What are the most effective digital learning outcomes for sales training?

1 Align with business goals

The first step to create effective digital learning outcomes for sales training is to align them with your business goals and strategy. You need to identify what are the main challenges and opportunities that your sales team faces in the digital market, such as generating leads, closing deals, upselling, cross-selling, or retaining customers. Then, you need to define what are the desired outcomes that you want your sales team to achieve, such as increasing sales volume, revenue, or market share, improving customer loyalty, or reducing costs. Finally, you need to map out how your digital learning activities will help your sales team reach those outcomes, such as by developing specific skills, knowledge, or behaviors.

2 Focus on competencies

The second step to create effective digital learning outcomes for sales training is to focus on the competencies that your sales team needs to succeed in the digital environment. Competencies are a mix of skills, knowledge, and behaviors that enable your sales team to be successful in their roles. Digital literacy, customer-centricity, data-driven decision making, and adaptability are all key competencies that should be developed through digital learning. Digital literacy involves using and understanding digital tools and platforms such as CRM systems, social media, email, webinars, or chatbots to communicate, collaborate, and sell to customers. Customer-centricity is understanding and anticipating the needs, preferences, and pain points of customers and providing personalized solutions that add value and build trust. Data-driven decision making is collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data from various sources like customer feedback, analytics, or reports to identify trends, opportunities, and risks and to optimize sales strategies and actions. Finally, adaptability is coping with change and uncertainty while learning from feedback and mistakes to adjust sales approaches and behaviors accordingly.

4 Use Bloom's taxonomy

The fourth step to create effective digital learning outcomes for sales training is to use Bloom's taxonomy, a framework that categorizes different levels of cognitive learning. This can help you design and deliver digital learning activities that challenge and engage your sales team and foster deeper and more meaningful learning. Bloom's taxonomy consists of the following levels: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. For example, a digital learning activity could be watching a video that explains the features and benefits of a new product (remembering), summarizing the main points in your own words (understanding), creating a sales pitch for the new product that addresses a specific customer scenario (applying), comparing and contrasting your sales pitch with those of your peers (analyzing), giving and receiving feedback on your sales pitch based on a rubric (evaluating), and revising and improving your sales pitch based on the feedback (creating).

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?