When you run a business that sells products or services as a product, you also depend a lot on the performance of your vendors. These authorized vendors, distributors, and other customer-facing entities are called channel partners. If channel partners successfully communicate with the customers and persuade them to buy your products, your business runs on profit.
Thus, to make sure that the channel partners communicate effectively, you must ensure that they know the product or the service that you provide well. They must also know your brand and your brand values well enough. This can be only achieved through training your channel partners.
One of the best ways to generate this training is by using a digital tool like iSpring Learn. Or, you can even use an LMS that comes with an in-built authoring tool to make the process easier and quicker.
How can an LMS help?
LMSs can be an amazing tool to effectively train your channel partners. Here’s how to use an LMS for the channel partner training programs.
Deliver training in different ways
LMSs can help you deliver training to your channel partners in different ways. For example, you can provide online training material and mobile responsive material to your learners and elevate their instructor-led training experience.
Automating learning
Learning management systems can help you automate your channel partner training to a certain degree. LMSs provide features such as auto-enrolments and automated certifications. Such features ensure that your learners get assigned to the training that they need without any manual assistance. This can reduce redundancy and workload for your L&D professionals.
White labeling
Most businesses understand the importance of keeping the consistency of their brand across all communication and sales channels. An LMS can be used to keep such consistency in the training material and platform too through white labeling. Learning management systems can provide customization to a great extent.
Tracking and evaluating
A learning management system can be used to track the progress of the learners. This can help you evaluate their progress. The data obtained from such tracking will help you understand if the training program is working or not. Based on such understanding, you can improve your training programs and help your channel partners better.
Advantages of training your channel partners;
Improved channel partner performance
One of the biggest concerns around the growth of channel networks is underperforming channel partners. Training improves their performance by equipping them with product knowledge. When your channel partners know the product well, they can communicate its value and benefits to the customers in better ways. This can increase sales dramatically and enable your channel partners to perform better.
Better growth of Brand
Better trained, authorized channel partners can help your brand grow better. As they are more aware of the brand and its values, they can contribute more to brand visibility.
Increased customer retention
When your channel partners are well-trained, they possess better knowledge about the product and become proactive. Upon engaging with such channel partners, customers feel satisfied and happy with the services and ultimately, your brand. Thus, customer satisfaction leads to better customer retention.
Less requirement for support costs
When your channel partners are trained, they don’t need as much support when things go wrong. They already possess the knowledge to handle small issues by themselves. As the need for support decreases, the requirement for support costs also reduces drastically.
Feedback from the partners
During the training and after it’s done, you can gather valuable feedback from your channel partners. The feedback can include what they think of the training program and the products and services you provide. Using this valuable information, you can make improvements both in your training and your products and services.
New revenue streams
You can sell certification courses to your channel partners and make money out of them. This can work as a new revenue stream for your business.
Conclusion
Training your channel partners can be very beneficial to your business and your brand in many ways. As they start understanding your products and services better, they communicate better with the customers. This leads to increased revenue and happier customers. The best way to train your channel partners is to invest in a good channel training learning management system or LMS. An LMS can elevate the training experience as well as make things more engaging and efficient.