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Sales Training Process for an Indian Retail Giant

Instructional Design to improve the effectiveness of a retail sales training program

This case study describes how our Instructional Design team worked with an Indian Retail Giant to improve the effectiveness of their Retail Sales training program.

The Client

One of India’s largest and fastest growing retail chains.

The Challenge

The client has over 75 outlets of its well-known departmental store across 50 cities in India and is adding many more as the business grows. The employees at these stores are trained and mentored continuously to ensure that they deliver the best possible customer experience.

The client had comprehensive industry-standard source material for sales training. However, the content was poorly structured and written. As a result, the process owners found it difficult to use the existing content “as is” for training.

They had to spend time:

  • reading through all the material and identifying what they needed.
  • creating their own versions of the training program
  • relying on experience of the trainer to incorporate deviations from the process, tips & tricks as well as examples into training programs.

This led to varying quality of training and consequently, different levels of customer service across stores.

Analyzing the Existing Training Content

The first step of the instructional design process was to analyse the current training situation. Our team of instructional designers worked onsite with the client in their offices in Mumbai to:

  1. Define:
    • Business objectives
    • Audience profile
    • Trainer profile
    • Expected outcomes
  2. Analyse the existing training material

The instructional design team found that:

  • The sales processes were fragmented and presented as tables split across multiple slides in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. This made it difficult for the participants to visualize the process as a whole.
  • The training material was quite extensive and much too detailed to be covered within the allotted training time. As a result, some trainers rushed through the training while others omitted some content.
  • There was a significant amount of redundant content.
  • The content was out-of-date and did not reflect the client’s current business practices. This affected the effectiveness of the training and the participant.
  • The language used in the documents was complex and difficult to understand. As a result, the participants could not use the handouts as an easy reference when needed.

The Instructional Design Solution

The instructional designers discussed their findings with the client’s management and worked with them to devise the following process to simplify and standardize the content.

  1. Meet with the sales process owners to understand the current processes.
    • Work with the sales process owners to define:
    • Learner profile
    • Trainer profile
    • Expected outcomes
    • Pedagogy
    • Content strategy and delivery mechanism
  2. Redesign, restructure, and rewrite training presentations and participant handouts to include:
    • Process maps to present a holistic as well as detailed view for each sales process.
    • Use cases and role plays to ensure practice and enhance retention
    • Effective assessments to ensure participants are adequately prepared to be assigned to the job.

For the next 2 months, a team of 2 instructional designers worked closely with the client’s sales teams to redesign the training content to be comprehensive, practical and effective.

The Benefits of Adopting a Comprehensive Instructional Design Process

The benefits of following a systematic instructional design process were immediate and measurable.

  • The process managers found that the visually stimulating and easy to understand process flows helped simplify and increase the effectiveness of the sales training sessions.
  • The participants were able to understand the process quickly and easily. More importantly, they were able to remember the content and use the handouts .
  • In addition, the process managers used the process flows to analyse the sales process and refine them. They found that they were able to provide more inputs during these brainstorming sessions because the process flow was visual.

The client experienced a significant measurable improvement in customer experience with the new training programs. Along with improved performance of the sales team, the client also benefitted from higher employee morale and lower attrition rates.

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