As the global economic climate becomes increasingly precarious, many brands are seeking to cut operating costs in order to weather the coming storm. Keep reading to find out how adopting a digital retail sales enablement platform can reduce the cost of your sales training, boost your sell-through, and give your business the best long-term chance of success.
Why now?
Influenced in part by events in Ukraine, supply chain disruptions, and post-Covid monetary policy, the world is experiencing a slowdown in growth and a rise in inflation. Food, fuel, and commodity prices have all risen dramatically and supply chains continue facing disruption. These pressures will likely lead to a reduction in customer spending, putting the squeeze on businesses.
Although many businesses will find it tempting to retreat in the face of economic disruption, those who pair cost-cutting with modernization will reap considerable rewards. For brands searching for ways to reduce their expenditure, digitizing your retail training presents an excellent opportunity to cut costs without compromising on customer experience. Indeed, using digital retail sales enablement platforms to support your sales trainers can lead to better quality training, improved sales, and a noticeably improved ROI.
Good training costs money
The most obvious cost of sales training is the salary of your sales trainers. This expense isn’t only restricted to your core team of trainers, but also additional trainers you might need to hire in advance of demanding product rollouts or to boost underperforming sales teams. This draws brands into a trade-off between the need to rapidly train sales reps and the costs of hiring enough trainers to do so.
Added to this are additional expenses such as car hire and other transport costs, fuel, food, and hotels. These costs quickly mount up if your sales network is national or global, even without taking high inflation into account. For brands in a growth phase, saving on these expenses could be crucial.
With retail staff turnover rates as high as 60%, and staff likely to forget 90% of what they have learned in a training session within a week, in-person training sessions with the same team, often need to take place several times. Sales enablement platforms provide retail sales associates with on-demand access to training materials, allowing retailers to rapidly onboard new staff and enable sellers to continually refresh their knowledge. This lowers the need for brand trainers to continuously conduct visits and reduces all associated costs, while also making retail staff more effective at their job.
Bad training costs more
Continuous access to brand and training materials helps engage retail sales associates. High-performing and passionate sales associates who feel that inadequate access to training is hampering their progress are more likely to look for another role. Since these are the people who are most likely to provide top-notch customer experiences and drive sell-through, brands can’t afford to lose them.
Retail sales enablement platforms allow brands to target sales associates with customized content, meaning that not only do your top retail sellers remain engaged, but they also continue getting better at selling your products. Even if the training only helps them sell 1 more product per month, multiply that across your network and the difference will be staggering over time.
When Gallup conducted a survey using data from over 100,000 sales teams gathered over decades, they found that engaged employees drive 18% more sales, clearly demonstrating the opportunity cost of failing to keep sellers engaged, and the value-added to your business by software that enables you to do this at scale.
The hidden costs of training
Two further hidden costs that sales enablement platforms can help eradicate are wasted time and wasted marketing materials. Retail sales associates spend a significant amount of time searching for and organizing training materials, especially when getting up to speed with new products or starting at a new retailer. Even if brands are providing digital training content, sales associates waste time searching across different platforms and formats. Docurated’s recent report showed that sales associates spend an average of 26 hours per month searching for and organizing content, equating to 312 hours per year - around 39 working days. That’s 39 lost sales days per seller per year. Digital retail sales enablement platforms offer one easy-to-use, mobile-friendly and on-demand source for all the brand training a retailer needs.
On top of this, research from IDG found that 58% of marketing content available to sellers is irrelevant to buying customers, which reduces the chance of closing a sale by 45%. By giving brands feedback on which content is being used to close sales, retail sales enablement platforms can provide marketing teams with the information they need to produce more effective materials and enhance the quality of brand training, leading to a better customer experience and increased sell-through.
The outcome is a more effective use of marketing budgets, a reduction in the time that sales trainers are forced to waste trawling through ineffective material, and an uptick in seller efficiency and sales figures.
In conclusion
The cost savings that come with utilizing digital retail sales enablement platforms can give brands peace of mind. Not only do they lower the upfront costs of deploying sales trainers, but they also enable brands to reduce less obvious hidden costs.
In doing so, sales enablement platforms massively enhance the training your sales trainers provide. They help engaged sales associates provide persuasive customer experiences, ensure that they remember what they’ve learned for longer, and build on existing knowledge. Perhaps the biggest cost saved by sales enablement platforms is the opportunity cost of not using one.
As a leading digital retail sales enablement platform, Myagi can help you lower the costs of your sales training and boost your revenue by giving sales associates access to engaging, on-demand training whenever and wherever they need it. Get in touch to discuss how Myagi can help your business supercharge its sell-through.