E-learning company SmartForce has launched its Virtual Sales University (VSU) SolutionSet for the development of sales professionals.
The VSU SolutionSet is designed to assist companies to drive business growth and gain competitive advantage through greater sales force productivity.
Paul Johnson, general manager of SmartForce Africa, says the new offering meets a critical business need as companies need to consistently and efficiently educate their sales forces and channel sales partners, keeping them up to date on new products, company vision, sales strategies, processes and product launch information.
"The traditional instructor-led training (ILT) approach tends to be geographically limiting, time-consuming and often results in delayed or outdated information," he says.
"The time it takes to train sales reps effectively using traditional methods can negatively impact a company`s revenue. For example, the time to competency for a sales rep may take as much as six to nine months from date of hire to becoming profitable with traditional training methods.
"A six-month delay in getting a product to market can seriously decrease the lifetime profits of a product," he says.
Johnson says the Virtual Sales University SolutionSet, which can be used in concert with traditional methods, can help companies drive revenue by significantly decreasing time-to-productivity for sales reps and by accelerating product launches.
"Through the VSU SolutionSet, companies can immediately leverage the benefits of e-learning for achieving significant results such as driving competitive advantage, expanding globally and accelerating product launches.
"The SolutionSet accomplishes this by developing the core competencies of the sales organisation, increasing productivity through skilled sales professionals and by reducing the time it takes to move new hires to competency," he notes.
According to SmartForce, the Virtual Sales University SolutionSet covers topics relevant to one-to-two call sales cycles representatives, territorial and strategic account sales as well as vertical market industry knowledge, salesforce automation (SFA), customer relationship management (CRM) systems and desktop skills, product and process knowledge, and core sales skills.
"Because in-house expertise and peer-to-peer and expert coaching are essential to the learning process, the SolutionSet provides collaboration tools in the form of virtual classrooms, real-time mentoring with experts and chat sessions. SmartForce also provides services for aligning e-Learning initiatives with business strategy and for customising the SolutionSet to address specific business issues," he adds.
Share
Editorial contacts