It’s the natural law that many organizations considering a learning management system to deliver training are still digesting and overcoming: Tough times, tough customers.

But for companies seeking an edge in the competitive market created by the recession, online training can help tremendously with everything from cutting costs to training employees to be more professional, efficient, and effective salespersons. And LMSs and e-learning platforms like Coggno are enabling organizations to create and deliver easy and effective sales training courses.

Particularly during a time when potential and existing clients are buttoning up their wallets on the grounds of economic difficulty, sales skills are critical. Sales representatives must be fully competent and able to cancel out any economy or budget objections before they arise.

So more and more organizations are seeking ways to create and deliver better sales training more cost-effectively. Training in sales management, sales skills, and telemarketing skills programs are some of the most common training topics that are going online.

Workshops and seminars on how to prospect and sell effectively, build solid customer relationships, master cold calls and closing sales, create effective sales teams, set performance goals and expectations, and prevent sales resistance are increasingly taking place online. Using online tools, workshop leaders are able to discuss and demonstrate sales principles effectively and at a fraction of the cost of traditional training methods.

One major benefit of online sales training is the quality and quantity of interactions that can take place. Not only can online learners contribute to discussions begun by workshop leaders, role-playing and receiving coaching on telemarketing programs and skills, but online interactions are often a more powerful means of practicing skills than the in-person ones, since learners are provided with the self-paced convenience inherent to online learning. Learners can repeat lessons and activities on their own time at their own pace.

Using online sales training platforms like Coggno, companies are finding they are able to increase a company’s sales, productivity, and profits. They also serve to enhance professional and personal self-confidence of participants, and enhance professionalism in a company’s selling processes.

Courses range from more involved programs to quick workshops that are able to be completed in 30 or 40 minutes, making them easy to work into learners’ schedules.

Sales training for a company’s sales professionals and managers can be organized and performed internationally, linking a company learning management system to its various human resources departments and ERP systems, to perform multi-locational, cost-effective and efficient training.

Organization is crucial in any training initiative, and in order to avoid problems due to confusion, an LMS can be implemented to keep track of member achievements and team objectives, tasks, and learners’ training processes.

These days, as well all know, companies are often composed of a small or large network of team members to meet all the goals and functions an organization has. Service teams, for example, are an increasingly international group. They support customers or the internal organization, normally with a service or technical support role, 24/7. LMSs like Coggno are proving that if so many sales and customer services can take place across great distances, so can sales training itself.

Tough times don’t simply mean tough customers. Tough times are a change for organizations to renew and improve their training, sales, and other procedures to stay in the race and move ahead.