For businesses looking to strengthen partnerships, streamline vendor relationships, and build loyal customers, external training is a powerful tool. An external training management system for partners, customers, and resellers generates better informed and more engaged learners across your enterprise's full network. This naturally leads to better sales and retention. No wonder the eLearning market is booming; with the industry predicted to surpass $545 billion by 2030.
Types of external training programs
External training programs focus on meeting the needs of partners, customers, vendors, and suppliers. It helps them collaborate with your company, sell your products or services, or use the ones they’ve purchased. Each type of program addresses that group’s unique needs and goals. And as a result, the programs build strong relationships, streamline operations, and enhance product or service usage.
External training programs for partners
Partner training programs teach resellers, distributors, and affiliate networks how to promote, sell, and support your organization’s products or services. These programs cover product knowledge, sales techniques, branding guidelines, customer service, and compliance.
External training programs for customers
Customer training programs show customers how to use your programs or services more effectively. Their goal is to enhance user experience, reduce the number of support requests, increase product satisfaction, and boost customer loyalty.
External training programs for suppliers and vendors
Vendor and supplier programs help businesses align with your organization’s standards, quality expectations, and compliance requirements. While not all businesses need this, those in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and food production will. These programs focus on compliance information, quality control standards, safety protocols, and company-specific requirements.
Benefits of external training
External training programs deliver strategic advantages like stronger partner engagement, enhanced customer retention, increased sales, and improved compliance. Here’s how your company can benefit from offering external training.
Stronger partner engagement
When partners understand your organization and its products and services, the better they perform as representatives, resellers, or suppliers. Aligning your partners with your company’s goals also leads to a more cohesive brand message and improved performance. Engaged partners are better advocates for your company and are more likely to put in extra effort.
For example, a luxury hotel chain develops a training program for travel agency partners worldwide, including an online course and a support hotline to resolve booking issues. Travel agents gain a deeper understanding of the hotel chain’s offerings and confidently recommend the properties to their clients.
Enhanced customer retention
When customers receive thorough training on your product or service, they’re more likely to understand its full value, use it effectively, and remain loyal. A robust training program reduces frustration, increases satisfaction, and helps customers feel invested in your brand.
For example, a software company runs onboarding webinars to help customers understand its project management tool. Because customers access these webinars, they see the tool’s value faster and experience a smoother implementation, reducing customer support requests.
Increased sales through better vendor knowledge
The more comfortable vendors feel about a product or services, the more confident they’ll feel selling it. When they understand the features, benefits, and target audience, they build trust with customers and close more deals.
For example, a consumer electronics company trains retailers and distributors on technical details, unique selling points, and troubleshooting tips for a new product line. Vendors can then better demonstrate the products, answer questions, and drive sales.
Improved compliance
If you’re in an industry where safety, data security, or regulatory standards are paramount, compliance training ensures everyone follows best practices and legal requirements. This decreases legal risk, protects your reputation, and prevents costly legal issues.
For example, a pharmaceutical company offers compliance training for its suppliers to ensure they understand quality standards and safety protocols. Suppliers learn proper handling and storage of the products, reducing regulatory violations, ensuring product quality, and protecting the company’s reputation.
Best practices for designing external training programs
Analyze training needs
Start by identifying and addressing the unique needs of your external partners. While they should understand your organization's vision and mission, their focus will differ from employee learners. Instead, focus on skills and information that relate to their role with your company—you're likely to need different modules for suppliers than for consultants or resellers. For instance, providing resellers with sales and customer support training prepares them to more effectively promote your products.
Choose the right delivery methods
Step back from in-person classroom training for external partners and turn to the learning management system (LMS) to deliver eLearning. Short eLearning courses focused on answering specific questions, also called microlearning, are ideal for external partners. It allows partners to access the knowledge they need quickly and apply it effectively. A global LMS that supports multiple languages also empowers your partners to do their jobs well.
Assess training needs and focus training on essential information that they don't already know. Emphasize new products and features, key branding messages, your approach to customer service, and other relevant topics. Avoid providing basic overviews or beginner-level skills courses.
Respect their expertise
When training external partners, consider how their needs differ from internal learners. Characteristics unique to external learners include multiple responsibilities and busy schedules. Don't assume that busy sales partners will remember every nuance of your products. Instead, offer essential details through an on-demand mobile app, empowering them to highlight the advanced features that set your products apart. This also provides refresher content they can quickly access to tailor their messaging for specific audiences before pitches.
Incorporate gamification and incentives
Reward top performers with incentives like digital badges, training credits, volume discounts, awards, giveaways or branded swag. Then, recognize their loyalty and dedication by inviting them to join a "lead team" of resellers, partners, or customers with additional perks. Going one step further, enlist this group as subject matter experts to help with training modules, LMS-based forums, discussion groups, and video FAQs.
Offering engaging training helps, too. Try building learning games and using realistic scenarios to hold their attention while allowing them to test and reinforce their knowledge.
Making external learning easy
External learning groups, like partners or resellers, often represent multiple products or services. As a result, their training time is limited.
Deliver content that's easy to find (simplified user interface navigation), convenient to access (desktop- and mobile-friendly), and simple to digest (think microlearning, printable reference guides and video tutorials). yThese actions will help you glean the most value from your LMS.
Tools and platforms for external training
The right LMS makes it easy for external partners to access and use training. Meet their needs on their first visit so it shows them how critical this resource is to their success and encourages them to return. Over time, this improves their knowledge retention, command of messaging, and, ultimately, sales performance.
Reduce friction and deepen engagement by providing an excellent learner experience. Offer multilingual and multimodal content, ensure easy access through an LMS or mobile device, and include robust, intuitive search.
Top LMS solutions for external training
With many LMS options for external training, such as Absorb LMS, there’s a lot to consider when choosing the best solutions for your company. Among the factors to keep in mind:
- Your training goals
- Audience needs
- Essential features
- Integrations with your systems
- User experience and accessibility
- Scalability and flexibility
- Analytics and reporting
- Review support and security
Integrations with CRM and HR systems
Integrate external training programs with customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR) systems, enhancing effectiveness, tracking, and personalization of the training.
- CRM integration: Integrating with a CRM system, such as HubSpot or Salesforce, allows your organization to track training alongside customer engagement data. This enables you to link training to sales growth, customer satisfaction, and support inquiries.
- HR integration: Integrating with HR systems such as Workday helps manage vendor, supplier, or contractor training and certifications. You can track training completion, certifications, and compliance requirements.
Measuring the success of external training
Key metrics to track
- Completion rates: Percentage of participants who complete the program
- Engagement rates: Level of participant interaction with training material (such as views, clicks, and time spent on sections)
- Knowledge retention: How well participants remember and apply what they’ve learned (typically done through quiz, test, or survey assessments)
- Performance metrics: Impact of training on participant performance (such as increased sales, higher customer satisfaction linked to a specific participant)
- Customer or partner satisfaction: Satisfaction the participants indicate with the training itself (gathered through surveys, feedback forms, or Net Promoter Score)
- Certification rate: Number of participants who earn a certification or pass a compliance assessment.
Feedback mechanisms and continuous improvement
Use your LMS as another channel for improving external training and engagement. Offer quizzes, surveys, and assessments, along with online collaboration tools, to encourage two-way communication on training. Not only does it provide a reliable pulse check, but it can also build loyalty because people value being heard.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What content should we include in our external training program?
Include content that addresses the audience’s needs. Customers will want product knowledge and usage information. Vendors will need compliance and quality standards, and partners will need to know sales techniques and product knowledge. Align this content with your business goals.
How do we measure the success of our external training program?
Use key metrics such as completion rates, engagement levels, customer satisfaction scores, and return on investment as guides on the success of your training program. Additionally, regular feedback from participants will help you to assess and improve the program.
What’s best for external training—online, in-person, or hybrid?
Based your delivery format on the audience’s needs and location. Distributed teams or those needing something scalable will need online training. In-person training is best for hands-on learning. A hybrid option or blended learning allows you to cater to different learning styles.
How do we encourage partners, vendors, and customers to complete the training?
Use engaging content, interactive elements, and incentives (such as discounts or exclusive access) to motivate participants. You can also highlight the benefits of the training to increase participation. For example, showing partners how using the training can increase their sales numbers. Microlearning—short, focused segments of up to 10 minutes—allows busy participants to engage with shorter sessions, making it easier for them to fit it into their busy schedules.
