If, during the sales process, a customer discusses your product with a dealer, distributor, or franchisee, that’s still an interaction with your brand from the customer’s perspective. The customer isn’t concerned with who formally employs the person on the other end. So let’s consider: what do your business partners need to know to strengthen the customer’s trust in your brand and product? This is the first step toward developing the right training program.
Why is product training for sales partners important?
I’m sure it doesn’t really matter to you either who owns a restaurant with a well-known logo. You go there because, when you see the logo, you expect a specific offering and standard of service. It’s the same with the customers served by your partners.
This means that B2B product training, in addition to imparting knowledge about the offering itself, helps maintain standards of sales, service, and communication even in areas where the company doesn’t have day-to-day control.
In its B2B Pulse 2024 study, McKinsey shows that business customers use an average of 10 channels to interact with a supplier during the purchasing journey. More than half of respondents say they might choose a different supplier if the experience across channels is inconsistent.
This clearly highlights the risk associated with distribution networks, franchises, or partner networks: if messages and actions are not aligned, the customer begins to lose trust in the entire brand.
Where should you start when implementing product training for partners?
It’s best to ask yourself: What do you want your partner to do better after the training? In short: What outcome are you looking for?
True support for your partner isn’t so much about providing product specifications (though that’s still necessary), but about doing so in conjunction with the knowledge that will help them perform well when interacting with customers.
Once you know what you expect from the training sessions, it’s time to move on to the next issues.
How can you determine who actually needs training?
The term “business partner” encompasses at least several different roles. A franchise owner needs different knowledge than a customer advisor, a technician, an implementation consultant, or someone responsible for local marketing. Therefore, group your audience based on how they influence the customer experience; don’t create a single training path for everyone.
Examples of knowledge to be conveyed to specific groups include:
- sales – sales pitches, objections, customer qualification, key factors in selecting an offer,
- customer service – FAQs, complaints, limits of liability, procedures, and escalations,
- technical partner – instructions, configuration, performance standards, certification,
- local marketing – current materials, taglines, brand book, and guidelines for creating and using materials.
How can you find out what knowledge your partners are lacking?
Of course, you might ask why a partner needs training and leave it at that. We recommend drawing on three additional sources:
- business data – product sales, complaints, conversion rates, and the quality of leads from partners;
- qualitative data – the most common questions asked of account managers, the content of support requests, feedback from onboarding sessions, and recurring errors;
- role-playing exercises – short scenarios demonstrating how a partner will behave during a conversation with a customer, or mystery shopper audits.
How do you prepare content for product training sessions?
The result of product training is a common standard for product service and presentation at headquarters and at the partner’s company. Does this mean the partner must have encyclopedic knowledge of what you do?
Materials that are too extensive can backfire. The recipient feels overwhelmed by the amount of information to absorb, doesn’t know what’s most important, where to find up-to-date information, or what to use in a sales conversation.
But what if there really is a lot of information to convey?
Shorter modules that guide participants through specific situations are effective. A set of materials for partners might include, for example:
- a short onboarding training session – who the product is for, what problem it solves, and when not to recommend it,
- a product sheet covering key features, variants, limitations, and advantages,
- a partner FAQ – answers to the questions that most frequently come up in conversations with customers,
- conversation scripts – how to discuss value, how to respond to objections, and when to escalate the issue to headquarters.
Content intended for people outside the organization must be clearer than internal materials. A partner is not familiar with all the acronyms, product history, or informal agreements between departments.
And here’s one more tip from us: keeping your product knowledge up to date is especially important. Whenever there’s a product change, prepare a brief announcement that includes:
- what has changed,
- who the change affects,
- when it takes effect,
- which materials are current,
- and what your partners should tell customers differently than before.
A well-managed, centralized product knowledge base will help streamline this process.
How to Implement B2B Product Training Step by Step?
Start with a single product, service, or process. Don’t try to train your entire network on everything right away. A good starting point could be a new product or an area where partners most frequently ask their account managers questions.
Example: If training for distributors is intended to boost sales of a new product line, focus on how to identify the right customer, select the appropriate variant, and address common objections.
You’ll design training differently for dealers than for franchisees, and the materials for technical partners will differ yet again.
The key to selecting content might look like this:
HRcode – a training platform for business partners
Training management is easier with a central repository. A training platform for partners featuring courses, quizzes, a product knowledge base, and up-to-date files is a great idea.
HRcode will help you streamline your training process. On the platform for dealers and partners, you can create and share online courses, quizzes, certificates, reports, and materials tailored to different audiences. Our learning management system (LMS) allows you to track participants’ progress, assess performance, and manage e-learning within your company.
You can organize product training for sales partners into the following process:
- You’ll create separate tracks for dealers, distributors, franchisees, or technical partners,
- provide access to an up-to-date product knowledge base,
- assess knowledge through tests and quizzes,
- confirm training completion with a certificate,
- monitor progress and results in reports,
- and quickly identify which partner groups need additional support.
And all of this from within HRcode. Let’s talk about how we can support your organization.
FAQ
Employees are usually familiar with the company’s context, processes, abbreviations, and informal agreements. In training sessions for partners, greater emphasis must be placed on:
- boundaries of responsibility,
- current product announcements,
- rules for using materials,
- the escalation path to headquarters,
- differences between product variants,
- and the location where the up-to-date product knowledge base is always available.
Product training for employees often develops competencies within the organization, whereas product training for business partners has an additional purpose: to protect brand consistency outside the organization.
HRcode can support the entire training system: from course creation, through tests and certifications, to reports and a knowledge base. You can use our platform for, among other things:
- onboarding new partners,
- training on new products,
- periodic knowledge assessments,
- certifying dealers or technical partners,
- sharing up-to-date product materials,
- monitoring progress across different partner groups.
The most common mistake is providing a one-size-fits-all training program without tailoring it to the type of partnership and the level of the role. The second mistake is creating materials that are too extensive, and another is failing to update them.
Monitor several metrics:
- completion of the training path,
- knowledge test scores,
- number of inquiries to partner account managers,
- quality of leads provided by partners,
- number of complaints resulting from incorrect information,
- product sales following training,
- use of up-to-date materials.
Bibliography:
McKinsey & Company, „Five fundamental truths: How B2B winners keep growing”, 2024, https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/five-fundamental-truths-how-b2b-winners-keep-growing.
Anna Różak
She writes about topics that are close to her heart for various reasons – from HR issues, through inspiring travel stories, to content supporting foundations and non-profit organizations. She gives her texts a friendly tone so that they remain in your memory for as long as possible.
She supports HRtech companies in marketing. She makes them sound professional, but at the same time understandable and friendly.
You can meet her at conferences and virtually on LinkedIn, where she shares data from reports, content about professional development, travel inspiration, and examples of the support that a kind word or a well-written text can provide.
