekit AI: Integrated AI capabilities automate the tedious parts of content creation and directly surface your training, knowledge, and coaching within the tools your reps use daily.
“Employees think Spekit is genius. They don’t need to hunt for answers in a giant wiki anymore — they can just use Spekit, no matter what page they’re on in Salesforce, or if they’re in Slack or a different app. They like it so much better than searching for answers in a completely separate tool.” Jack Michel, SENIOR SALESFORCE ADMINISTRATOR AT ADDIGY - Read full story
2) Brainshark
Notable customers: J.G. Wentworth, Scantron, Zoom
Platform overview
Brainshark is a sales readiness platform that lets you onboard and train sales reps more efficiently. Available both on and offline, your reps can access valuable training and coaching materials from wherever they are.
Certain integrations with Brainshark will place your training library inside of your other tools, eliminating the need to log into a separate platform.
Key sales training features:
- Content authoring: Control permissions regarding who can make, edit, and publish new content.
- Available anywhere and offline: Reps can access your content library from any device and without an internet connection.
- Readiness scorecards: Track which reps have completed which courses, see who scored the highest on each assessment, and follow up with anyone who hasn’t completed certain assignments on time.
- Video coaching: Sales reps can record videos of their pitches and submit them for peer or AI review.
- Integrations: Add a separate tab within your CRM that contains your training material.
3) Mindtickle
Notable customers: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, MongoDB, United Colors of Benetton
Platform overview
With Mindtickle, you can centralize your training content and build out a reference library that mirrors your business. You can keep track of how reps are moving through training modules, and see their performance scores for each section.
While Mindtickle offers powerful tools for getting your sales reps up to speed, it’s important to note that it does not support just-in-time learning. Mindtickle’s sales training platform exists as its own entity, instead of integrating with other software.
Key sales training features:
- Content management: Get a centralized hub to store, manage, and access training content. As a cloud-based platform, Mindtickle can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.
- Conversation tracking: Mindtickle allows you to record real interactions and see critical insights, giving your reps the ability to improve with every new conversation.
- Benchmark setting: Define who your ideal sales rep is, and let your reps work towards becoming all-stars.
- Analytics and dashboards: Monitor rep performance and measure skill levels against CRM data to spot weak points in your processes.
- Individualized coaching: Give customized lessons to reps who need an extra lift.
4) Lessonly by Seismic
Notable customers: Lincoln Financial Group, New York Life, Salesloft
Platform overview
Lessonly by Seismic lets teams of all sizes make and store training content for any team in an organization. You can create interactive courses that draw from real-life examples, and launch data-driven coaching programs.
As part of the Seismic family of tools, Lessonly by Seismic has a robust API library, giving your developers the option to build a more bespoke employee experience.
Key sales training features:
- Content authoring: Publish new content quickly and seamlessly.
- Content management: House your content in one place and organize it in a way that makes sense for your teams and business.
- Coaching plans: Use data and insights to identify knowledge gaps and design better coaching plans.
- Integrations and APIs: Integrates with Salesforce, Slack, and dozens of other tools. Your devs also have the option to leverage APIs for a completely custom experience.
- Community membership: Interact with other Lessonly by Seismic customers to share advice and build additional skills.
5) EdApp
Notable customers: Deloitte, Pandora, Shell
Platform overview
EdApp lets you easily publish, distribute, and gamify your training content through its mobile app. You can make your own training content from scratch, automatically convert any existing training PowerPoint slides into microlearning modules, or leverage EdApp’s existing content library. Although EdApp is a standalone app, it does integrate with other LMS systems and tools like Zapier, Canva, and Cornerstone.
EdApp is a mobile-first platform, meaning it’s primarily designed to run on mobile devices. This is certainly a plus if your reps are out in the field or traveling frequently. If you’re more of a desktop-heavy organization or need to minimize the amount of time reps spend on mobile, however, EdApp may not be the right fit.
Key sales training features:
- Content authoring: Anyone on your team can design nice-looking training content or borrow from existing templates and publish it within a matter of minutes.
- Gamification: Let employees compete with one another and earn prizes for top scores.
- Spaced repetition: Trigger a set of follow-up quiz questions to aid retention — especially important for remembering the right answers to questions that were answered incorrectly.
- Rapid refresh: Sprinkle quizzes at regular intervals throughout your content to reinforce learning.
- Translation tool: Translate any content into over 100 languages with just a few clicks.
- Reporting and push notifications: See how your employees are performing and send customized push notifications to help those who need to brush up on their skills.
6) Bigtincan
Notable customers: The Economist, Sacramento Kings, Starwood Hotels and Resorts
Platform overview
Bigtincan supports microlearning and sales enablement training in any format on any device. You can create a completely custom hub for your sales training and retain control of who can access which training materials and when.
Bigtincan serves as a standalone centralized database for all of your training and documents, but it also integrates with CRM platforms like HubSpot, Oracle, and Salesforce.
Key sales training features:
- Learning hub: Create engaging learning modules at scale for new hires, veterans, and everyone in between.
- Content hub: Store all of your training materials in an easy-to-use database. Seamlessly insert existing slides, videos, or recordings, or create new ones using Bigtincan templates.
- Engagement hub: Keep tabs on which reps are giving customers their full attention during calls and which ones are multi-tasking.
- Readiness scorecards: Identify skill gaps and measure readiness more quickly.
- Gamification: Motivate employees to perform better with badges, leaderboards, and other incentives.
- Augmented and virtual reality: Immerse your team into virtual environments with your product.
- Pitch practice: Let your sellers upload recordings of their pitch and receive intelligent feedback on clarity, pacing, perception, and more.
Benefits of sales training software
At its core, sales training software helps salespeople develop their skill set. These are several key benefits that come with investing in sales training software:
Onboard sales reps faster
It’s no secret that onboarding new employees is time-consuming — and that’s especially true if you don’t have materials that can be updated and accessed quickly.
With sales training software, you can streamline the onboarding process from day 1, allowing your reps to get up to speed on best practices much more quickly. Some sales training platforms even give you access to expert-written training content, so the work of putting material together is already done for you.
Deep Dive: Learn 8 Best Practices to Reduce Your Sales Ramp Time - READ POST
Accelerate rep productivity
Another noteworthy benefit of investing in training is that it’s a boon to your reps’ productivity. Giving your reps access to enablement resources in real-time will significantly accelerate pipeline and productivity.
Close more deals
The most obvious advantage for using sales training software is that your win rate will improve. Your sales reps will close more deals with a deeper understanding of which strategies to apply and when.
Improve rep retention
Sales jobs are notorious for high turnover rates. Better training can empower your sales team to be their best and give them the confidence and encouragement they need to keep going. When your sales team feels equipped to handle the highs and lows that come with the territory, they’ll be less likely to jump ship.
Which sales training software is the right fit?
If you’re ready to take your sales team to the next level, Spekit is the best choice for just-in-time sales training software. With Spekit, you can integrate custom sales playbooks, methodologies, and training in your most-used tools, create new content from anywhere, seamlessly communicate updates to your team, and measure progress in real-time.
Learn more about how Spekit can take your revenue to new heights.
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