Increase Sales Dramatically with eLearning

Use eLearning for Sales.

When most people thing of e-Learning, or any kind of training for that matter, they typically think of training their own staff or their own customers. This is because the training duties in an organization usually fall upon the HR or Training Manager. An area often overlooked for training is with your prospects. Prospects are people you should impress with your expertise and knowledge. You want to offer them a comfort level and prove that you know your field of expertise. What better way than to be their teacher for a little bit?! Elearning is ideal for this since so many prospects come to learn about you at your web site, and hence, are already online.

E-learning is the ideal vehicle for many reasons. First of all, many customers and prospects these days are faced with travel restrictions. Add to that, their requirement to be more efficient with their time, and, at the same time, make sure they keep their sales staff’s product knowledge up to date. Here’s a solution: Let’s say you sell medical equipment. Imagine the perfect prospect. They need to purchase medical equipment like yours and they set out to find someone they trust with their purchase. They will do what most of us do; search the Internet. Bingo. You are lucky and the link to your web site popped up. But what’s on your site that makes you different than the other sites they may have clicked on? What makes them want to invest in you?

People buy from people they trust and from people they believe know their subject matter. To put yourself in a competitive position, you want to be thought of as a good resource for your clients. The prospect will be delighted to find a link on your web site that says, "Click hear to learn how quality medical equipment reduces your costs and increases your profits." Think they will click? If they are serious buyers, they will. The prospect clicks the link, which takes them to a registration page, where you get to capture as much information about them as you need. After they complete the registration, it is time to impress them (and win them over!) with some of your knowledge.

Putting it Together

Courseware these days is not hard to put together from existing documentation. It’s even less difficult to upload the course to the net and track the results. Your course does not have to be "salesy." In fact, it probably should not be. It should demonstrate your expertise, inform, help and teach. It should even include a few questions with feedback so they (and you) will know how the prospective customers are doing. Why not include a page in the course with an email link for them to get more information on your product or to contact you regarding the content, right there in the middle of the course? It’s a real-time sales lead! Once they are in your course, you have the chance to prove you are an expert. You are there to help them and you know what you are talking about - which is probably more than what most of your competitors do.

How to get started with your e-Learning marketing program:
You first need to get a good system in place. When evaluating e-Learning systems consider the following:

• How easy is the software to use?
• Will the vendor offer free or reasonably priced training for you?
• Does the vendor publish their pricing so you know what to expect as you expand?
• Find out the options you have as to who will host your courses.
• Can you use this e-Learning system with other systems?
• What kind of back end system comes with the eLearning system to track your prospects?
• What about all the training content you already have?

These are just a few ideas to get you started generating additional sales from a new area. E-learning is predicted to keep growing 30% per year. If they are not already, your customers and prospects are going to start demanding they receive their training from you online. It’s time to get ready.

For more ideas on this subject go to http://www.mindiq.com/elearning/dac