Did you know that only 13 percent of customers think a salesperson truly understands their needs?

While a lot of companies believe they’ve got decent sales call process, in reality, customers clearly disagree. Here at Go1, we think we know why this is – most sales people talk too much.

Of course, selling techniques take a lot of persuading and convincing customers that they can benefit from a product or service, but there’s one problem that we see a lot: sales staff are simply not listening to their potential new customers.

This would definitely explain why customers think that nobody understands their needs and obviously this translates into lower sales for your business.

It’s true that sales calls aren’t necessarily easy. In fact, lots of employees are super nervous when they first start out  and don’t know what they’re doing. You really do have to develop the skills and a good technique for a quality sales conversation.

So, how can you help your employees learn how to make successful sales calls? Well, the best way is through providing sales call training.

This is definitely an investment that will see a return for your business since quality sales conversation turns into more business, which leads to bigger profits and more customers. All of this equals success!

A lot of businesses think that the era of sales calls is over. But, this couldn’t be further from the truth. While the rise of technology has meant that sales techniques have changed, there’s still a lot of success that comes with making sales calls to new and existing customers.

In fact, we found out that only 24 percent of people actually open sales emails. On the other hand, sales calls are more personal and interactive – and get better metrics overall. They allow you to really engage with a customer and it offers that human element that shows your business is real.

This is important to customers – they want to be offered more than just a quick sale. They want a positive experience and to build trust with you.

Of course, we all know that sales calls are only effective and productive for your business if they are done successfully. That’s why it’s important to provide your employees with the training they need to feel confident and know how to interact with customers over the phone.

At the end of the day, you don’t want to be too corporate. You need to keep customers engaged and interested in what you’re offering them.

You’ve got to stand out from the crowd and not be like all the other sales calls they receive. You want to build rapport by listening to them and offer them something of value based on what they talk to you about.

This is where our Go1 Premium e-learning course comes in. This is the best way to get your employees up to speed and increase your customer satisfaction and business profits through training.

The Sales Call Flow course is exclusively offered to Go1 Premium customers and its engaging material will make sure that your employees are well versed on how to handle sales calls and secure business for your company.

Your employees will learn all about the eight steps they need to ace their sales calls and the course explains how quality conversation is what the sales call flow is based on.

From learning about how to greet and open a sales call to how to end the conversation and secure the sale, your employees will know how to connect with your customers and secure profits for your business.

This e-learning course is just what you need to get started on sales call training and the content takes around 15 to 20 minutes to complete. In addition, there is a short assessment at the end that lets you test your employee’s knowledge and see how much they’ve learned from the course.

It’s important to remember that practice makes perfect. By providing your employees with training on how they can conduct their sales calls, you can make sure that the needs of your customers are being met.

It’s all about a quality conversation, which involves talking and listening.

With Go1 Premium, you can meet all of your training and compliance needs right in one place. You can gain access to thousands of courses, including the Sales Call Flow course and make sure that your employees can grow and learn with your company.

In addition, we offer an advanced reporting and tracking system, which lets you keep an eye on everyone’s progress. You can see how employees are performing on their training and make sure everyone is up to a standard you are happy with. With a 24 hour support team, help is always on hand when you need it.

Now is the time to focus on your sales call training and make sure that your business offers excellent customer services and generates new leads all year round. Don’t start tomorrow – start today!


Get the Sales Call Flow course with Go1 Premium

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How to improve your sales call flow with quality conversations

Do you promote a culture of innovation in your workplace?

A lot of people think that “true” innovation is only something that STEM folks focus on these days or what employees in technology sectors can achieve in business. But, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, every business should be encouraging innovation in their workplace and making sure that their employees are supported and can channel their passion into creativity and innovative brainstorming.

So, what’s the secret to innovation in today’s marketplace? Why does it move so many mountains in modern business? Well, innovation goes hand in hand with progress and it helps keep your business moving forward, whether this is with fresh and exciting products or new and improved services for your customers.

Creativity and innovative ideas allow you to keep up with the growing demands of customers, since there’s always a need to change and meet their needs and wants.

By encouraging innovation, your business will have an advantage over other companies in the industry and make sure you’re better than your competitors.

Plus, with better processes, your team can become more productive and when employees can share their ideas freely, you’ll see a lot more passion and commitment from them as well.

Of course, you don’t want to just encourage your employees to be creative and innovative individuals. You want your whole team to be forward thinking too. After all, two heads are always better than one!

That’s why it’s important to promote a culture of innovation and allow your team time to come together and share their ideas, visions and passion. Everyone can achieve bigger and better things when they work together!

While it’s crucial to create a workplace where innovation is encouraged, you’ve also got to actively promote team work. Everyone within a team has something different to bring to the table, including different strengths and skills.

Innovation starts with the idea, but it will be the team that works together to brainstorm that brings that idea to life. Over time, everyone works together to refine this idea and follow it through to create an innovative new process or product.

In Go1 Premium, we offer the perfect solution to help make sure innovation and the creative juices are following in your workplace.

With the help of our Promote Innovation in a Team Environment e-learning course, you can make sure that you’re fully equipped and know how to build a culture of innovation.

So, let’s check out what you’ll learn in this course:

Promote Innovation in a Team Environment Course

This module covers the ways you can create opportunities in your workplace that can maximize innovation within your team.

In addition, managers can learn how to organize and agree on effective ways of working, as well as things they can do to support and guide their colleagues.

Of course, it’s always important to reflect on a situation and find ways to improve ways of working. That’s why this course also explains how you can reflect on what you’ve achieved to make sure you identify strengths and fix any weaknesses and problems that you’ve experienced along the way.

This Go1 e-learning course is around 15 to 20 minutes long, which is enough time to learn all about innovation in a team environment, as well as keep your employees engaged with the material.

There is also a short assessment afterward so that you can test your employees and make sure the important points are reinforced and understood.

When you are in business, you can’t stand still. You’ve got to be able to come up with bright new ideas that keep your operations running, products exciting and services the best they can be.

The only way to achieve this is through encouraging innovation and effective team work. When everyone comes together and contributes their ideas, this is when great things happen.

Innovation is the vehicle to drive your business to success!

With Go1 Premium, you can have access to thousands of courses that will enable you to upskill your team and promote innovation in a variety of ways. From improving your customer service to boosting your IT training, there are lots of ways you can make sure your business keeps moving forward.

All of our off-the-shelf training courses are delivered by experts, which means you can stay up-to-date with the latest regulations and complete compliance duties.

What’s more, there are even tools you can use to build your own courses so that you can suit your personalized needs!

Go1 Premium also has a sophisticated reporting and tracking system, which means you can keep a record of how all of your employees are performing and make sure that everyone is advancing together. Plus, with our 24 hour support team, you have all of the help you need 24/7.

So, what are you waiting for? There is no better time like the present to promote creativity and innovation in your workplace.

With the help of Go1 Premium, you can create an environment that encourages teams to work together and inspire each other to achieve success for your business!


Get the Promote Innovation in a Team Environment course with Go1 Premium

How to promote innovation in a team environment

At Go1 we understand that having the most up to date and relevant content for your team is a priority, and we want to help to make staying up to date as easy as possible. By using Go1 you are getting access to the best content from top providers worldwide thanks to our Content Partners, and as our partners add more new content - everything is passed on directly to you!

Join our April Go1 Content Update webinar on April 24th at 8:30am AEST to learn more. 

Webinar: learn about our Go1 content updates for April!

If you’re working in IT, you no doubt know all about ITIL training and certification. But if you’re new to the industry, or just wondering what ITIL is all about, you’ve come to the right place.

Here, we’ll give you all the info you need to understand more about ITIL and why it’s such an important certification for IT workers.

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library and has been around since it was first formed in the UK during the 1980s.

To this day, ITIL remains the cornerstone and industry-standard best practice framework for supporting, managing and aligning IT Service Management. As you can see, the framework has been deeply entrenched in the industry for some time, and is still regarded as an essential component of today’s IT environment – on a global level.

How ITIL is used to improve business practices

ITIL acts as a governing agent for Information Technology.

It’s a set of detailed practices that provide a structured but flexible framework that supports effective IT service management, aligning IT services with the needs of the business.

These days, companies want effective IT services that support the business, while improving the quality of services delivered. When implemented, processes built in alignment with ITIL guidelines can help your organisation:

create a stable and predictable service level

provide metrics for benchmarking and continual improvement.

The ITIL Service Lifecycle begins with the identification of customer needs and drivers of IT requirements, the design and implementation of the service, right through to the monitoring and continual improvement of the services. This means that once adopted, ITIL best practices will help your organisation through continual improvements to business processes.

The benefits of ITIL certification for employees

It’s really essential that all IT professionals have an understanding about the ITIL framework and IT service management processes.

Employers – it's in your best interests to make sure that all IT staff have a good understanding of ITIL and have undergone proper training.

Employees – it’s also a smart step for your career. Getting a better grasp of how ITIL is managed and implemented will greatly increase your skillset and make you a much-needed asset among your colleagues. ITIL certification will also allow you to feel more confident in your knowledge and abilities, while really helping to set you apart from the competition when you’re interviewing for jobs.

Remember, ITIL certification is worldwide, being independent of any company, and applicable across all industries. To be awarded ITIL accreditation, you’ll need to enrol in an internationally recognised ITIL certification.

Get your ITIL Foundation training, online

To get started on your ITIL certification, you’ll need to complete the internationally recognised ITIL Foundation course.

This is the entry level accreditation, that will familiarise IT professionals with the general concepts, elements and terminology used in the ITIL Service Lifecycle.

Take a look at Go1’s ITIL Introduction to Problem Management. This online course will introduce you to the fundamentals of ITIL and IT Service Management. You’ll get all the information you need to prepare for the certification exam, while acquiring valuable insights from instructors who have actually managed IT operations.

Go1 also provides online training courses for the next levels of ITIL certification, all included in Go1 Premium!


Need Training? Get started with Go1 Premium

Are you monitoring employee performance and professional development in your team?

Keeping a close eye on the performance and progress of your team members is as much for their benefit as it is for yours. Because when we talk about monitoring performance, we're not talking about micromanaging people, or watching each individual staff member like a hawk – it’s about taking the time to help employees develop.

Many employees become unhappy in their jobs after some time, especially if they no longer find their work exciting or challenging. Professional development is the best way to help staff feel continually challenged, rewarded and energised by their work.

How Professional Development Programs Help Staff

If you’re an employer or manager, you should be taking the time to sit down with each team member, to devise a personalised action plan that will help them plan for their career.

Having a professional development program in place will help employees identify the skills they want to refresh or develop. These can be role-specific skills, for example graphic design, or skills that are focused more on personal development, such as becoming more resilient to change, responding well to feedback or dealing with challenging situations or people.

This also helps staff to identify goals, while coming up with realistic pathways, strategies and timeframes to achieve those goals.

Outside of the office or away from the job site, learning also helps to keep our minds sharp and active, providing further long-term benefits for your personal life and wellbeing.

How Professional Develop Programs Help Organisations

As well as helping staff to take charge and direction of their career, there are obvious benefits for your organisation.

When you invest time and energy into your employees, they’re far more likely to be productive and high performing. This certainly makes for a better workplace culture, which in turn has a positive impact on your company’s reputation, results, and profits.

Fast-paced advancements in technology mean learning and development tools are always changing, offering us more options and more solutions all the time. But you can rest assured that your business won’t be left behind, as your employees will have the skill sets to keep up-to-date with industry advancements.

Professional development also assists knowledge sharing, as managers reclaim more of a mentoring role, passing on skills and knowledge to their teams, and in turn, the greater organization.

Monitoring Employee Performance through Training

So you’ve invested in professional development for your staff, through increased employee training. How do you know if you’re getting a good return on this investment?

That’s where performance monitoring comes in – you need to think about how you’re going to track employee performance.

Consider how you can measure improvements in staff skill levels. Technical skills can often be measured quite easily, in tangible figures and numbers. Productivity itself is a very good indicator of the success of your company’s training methods, allowing you to see if your training program has been effective.

In this way, professional development programs should aim to improve staff competencies and increase productivity, while helping employees set goals for their career.

You also want corporate training programs to help bridge any skills gap present in your organisation, helping to improve the gap between the skills your business wants and needs, and the skills your employees currently have.

Learn More About Monitoring Employee Professional Development

Need a little more help getting started with employee professional development programs?

The Monitoring Performance and Professional Development course looks at the process of assessing and improving work quality, through the creation of employee development programs.

This online course will help employers and managers understand the importance of planning professional development. You’ll learn how to analyse each team member’s past performance, to identify strengths and challenges before setting goals and plans for personal improvement.

You might also like to check out our tips for creating effective professional development programs. This article is full of helpful advice, to help make your learning and development programs even more effective for your staff.


Kickstart your Professional Development program with Go1 Premium

Why you need to be monitoring employee professional development

After spending some time to walk you through the Go1 Content that is available to Totara Partners in our webinar last month, this month Jamie was back to take a more detailed look at the  Return on Investment for Totara Partners using Go1 Content, and how you can start generating additional Annual Recurring Revenue from being involved.

In this webinar for Totara Partners, we do a step by step walkthrough of the entire process of using Go1 Content from signing up to generating revenue, including working examples based on current average contracts so you can see exactly how the program works.

We did run 2 seperate webinars so we could cover specific details relating to each region, and we have got the recording of both of them available for you below - so please make sure you watch the recap that is most relevant to your business.

If you are based in the United States or Oceania, here is your recap:

If you are based in the United Kingdom or Europe, here is your recap:

If you have any questions about what was covered you can reach one of our team members at totara@go1.com.

If you are a Totara Partner and want to get started with Go1 content, learn more and get started here

Webinar catchup: ROI on Go1 content for Totara partners

It’s nice to have the most up-to-date tech gear, a fancy coffee machine, and a cool open-plan office. However, if your business doesn’t deliver high-quality customer service consistently, it’s almost impossible to stay ahead of the competition. 

Think of your business like a pyramid. Without a solid, dependable foundation — in this case, excellent customer service — the rest of the bricks will inevitably crumble. Only once that is reliably in place can you move on to flashier things, like the most up-to-date gadgets. 

As such, providing consistently excellent customer service is non-negotiable. And one of the most important aspects of good customer service is knowing how to build rapport with your customers. 

Rapport is that feeling when two or more people are on the same wavelength. Sometimes, it can be hard to quantify, but you always know it when you feel it. When you’re building a rapport with customers, you feel ‘in sync’ with each other and are likely to have a good understanding of where the other person is coming from.

When people have a solid rapport, communication and ideas flow easily, leading to high-quality customer service. You might even feel like you’re two steps ahead of your customers, predicting their needs before they even know them! 

With this in mind, we’ll take you through how to establish your foundation by building rapport with customers to improve your team's customer service. We’ll start by analysing the benefits of building rapport with customers, before outlining practical tips for building rapport with customers, and finally detailing online customer service training courses to help you get started. 

The benefits of building rapport with customers

The benefits of building a strong rapport with customers are manifold. Think back to a time when you had a strong rapport with someone else. It could have been a teacher, a manager, or your best friend. How did that feel? In all likelihood, you felt heard, trusted, and like your needs were being met. Customer service is no different. For starters, by developing a good rapport with your customers, they’re more likely to:

Feel confident in your abilities and product knowledge

According to professional speaker and consultant Michele Payn-Knoper, building rapport with customers is critical to show them “you're sincerely interested in a mutually beneficial relationship, critical to selling solutions.”

Or, as ZenDesk explains, “developing rapport with clients can go a long way toward building customer trust and improving satisfaction rates. But you have to show genuine interest in your buyers. Otherwise, your attempts might come off as insincere. And with 90 percent of consumers saying authenticity determines who they buy from, insincerity is a big no-no.” 

In other words, by putting in the effort to build rapport, you’re showing customers that you’re interested in finding the best solution for them and meeting their individual needs. Not only that, but you’re also showing that their needs sincerely matter to you, thereby building trust. 

And this is only the tip of the iceberg, with research showing how critical building rapport can be. For example, Salesforce finds that 80% of customers believe the experience a company provides is as important as their product or service. Unsurprisingly, this means that 90% of consumers believe that customer service is either somewhat or very important when choosing a company to purchase from. 

Additionally, 67% of customers would be willing to pay more to receive a great customer service experience, while 73% of customers will remain loyal to a company with friendly customer service reps. 

Ultimately, these statistics mean that building rapport can benefit your bottom line. In fact, 84% of businesses that prioritise improving the customer experience enjoyed increased profits. 

So, what happens when your customer service isn’t up to standard? Globally, companies lose $1.6 trillion per year due to poor customer service. That’s right, trillion. With a T. 

Further, 62% of customers say they share their bad experiences with others, while angry customers share their bad experiences with 15 people on average. Given this, you're not just losing their business by failing to build rapport, but potentially losing many other people’s business too. 

Finally, 78% of customers have backed out of a purchase due to poor customer service. The bottom line? It’s worth taking the time to build rapport with your customers. Failing to do so could cost you significantly in the long run. 

There’s an old saying that customers first buy into the person and then into the product. That is, they need to feel like they can trust you and like you if they’re going to build a good rapport with you. So, how do you make sure that you’re able to build rapport with each customer?

At its core, rapport is all about establishing a mutual feeling of friendliness and trust. One of the best ways to do this is to highlight things you have in common. Pay close attention to how each customer prefers to communicate and do business. Do they prefer a quick phone call to an email? Would they appreciate a casual, friendly approach or respond better to a more formal communication style?

Some people like to chat before getting down to business, while others respond negatively to any attempts at small talk. Good customer service or sales reps will know how to adapt to different customers to develop a unique and positive business relationship with each individual.

Most importantly, make sure you’re always practising active listening with customers. You need to focus 100% on what they’re saying to be able to meet their needs, wants, and preferences. Active listening is also a sign of respect, meaning customers will feel far more comfortable with you than with other customer service professionals.

Other tips for building rapport with customers include:

Learn their name and make sure you’re pronouncing it correctly — while this may sound basic, nothing breaks rapport quite like someone calling you Julia when your name is actually Julie. 

Be mindful of your customer’s preferred pronouns.

Don’t be afraid to go ‘off-script’ when appropriate.

Restate their problem in your own words to show that you’re listening. 

Establish trust by mirroring the customer. As ZenDesk explains, “sales teams use mirroring—the act of imitating the actions or words of others—to build affinity with prospects. Your support team can leverage this same tactic to develop rapport with consumers. By mirroring a customer’s tone, language, or volume level (within reason), agents can communicate they’re on the same page with them.” 

Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you don’t know the answer to something. 

Try to find common ground and look for relatable, shared experiences. 

Aim for a personalised outcome, not a generic solution. 

Above all, the most vital factor in building rapport is to deliver what you promise. Always. While this should go without saying, customer service people often promise you the world but fail to deliver. Therefore, delivering exactly what you say —  every time —  is the most simple and effective way to create trust and build rapport with your customers. 

If you say you’ll give someone a call, send a follow-up email, or send them a sample product, make sure you do. It’s as simple as that! Not keeping your promises or falling back on your word will quickly undo all your hard work and break your customer’s trust. 

Ready to improve the way you build rapport with customers?

Online learning is a fantastic way to improve your customer service skills, as you can learn aspects of customer service training through short, engaging eLearning courses.

For example, with the Building Rapport: Building Positive Relationships course, you'll learn all about developing rapport with your customers, as well as the four different relationship styles and how to manage them.

Or, you could check out these courses on How to Build Rapport and Building Rapport in Customer Service. 

Remember: taking an online course in customer service isn’t just beneficial for people working in a customer-facing role. Improving your customer service skills will help your professional development — no matter your job. Building rapport is a highly transferable skill whether you’re looking to impress a first date, ace a job interview, or simply build rapport with your boss and teammates.

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

One of the most important aspects of good customer service is building rapport with customers. Here we take a look at essential strategies for doing so.

Building rapport with customers through customer service

One of the most important aspects of good customer service is building rapport with customers. So, we'll take a look at essential strategies for building rapport. 

So, you’ve heard about the Six Sigma certification – but what exactly is it and what can it do for your team?

Well, to answer this question let’s start from the very beginning…

Six Sigma was first created in 1986 and since then it has become a popular and successful way to improve businesses and organizations around the world.

Six Sigma is a set of methods that you can use to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your business.

How does it do this? Well,  Six Sigma provides you with a methodology that you can follow to eliminate any errors or problems that are currently hindering your business.

These methods can be applied to anything and any situation and can be used across a variety of industries. It’s not a set of rules that you have to strictly follow - it’s a new way of thinking, identifying and optimizing the processes in your business.

Now that you know Six Sigma can improve businesses processes, how exactly does it do this? Let’s have a look and break down the methods so you can see how it works and how you can use it.

First, it starts with defining the process and what the problem is. After all, you can’t solve the problem if you don’t know what it is or what is causing it.

Once you’ve identified what your error or problem is you can move on to the measuring part of Six Sigma. This involves evaluating your current performance and what’s really happening within your business.

The third step is analyzation. This is where you break down your process and the problems you’ve got and find out what is causing the issues you’re experiencing.

Next, this is your opportunity to think of ways to improve your process and how you can implement those actions into the day-to-day runnings of your business.

Once everything is in place and you’ve figured out what’s needed, it’s all about control to maintain those new actions and sustain a successful process.

There are three levels of certification you can offer your employees – the yellow belt, green belt and black belt. They all offer different rewards for your team and it’s worth look at your options to see which level of mastery you should be shooting for and in what sort of time frame.

So what benefits will it offer your workforce? Quite a few, it would seem:

When you’ve got lots of problems that are holding back your business, this affects your productivity and wastes precious time.

But, by utilizing what you learn through Six Sigma, employees can reduce any errors or problems that are putting a strain on your organization. By identifying the problem and solving it, your team can be more productive and increase revenue.

After all, inefficient processes are costing your business money, so you’ve got to find ways to break the barriers that are hindering your employee productivity.

(Once you’ve eliminated these problems, this also lowers the risk of non-compliance).

With increased productivity comes better time management and these both equal more success for your business!

With Six Sigma, your employees are learning new skills that they can use every day.

The methodology allows your team to practice analyzation skills and problem-solving, as they dive into business processes and figure out what’s wrong and what needs to be improved.

Plus, employees not only find solutions, but they make sure that they’re carried forward to make your business successful.

In addition, Six Sigma is a great way to prepare employees for leadership roles and future promotions within your company and will let you improve your business from the ground up.

When you introduce better processes within your company, this is going to lead to customer satisfaction as the end product. With your business running more efficiently, customers will value the products or services you’re offering them and this leads to customer loyalty and them supporting your business.

What’s more, when your customers are loyal to your business, this means that they can spread  the word about your services or products to people they know. This, in turn, brings around more business for your company.

We all know how important your relationship with your customers is and by minimizing the risk of their dissatisfaction through improving processes, you can retain your customers and they won’t go to your competitors.

When everyone knows how to deal with a problem and has the methodology they need to solve them, your whole business runs smoothly. This means that team members can communicate properly and work together and this leads to higher morale and better team cohesion.

With Six Sigma, you can get everyone working and moving forward together.

All of these benefits of Six Sigma mean that you can improve and make your company more successful. And that’s something we all want, right?

When your team is trained in Six Sigma, you can make sure that any errors in process or problems you’re experiencing are solved. Following the methods of Six Sigma will get you there and allow you to run a business that can handle anything!

We’re always looking for ways to improve our business. So, now with Six Sigma, there’s a tool your team can use to actually do it.


Get Six Sigma Training included with Go1 Premium

How Six Sigma training can help your team

Using positive feedback to fix a problem.

Employee performance feedback - Who wants it?

Let’s face it: Giving your staff negative feedback sucks for you and your employee. You can bet your employees don’t like being told what they’re doing wrong.  So do you sit back and tolerate poor performance or do you bite the bullet and give negative feedback? The thing is, when your employees do something wrong it’s your job as a boss to fix it. So what if there’s a better way?

It’s a small issue, I’ll wait to see if it becomes something worth fixing,

I don’t want to seem petty and risk my staff hating me,

I don’t have the time this. I’ll save it for the performance review, and

Carol always get’s defensive and has an excuse for everything.

Start With Awareness of Where Your Excuses are Self-Limiting Beliefs:

Bad performance affects everyone on your team,

Your inaction sends the message that you condone this behaviour