how to train your partners & customers

18
A guide of best practices and examples YOUR PARTNERS & CUSTOMERS

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Not training your community of partners and customers? You could be missing out on a big opportunity for boosted sales and increased customer loyalty. See how.

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Page 1: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

A guide of best practices and examples

YOUR PARTNERS & CUSTOMERS

Page 2: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

2How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Finding new business. Closing deals. Retaining customers. What do all of these have in common?

They all require a deep awareness of your organization’s evolving role in

the marketplace in order to be successful. It’s assumed that you’re making

sure employees know and understand the benefits and use cases of your

products and services. But have you stopped to consider if your extended

network of partners and customers fully know the value of your offerings?

If not, you could be missing out on a hefty opportunity to boost sales and

customer loyalty—through training.

Page 3: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

page 3 How to train your partners and customers

3How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Boost loyalty: When partners and customers know how to effectively sell and

use products and services, they will remain more loyal because they are able to

provide and receive top-notch customer service.

Sell more: With more knowledge about what they’re selling, partners will

provide better service and be able to sell more products.

Decrease costs: Training a large group of, say, sales associates can cost a lot

of time and money when teams are dispersed across the country. A learning

technology lets a company connect with teams across different locations while

boosting the productivity of training.

Why training customers and partners matters

Page 4: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

4How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Now that we know why training the extended network is a must-do, let’s dive into how we do it.

Here are 8 best practices:

Page 5: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

5How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Create a central location for all training resources

Benefit: One centralized portal makes it easy to deliver and maintain

consistent training, ensuring employees, partners and customers are all up-

to-date on the latest resources.

Page 6: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

6How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Provide real-time training on new products

Benefit: With a technology-based learning system,

the time lag between rolling out a new product

and educating the extended network is eliminated,

increasing partners’ and customers’ ability to

provide stellar service.

Page 7: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

7How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Address common issues that the extended network reports

Benefit: When partners are armed with the answers to FAQs,

companies can reduce the number of redundant questions

to the call center, and partners and customers can get the

answers they need faster.

Q

FAQ’S

A

Q

A

Page 8: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

8How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Collaborate across social channels

Benefit: Companies that engage partners and customers on wikis,

blogs, social network profiles and forums provide continuous learning

opportunities no matter where the extended network is online — this also

creates an opportunity for partners and customers to share knowledge and

learn from others’ experiences.

Page 9: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

9How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Incorporate company procedures and standards

Benefit: When risk and compliance training is baked into customer and

partner enablement, companies mitigate problems that could result from a

lack of communication with partners and customers.

Page 10: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

10How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Create competition with certification programs

Benefit: Everyone has a small — or big — competitive streak, so offering

various levels such as gold, silver and bronze motivates the extended

network to continue learning.

Page 11: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

11How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Monitor the success of programs through an analytics dashboard

Benefit: Companies can measure the impact of their training on sales

performance and customer satisfaction — plus they can see how partners

and customers prefer to learn.

Page 12: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

12How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Turn learning technology into a revenue stream

Benefit: By offering customers and partners training at a cost, companies can

create a new source of revenue while offsetting the technology investment

costs. For example, tech companies commonly derive 6 to 10 percent of total

revenue from training.

Page 13: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

13How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

How do we know these are best practices? Many companies have proven that extended network

training boosts their performance.

Let’s take a look at three companies that drove big results:

Page 14: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

14How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

MetroPCS, a wireless communications service, created Metro University with

80 dynamic online courses to train 5,000 dealers and sales associates about

the latest technology and rate plans.

3 big results:

Increased productivity

and profitability.

Accelerated onboarding

of new associates.

Instant ability to analyze the

number of completed courses

against the amount of sales.

1 2 3

Page 15: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

15How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Education isn’t just about teaching students, it’s about teaching educators and

superintendents too. That’s what Pearson Education, a media and education

company, did by providing educational and professional development training

to 30,000 members of its extended network.

3 big results:

Updated courses on

a rolling basis.

A fully trained

global network.

Record course completion

and certifications.

1 2 3

Page 16: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

16How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

American Bankers Association, a financial company that provides compliance and skills-based

training to bankers, has a highly engaged extended network of 130,000 bankers who complete

150,000 courses each month. After a bank’s staff completed the courses, one bank increased new

customers by 70 percent, and another bank saved $47,000 annually on professional development

and compliance training.

3 big results:

Reduction of costs.Ability to drive return

on training investment.

Custom learning

opportunities.

1 2 3

Page 17: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

17How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

No need to wait — it’s time to dive into training the extended network!

Page 18: How to Train Your Partners & Customers

18How to train your partners and customers | A guide of best practices and examples

Learn more at www.csod.com

Cornerstone OnDemand is a leader in cloud-based applications for talent management. The company’s solutions help organizations recruit, train,

manage and engage their employees, empowering their people and increasing workforce productivity. Based in Santa Monica, California, the company’s

solutions are used by over 1,700 clients worldwide, spanning more than 14.5 million users across 191 countries and 41 languages. For more information

about Cornerstone, visit csod.com. Read Cornerstone’s blog at csod.com/blog. Follow Cornerstone on Twitter at twitter.com/CornerstoneInc. Like

Cornerstone on Facebook at facebook.com/CSODcommunity.