How to effectively train your B2C sales team to improve product knowledge
Have you ever been in a store to seek help or guidance about a product and been left feeling like you would’ve gotten more help from your internet browser?
With the high street struggling to compete with online retailers, the need to provide exceptional customer service has never been more important. Your sales team needs to be equipped with more than just a script from your online store. They need to provide extensive information and guidance to your customers which allows them to promptly answer challenging questions and overcome any objections which are thrown their way.
Here is an example; a customer comes into your furniture store looking to buy a sofa that is stain resistant and hardwearing. They have children and cats so they need something that will stand the test of time. Your sales associate knows the dimensions, materials and insurance which you provide for your sofas but that’s about as far as their knowledge goes. This means they are ill-equipped to recommend the best sofas for the customer’s needs and they certainly wouldn’t be able to persuade them on how hardwearing a particular product was. All in all, this makes the sale incredibly difficult and the customer will probably take their cash elsewhere.
Product knowledge is power when it comes to great in-store service and your customers agree too!
AE conducted a study which found that 62% of customers believe the key to great customer service is knowledge and insight. Whilst Microsoft reported that 1 in 3 people say the most important aspect of customer service is speaking with a knowledgeable and friendly sales rep.
So how do you effectively train your B2C sales team on the products they’re selling?
You have tonnes of products to sell and ensuring your sales team knows each of those products inside out is challenging to say the least. We get it! Fortunately for you, it’s not impossible to effectively train your team, you just need to know which aspects of the product to focus on and how to provide training that will actually help your sales team retain important information.
Which areas of product knowledge should they focus on?
When selling high investment items such as cars, sofas, technology or houses, the amount of information your sales team needs to learn could be endless. Obviously, they need to know the basics of an item e.g. what it does, how it works etc. But rather than mindlessly sending out reams of facts and figures, think carefully about what your customers will want to know. You can do this by;
Looking through your online support tickets. If your customers are frequently asking the same questions online, they’ll probably be asking the same questions in store.
Look through your customer testimonials. You should be able to pick up common themes or patterns of what your customers were looking for.
When your customers purchase an item, get your sales rep to fill in a quick questionnaire which includes things such as ‘What were you looking for?’ ‘What persuaded you to buy the item?’ You can then use this information to find out what areas of knowledge your sales team should focus on.
Get your sales team to make a note of the questions they are asked by customers. You can then build up a database of FAQ’s which you can use to guide your future training.
From analysing the information which you’ve collected using the methods listed above, you may start to see common queries e.g. What warranty will I get? Which product is most hardwearing? What products are best for work use? How hard is it to put the product together? Etc. Now you can start your product knowledge training.
Training methods to ramp up product knowledge
Customer roleplaying
To really test out the knowledge gaps that your sales team have, you need to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Quite literally.
Get your sales team to play the role of the customer and the salesperson. Start the roleplay from the moment the customer enters the store and ensure the customer is asking the questions which you know are most commonly referred to. Make a note of the areas your sales reps struggled and use this information to guide your training efforts.
It’s also a good idea to film the roleplay as your sales team can see for themselves where they are struggling or succeeding with their product knowledge.
Use a digital knowledgebase to boost product knowledge
A digital knowledgebase is a place where you can house important documents or sales playbooks in an online space. These can then be accessed via a mobile, tablet or desktop device making them easily visible wherever your sales staff are.
Having product knowledge articles available wherever your staff need them means they are more likely to refer back to them. Repeatedly reading the information makes them more likely to retain the information and ramp up their product knowledge.
Best of all, with a digital knowledgebase you can view user activity such as who’s reading what, which articles are most used and which are most neglected. This allows you to gather the information you need to make your training content more useful.
Use microlearning
With the amount of information your sales reps have to learn and the little time they have, it’s essential that you introduce time-effective learning techniques. Microlearning allows your sales team to learn in 1-5 minute chunks making it easy to fit training into their busy routines. Choose a microlearning platform, upload your product knowledge articles and create your microlearning modules. It really is that easy.
Gamify your training to improve product knowledge
Let’s face it, product knowledge training can be a little dull. Spice up your learning by gamifying the information. It’s not only more engaging but it can actually provide you with better results. In fact, 83% of employees who undergo gamified training are more motivated at work (TalentLMS, 2019) and 67% of people found gamified learning more motivating and engaging than traditional courses (Intuition, 2019).
You can do this by turning your product knowledge quizzes into arcade style games which your staff can play on their phones. Most gamified learning apps also include live leaderboards and spot prizes to ramp up engagement and encourage healthy competition.
Create and use sales training plan templates
Product knowledge training shouldn’t be something that happens when you feel like it, as with most things in life, training has to be done consistently for you to see the results.
A product knowledge training plan makes it easy for you and your employees to see what they need to get done, where they need to improve and their progress.
Without a training plan, it will be very difficult to ensure your employees are always progressing, developing and are on task with what they need to get done to improve. Download our free training plan template below:
Carry out covert observations
When your sales team know that a mystery shopper is coming to the store they improve their performance. Why not use this same momentum all year round by introducing covert observations. Let your team know that once per month you will be carrying out an observation on one member of the sales team to assess their product knowledge.
This will keep them on their toes ensuring they stay up to date with their product knowledge training.
Use a mobile reporting tool such as Engage so your managers can easily carry out a quick report from their mobile or tablet device right on the shop floor.
Have in-store leaderboards
To make your covert observations (as mentioned above) even more effective incorporate staff leaderboards. Simply take the scores from your observations and place everyone on the board in order of their result. The top performer can be titled product knowledge king and the bottom performer could be titled product knowledge novice.
This will encourage your sales staff to perform better so they can beat their co-workers. To ramp up the competition even more, why not introduce a prize for the top performer.
Create product knowledge videos
Nothing kills engagement more than reading through pages and pages of text. Why don’t you create a video which includes one of your team talking through the products as they walk through the store. Not only will this be more engaging but it will also help your employees retain more of the information. This is because they’ll associate visuals in the video with the information about the products.
Introduce shadowing
Shadowing is where you get one employee to shadow another employee for the day so they can see how they work and what they do differently.
Ask your bottom performers to shadow your top performers so they can see how they talk to customers and what they say to sell the products. This will give your bottom performers a fresh insight into what they can do differently and how their behaviour differs. It’s a great way to inspire and motivate them rather than telling them they are wrong and they need to do better.
Send out infographics
Incorporating visuals into your training materials is crucial if you want employees to retain the information. In fact, people remember 65% of the information they see in visuals and only 10% of the information they hear out loud. The human brain actually prefers visuals as 50% of it is used for processing visual information.
If you don’t have an employee training app, send out a leaflet with infographics on which detail the main features, benefits, drawbacks and common objections. This will help your employees remember the information and it also means they’ve got one handy to refer back to whenever they need it.
Be consistent with your product knowledge training to reap the rewards
Turning your B2C sales staff into product knowledge experts takes time and patience. You can’t do the training on a one-off occasion when you feel like it. It has to be incorporated into their daily routines to ensure they make a habit out of learning the information they need to know. If you follow the tips above and remain consistent we guarantee your customer service will improve and your sales figures will rise.
Need a sales training app?
Engage is a mobile-first sales knowledge platform which makes it easy to increase sales through more effective training. Take a look at it here and if you have any questions get in touch with one of our platform experts below:
