Top 5 Principles To Boost Effective Sales Reinforcement Programs

Like many companies, channel vendors want to boost sales through a successful sales development program. There are so many tips that need to be considered, but one that is often missed or relegated as less important is sales reinforcement.

In reality, sales reinforcement is an important factor in an effective program. The ideal program entails giving continuous support, making sure that resellers and sales reps apply their acquired skills and knowledge and using data-driven practices to proactively classify gaps and provide proper solutions. Initially, you have to understand what you want to reinforce. And with proper planning, you can achieve maximum ROI on all your sales training investments.

Discover the top 5 principles that can help increase knowledge retention, enhance job performance and provide optimal user engagement.

1. State The Program Objectives

The main goal of any program must be set upfront. Some goals include helping resellers who are having difficulties with a new product, service or competitive messaging, or focusing on core selling skills. Making sure that the success metrics and the content of the program are well-aligned makes a great difference when it’s time to evaluate and report results.

2.    Prioritize Mobile Access

 Resellers must have access to product content on the go from any device and wherever they are. Know that a mobile-first reinforcement program enables convenient and quick participation of resellers while allowing proper selling time and at least a 90% adoption rating.

 3.    Curate Effective Content

 If resellers are provided too many training materials, they could screen these out, resulting in less than ideal knowledge retention. So, to reinforce this, prepare content that provides the most important concepts in the simplest way possible. Remember that providing clear and concise content produces better results, especially for those using mobile access.

 4.    Communicate In Advance

 The core stakeholders of a reinforcement program are channel partners, sales executives and resellers. Issuing effective and advanced communications boosts understanding and proper support to encourage more adoption. Communicating live or by email or other communication tools and solutions including a sales portal will ensure proper and timely receipt.

 5.    Include Clarifications

 For Q&As, include explanatory text in every question you answer. Whether the reseller replies properly or not, explaining is more effective than just restating the query. Remember that a well-thought, robust clarification with embedded links or providing accurate and authentic supporting documents whenever these are available will help optimize a team’s learning experience.

 In the end, a good way of determining what to reinforce is to put your shoes in the head of a large sales force. As the head, what would you tell your resellers or sales reps if you have five minutes of their full attention on a daily basis? Incorporating the set business goal of the company, you must ensure that the team has whatever they need to bring the company to success. By designing your sales reinforcement programs with the principles described above and concentrating on the competencies that matter the most, companies and channel vendors can shape seller behavior better, maintain high productivity levels regularly and achieve projected ROI more successfully. Lastly, note that the best reinforcement encourages resellers and sales representatives to give feedback, contest and motivate their peers.

 Discover the principles employed by our channel vendors when you join the ForzaDash community and be one of our active and successful channel partners. To set a meeting, call here today.

ForzaDash posts a blog on Mondays. This week’s blog feature is about the fundamentals of partner enablement. To read it, click here.