Product Training

Over the past 30 years, we have had more than a few occasions to observe our client’s product training, while we were simultaneously engaged in a project with the sales organization. In virtually every one of these situations, we have been struck by one thing.

Rarely, if ever, were the objectives and outcomes of the product training in alignment with, or directly supportive of, the objectives of our sales development engagement.

In most of these situations, we worked with the sales force to engage in different kinds of conversations with different kinds of people in their customer’s company. Sometimes, we were focused on helping the field call higher, with higher-level business impact value messages. At other times, our engagement was designed to enhance the field’s influence skills, helping them engage the customer with enhanced credibility and earn the right to do deeper and more influential discovery.

Invariably, our observation of the product training was that it did not appear to be designed to support the same kind of objectives that we were engaged to accomplish.

Instead, the product training seemed to be designed specifically to enable a product-centric, technically oriented dialogue with technically astute buyers who would be making buying decisions based upon their perceptions of product and/or technical advantage.

About 10 years ago, we began to work in this area ourselves, developing a “How to Sell” Product Training model that we have implemented in both e-learning and instructor-led modes for a number of our customers.

Today, we have a dedicated team of project managers, technical writers, and instructional designers who are experienced with a variety of delivery methods, and intimately familiar with the higher level outcome objectives of our sales skills and process work.

Over the new few months, we’ll be posting samples of the design approach and examples of the instructional materials.

For more information, download a of our Product Training fact sheet or contact us directly.