Home » Training Software » Salesforce Training Best Practices
New and continued training can help your Salesforce become even better at meeting the needs of your clients and getting more sales. The right training can also help your employees to become leaders in your organization, helping others to improve and helping the whole company to grow. The right training can also make your employees feel more empowered so that they are more engaged in and excited about their work.
To get training right, you’ll need the right software, and you’ll need to implement the Salesforce training best practices. Here are a few of our favorites:
Define Objectives to Guide Your Training
How can you be sure that your training is doing what it needs to do if you don’t know what you hope to accomplish? How can you expect your employees to feel excited about the training if they don’t know its purpose?
You need to define clear, measurable goals for your Salesforce training before you even develop it, let alone introduce it to your employees. If your goal is to improve the efficiency of the sales process so you can increase profits, you need to narrow down the goal to precise benchmarks. For example, you can say that you want to decrease the time it takes to process a customer order by 20 percent and you want to increase sales by 10 percent.
By having a specific goal (or set of goals), you will be able to design training that will enhance the appropriate skills needed. Otherwise, how do you know that the training is actually helping? And how can you expect your employees to feel like the training is necessary or worth their time?
Start with a clear set of goals and use them to choose the appropriate training, as well as to inform the way you present the training to your employees.
Create Effective Training Materials that Account for Different Learning Types
Your Salesforce training is only as effective as the materials used to teach your employees. If the materials are too hard to understand or are not accessible for all learning types, the training will be all but pointless.
Your training materials should include written, visual, and audio materials, and the written materials should be in print and in electronic formats. The materials should be focused on teaching specific skills to meet specific goals, and they should be detailed.
Include materials like slide shows, videos, manuals, glossaries, graphics, a list of resources, songs, and more. Be creative, and consider different ways to present the same information.
By creating materials for all types of learners, you ensure that all your employees are able to access the information and assimilate quickly. You also give employees a variety of ways to learn the information, which will reinforce the concepts and make them easier to master.
Break the Training into Modules for Better Organization and Easier Consumption
No one looks forward to full days or even weeks of intensive Salesforce training. Hours upon hours of training can become monotonous and draining, even if employees were originally excited about the material.
You can make the training easier on employees by breaking it down into modules. Whether the modules are to be completed individually or in a group training session, they should be designed so that they are short in duration and they present manageable bits of actionable information.
Each module should be designed around a specific concept and a step in the training process. Ideally, the module would be self-contained, but you can certainly have multiple modules that cover a more complex concept or skill.
By breaking your training into modules like this, you make it easier to organize the overall training so you know that you are staying on track to meet your goals. You also make it easier on employees to engage with and process the information.
Tailor the Training and the Presentation to the Audience to Keep them Engaged
As much as your employees may love their jobs and even love your company, people are essentially selfish creatures. They are always going to want to know what’s in it for them. In addition to helping employees understand why the training will benefit them, you also need to tailor training and presentation so that employees are engaged with the information.
How do you do this? The simplest way is to create examples, anecdotes, and illustrations for the training that are in line with your employees’ interests.
Do you have a lot of people in your Salesforce who are parents? Use examples in your training that relate to their experiences with their children.
Do you know that some of the people on your staff like to fish? Incorporate a fishing simulation into your training to get them more excited about it.
If you aren’t sure what your employees’ interests are, you can find out by doing some icebreaker exercises at the start of the training. Even using a few games related to those interests during the breaks can make your employees feel more engaged so that they are more into the training when it starts back up.
Offer Hands-On Training with Real-World Scenarios and Data to Engage Employees
Have you ever sat and been talked to without the chance to engage for any length of time? Chances are good that your eyes glazed over fast, and you checked out of what you were being told.
The same is true for your employees when they are subjected to Salesforce training that doesn’t get them personally involved.
You can improve your training sessions by giving your employees plenty of opportunities to participate. Your training should include group activities, individual presentations, simulations, games, practice exercises, and more. You should give employees as many opportunities as possible to put the information they are learning in their training to work.
Get employees off their feet. Get them using their hands and being physical. Even if they are typing, they are moving and they are actively engaged.
The more engaged you can make your employees, the more likely they will be to feel excited about the training and to remember what they learned.
Use the Right Tools and Software to Guide Your Training
There is a lot more you can do to make your Salesforce training a success, including dealing with logistics ahead of time so that employees are not sidetracked from their purpose and empowering employees with data to show them why the training is needed. However, one of the most important things you can do to make your training and your change process a success is to use the right software adoption tools.
WalkMe can help train employees on any software system so that you stay on track and meet your goals. You can monitor every stage of your training program, ensuring that you stay within your timeline and that you know who is accountable for each step.
