Mentor Group – a digital-first, sales enablement specialist – has launched Sales Academy, its SaaS sales enablement tool, to deliver enterprise-level training and skills to SMB sales teams.
The digital learning platform is designed to support SMBs in harnessing talent within their business and managing staff retention. Mentor Group’s new tool seeks to enable SMBs to plug the talent gap where 55% of salespeople lack basic sales skills, according to research into the performance of sales programmes.
Through Sales Academy, SMBs can utilise training programmes employed by FTSE100 companies to improve sales performance, optimising revenue and maximising profit. With bite-sized multimedia content produced by a global team of industry experts and backed by the Institute of Sales Professionals accreditation, salespeople can learn on the go, on-demand and on any device.
The training content covers seven distinct topics including negotiation, outcome-based selling, storytelling and key account management. Sales Academy has been designed to provide salespeople with the knowledge, resources and mentality to perform at an elite level.
“With bite-sized videos and e-learning modules delivered directly to any device, teams can learn at their own pace, wherever they are,” said James Barton, CTO of Mentor Group. “The on-demand content helps salespeople refresh and reinforce their knowledge when they need it. We’ve designed Sales Academy as the pocket coach; giving teams the right content, in the right way, at the right time.”
Sales Academy users benefit from expertise and advice through the Ask the Expert feature, which provides direct one-to-one coaching support through WhatsApp and enables salespeople to leverage the skills and insights of proven industry experts.
“In developing the product, we learnt the importance of live coaching advice and saw the opportunity to facilitate this through WhatsApp for the younger generations entering the workplace. Having our experts on hand can really make the difference between a big sale and a missed opportunity,” added Barton.
Freestyle IT, a multi-disciplinary IT solutions provider, has been using Sales Academy in beta version to support its sales team in managing large technology projects for enterprise customers globally.
“The accessibility and usability of Sales Academy makes the adoption of digital learning very straightforward, with ‘on demand’ content learning anytime and anywhere in digestible sized pieces,” said Peter Hopkins, Sales Manager at Freestyle IT. “We are implementing a quality induction process that speeds up the readiness of new sales recruits and have taken advantage of the ‘Coaching-as-a-Service’ to help us to map out a consistent sales training strategy.”
Sales Academy allows SMBs to create a culture of consistent learning and development amongst their sales professionals to accelerate revenue growth and improve sales conversions.