Want to keep up with the booming learning management system market? Here’s how to gain a significant advantage.
With more than 500 learning management system (LMS) vendors present across the globe, the competition for every sale in the LMS business landscape is nothing short of cutthroat. The LMS market is expected to cross the $22 billion mark in the next three years.
Despite the fierce competition, there is a lot of money to be made if you are an LMS vendor. While a lot of your success is dependent on the abilities and features offered by your LMS, even the best, most feature-rich entity is no good if there is not a bulletproof sales strategy backing it.
If you have just launched an awesome learning management system and are stuck on how to keep up with the competition to take a chunk of that $22 billion, try the following sales hacks.
Understanding Your Buyer
Any article about effective marketing is incomplete without mentioning the importance of understanding the target audience. Only when you fully understand who your ideal buyer is, can you effectively design marketing communication that will interest them.
However, when it comes to LMS sales, you have to go one step further. Before you can start pitching to a potential client, it is important to fully understand their organization and know the individual. Understand their objectives, if they are planning to sell their course, or if they want to help their employees learn a new skill. Thanks to the internet, this information is now readily available on official websites and social media platforms such as LinkedIn.
Be a Specialist
Almost every LMS in the market claims to be user-friendly, budget-friendly and different from the rest. The successful ones, however, focus on what sets them apart: their unique selling proposition (USP).
If you want to succeed, focus on a unique problem that your LMS solves for the customer, one that no other (or only a few others) can effectively solve.
If you doubt that statement, just analyze how quickly Saleforce has grown. This cloud-based customer relationship management software has become the fourth-largest software company in the world, leapfrogging SAP, HCL Technologies and Adobe Systems.
Understanding your USP will also help you understand your target audience better, ultimately leaving you with a set of prospects that are looking for exactly what you have to offer.
Find Relevant Audiences
Understanding where to find an audience that will find your product relevant is the key to high ROI marketing. A great example of one such “place” is LMS pay-per-click networks.
Just like Google PPC, the LMS PPC networks allow you to make your LMS visible to an audience that is actively searching for an LMS solution. To make the whole affair more efficient, you can target niche-specific directories relevant to your specialization or ideal audience to ensure the maximum ROI on your PPC dollars.
Train Your Team…Again
According to a GetApp study, 92% of salespeople admitted that any kind of sales training has been beneficial for their sales and marketing abilities. And while training once is great, your sales team should be constantly educated to keep up with every new development in their field.
And with the help of an LMS’s eLearning module, the constant updating information in the world can be easily used to train your sales team in a consistent and continuous way.
Leveraging this simple practice will benefit you buy building a strong sales force for your company and increasing your possible deal-close rates.
Apart from directly taking care of your customers and clients (which is paramount), you need to enable your most crucial team—sales—because they directly contribute to your revenue growth.
Don’t Make False Promises
Many people make the mistake of thinking that the sales process ends at the sale. Thanks to this attitude, some sales representatives leave out important information about their product in the fear of losing the sale if the prospect realizes that the product being offered is not the right fit for their needs.
However, in the age of online reviews and social media, the sales journey continues long after the sale has been made. When you are selling an LMS, customer success should be at the top of your list.
Your potential customers will tell you exactly what they are looking for—if you realize your product is not the right fit, let the prospect go. Remember, not having a customer is better than having a portfolio of unhappy customers that will badmouth your brand’s name.
Conclusion
There are innumerable sales tactics and B2B lead generation tactics one can employ to improve one’s revenue numbers. Did I miss out on any of your favorite sales tactics?
Christopher Pappas is the founder of eLearning Industry’s Network, the largest online community of professionals involved in the eLearning field. Christopher holds an MBA and an MEd (Learning Design) from Bowling Green State University and has years of experience in B2B Lead Generation, focused on the online learning industry.