You’ve already hired a strong sales team. Your training program doubles down on this investment, and it ultimately helps your reps close more of those challenging deals.
But for all of this to work, your sales training sessions have to be good.
A mediocre training program won’t cut it, and it certainly won’t deliver the results you need. Integrating video into your strategy is the easiest, most efficient way to ensure your sales training sticks and drives better performance across the board.
This guide shows you why video training works so well for sales teams, when to use video in your own training program, and how to make engaging training videos without a lot of extra effort.
The benefits of using video for sales training
It might seem odd to say that video is an efficient way to improve your sales training. After all, aren’t videos difficult to create? Don’t you need some sort of cinematography degree to make great video content?
The answer is no, on all fronts. Training videos are actually easy to make if you have the right tools. We’ll show you how in a minute. But first, let’s talk about why you should use training videos in the first place.
People learn better with video
Your goal for any sales training is to deliver information that:
- Gets the attention of your sales reps.
- Is easy to understand and remember.
- Can quickly be put into action.
Video is insanely good at doing all three of these things.
For most people (basically everyone but speed readers), watching a video is the fastest way to learn about anything. And that information sticks far better than a message delivered through text. Consider these stats:
- 72% of people prefer to learn about products and services through video. It’s safe to say your sales reps are no different when it comes to training.
- Meanwhile, only 37% of employees say they actually read internal messages.
- To drive the point home, research shows people retain 95% of a message when they see it in video, compared to 10% with text-based messages.
Video training enhances your dynamic sales process
If you want your reps to succeed, you need formal sales processes that are flexible enough to adapt to unique situations. That way, reps aren’t forced to toss your playbook out the window any time things don’t go to plan.
In other words, you need a dynamic sales process.
Dynamic sales processes require reps to be very familiar with the current market conditions, product developments, customer sentiment, and any available resources they can leverage to close those non-standard deals.
As we already pointed out, video makes information memorable, which helps reps more easily recall those sales enablement resources when they’re on a call or writing an email. Video also allows you to get new information out to your reps quickly (especially if you use video templates).
And when people get the information they need, they’ll close more deals.
Better training equals more sales
A well-trained sales rep is a better sales rep. Once you’ve established a solid training program, you’ll inevitably see an increase in sales performance.
- Companies with ongoing sales training programs close 11% more of their forecasted deals than companies without ongoing training.
- Organizations with good sales-marketing alignment achieve 27% faster three-year profit growth and close 38% more deals.
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Start with these five sales training videos
Video isn’t perfect for everything. There are some parts of your sales training program that need to be put in writing, and other parts that are best delivered synchronously. But these five videos will go a long way toward enhancing your existing sales training program, aligning your reps, and setting your team up for success.
1. Invites and teasers for major trainings
One of the challenges with training events is getting everyone to actually show up in the first place, especially for big events where you bring in an outside trainer or a client to give a presentation.
No one wants to explain a room full of empty seats in a situation like this.
But imposing penalties for no-shows isn’t a great option. It strains your relationship with your sales team, and you end up with a lot of participants who resent being there. Not exactly a recipe for learning.
If you want your sales reps to show up to a training motivated and ready to learn, it’s much better to create buy-in ahead of time and convince them to attend because they want to, not because they have to.
A short video teaser does a lot of this legwork for you.
Think of it like watching the trailer to a movie versus reading a blurb about it. A trailer (or in this case, a training teaser) is more dynamic and ultimately more persuasive than a written blurb.
It sets the tone, promising participants an engaging event while also showing them what they can expect to learn from the training — all in the space of about 30 seconds.
2. Training highlights videos
One of the reasons sales reps don’t put new strategies and tactics into action is because they don’t have the information top of mind.
It’s tough for reps to remember everything from training, and equally tough for them to make the connection between what’s in the training and how it applies to the real world. In a pinch, they automatically default to their old selling behavior.
Help the message stick and make your sales training more actionable with a training highlights video.
After a major training, create a short video highlighting the important takeaways. Include tips for applying those concepts to your own sales framework. Once you’ve made a few highlights videos, house them in a video library that reps can access on demand.
Instead of slogging through written materials or recorded presentations to find what they need, your team will have a repository of resources they can use to quickly recall what they learned — and put those concepts into action.
3. Short-form microlearning videos
The importance of continuous sales training can’t be understated. If you want your dynamic sales processes to work well, you have to constantly update them to keep up with changing market conditions and product updates.
Microlearning is one of the best ways to deliver this type of market-driven training. Each microlearning lesson takes just a few minutes to complete. The lessons make a big impact because they are immediately actionable.
Since each lesson takes just a few minutes, sales reps can complete several of them each week.
Your sales team can stay up to date on the current market environment, customer needs, and the best ways to adapt their sales processes to account for these demands — all without wasting their valuable time.
4. Onboarding training packs
Believe it or not, most sales departments have subpar initial sales training. But it’s not for lack of trying.
The problem is that most onboarding training is not engaging, and new sales reps skim through it or get distracted during the process. Very few of these initial lessons stick, and reps end up having to relearn most of these lessons on the job.
This approach causes longer time-to-productivity for new sales team members. Which, as you know, is costly to your sales program.
Onboarding videos are not a complete replacement for handbooks, face-to-face orientations, and other training resources. But video is incredible as a supplement to the rest of your onboarding program.
Use a series of short videos to introduce the key skills and processes that new sales reps need to know right away. These can be made in a similar format to your ongoing microtraining videos.
House your onboarding videos in your video library so new reps can easily rewatch them for a quick refresher or with a better perspective after working a few deals.
5. Zoom recording videos
Zoom calls are less focused than a prepared training video, so a Zoom recording should be used as a last resort for training. But sometimes a Zoom recording is the only option.
For example, if you do some real-time coaching with a sales rep over Zoom and you want the rest of the team to see what you did, it’s tough to share that without using the Zoom recording.
If you do use a Zoom recording as a video training tool, it’s best to edit it heavily. Trim your video to remove chit chat and anything else that’s not vital for the concept you’re covering.
Make it even more viewer-friendly by adding a short intro telling people what to expect from the video. It’s easy with animated on-screen text. We’ll explain how in the next section.) Optionally, polish your recording further by adding transitions between scenes and a clickable call-to-action at the end.
These steps turn a lengthy Zoom training or coaching session into a succinct training video that covers the topic with more focus.
How to make your training videos engaging
The big advantage video has over other training media is that it’s more engaging. But it still needs to be engaging in the right way. If your videos are essentially just PowerPoint presentations that automatically advance to the next slide, they won’t make the impact you want.
With a few simple best practices, you can make training videos that hold people’s attention and deliver actionable information that sticks.
Take advantage of animation
Using animation (even if it’s just animated text) is one of the best ways to grab a viewer’s attention and differentiate your training videos from all your other resources.
It might seem like animation is fluff, because it doesn’t always add new information. But animation makes the information more engaging and helps keep people from getting distracted. It also makes learning the information more fun. And, if you use video templates, you don’t have to do any extra work to get animation into your videos. Just supply your information and the template will handle the rest.
Use your brand colors and logo
Branding your videos with your colors and logo is a simple way to keep the look and feel of your training videos consistent.
Also, good training videos often get shared around the sales community. A branded video gives your organization some credit for producing good training, and it might even end up attracting strong talent somewhere down the road.
Avoid overcommunication — keep your videos short
Keeping your sales training videos short is key for a few reasons.
First, it helps you manage what information you put into a video. Most sales concepts are related to other concepts, and a video can easily balloon into covering your whole sales handbook as you naturally expand on each connected idea.
Limiting each video to a few minutes max keeps your videos focused and makes them easier for sales reps to use as references on the fly. Stick to only one topic in each video. If you need to cover additional information, make a second video (or a series) and add a clickable link directing people toward it.
Give actionable next steps
Lastly, make sure you tell viewers exactly what you want them to do after they watch your training video. If this sounds like a call-to-action, that’s because it is.
The entire purpose of training is to get the sales team to put the information into action. Include a call-to-action at the end of each training video that clearly states how the training should impact selling behavior.
Connect the concepts to action so reps can make immediate changes and see immediate results.
Make training videos in minutes with Biteable
Sales training videos make your information more accessible, more memorable, and more actionable. If you add video to your training programs, your hard work will get better results across the board.
Creating sales training videos is easy with Biteable — no video-making experience necessary.
Biteable takes the headache out of making training videos. Sales-focused video templates, a user-friendly interface, and a library of over 24 million stock images, video clips, and one-of-a-kind animations help you make videos in minutes, not hours.
Make your first video and share it with your sales team faster than you can say, “mandatory training tomorrow at noon”.