Product Training Best Practices

Some of my hardest lessons as a sales leader came when figuring out how to setup and run training (learn from my mistakes!) Me as a new leader: "Great we have 10 topics we want to cover... let's do 1 a week. 2.5 months later we will have covered SO much ground!" 🙃 Training was more of a "box checking" exercise. Someone shared feedback on what they wanted to learn, and it got added to the list Having one 30 or 60 minute training on any topic is never sufficient, and I did the team a disservice So what was missing? And what did I seek to add later? 👉 Focus Instead of 10 topics, we might go into a quarter with 1-2 priority focus areas. The deeper engagement on a narrower topic is not unlike narrowing your focus on a smaller set of ICP accounts This creates room for practice, follow up sessions, different voices delivering the material, and ultimately makes the content stickier 👉 Engagement from other departments Where applicable, involvement from other departments can add incredible value to your training program. For instance, when you are training on a new product category, it is valuable to: - Hear firsthand from Product how it's built - Align your training timeline with Product Marketing so that materials are ready to go as the training commences - Work with Marketing so that messaging aligns to how you can sell it and everyone has the same talking points from day 1 - Work with Rev Ops to identify a market opportunity to apply your learnings - Have Sales Enablement help prepare uses cases in your sales tech stack 👉 A system to encourage accountability Once the trainings are delivered, how do you know that the sales team was paying attention? That can take many forms: - Group activity like pitch practice - Measuring adoption through tools like Gong - Contest/SPIF to encourage initial matching sales activity - Knowledge tests in your LMS (my least favorite) 👉 Repetition There's a reason Sesame Street used to repeat episodes during the week - once wasn't enough to get the message home! While your sales team isn't full of 3 year olds, similar principles apply Bottom line: instead of thinking about any topic as a single "training", think about creating "training programs" for your team 🎓 Tying it all together for a training on "New Product A" Week 1: Product & Product Marketing introduce the new offering Week 2: Outside expert/marketing/leadership deliver the industry POV Week 3: Team gets together to identify prospects and practice the pitch Week 4: Team provides feedback on material and prospecting plans are built incorporating the training Weeks 5-8: Measuring adoption through Gong. Shouting out strong adoption and privately helping laggards identify gaps in understanding Week 6: Short contest to encourage cross/up-sell opportunity creation Week 12: Revisit/Feedback #SalesEnablement #SalesTraining #LeadershipLessons #CorrCompetencies

We spend months interviewing to find the “perfect” CSM… and then set them up to fail. Here’s the reality I see too often: ❗ New hires are thrown customers after 1–2 weeks. ❗ Product training is rushed or nonexistent. ❗ SOPs are thin, outdated, or missing. ❗ Leaders don’t invest the time to set expectations or coach. ❗ And then KPIs are handed down that even seasoned CSMs struggle to hit. The issue isn’t the talent, it’s the lack of enablement. But here’s the good news: you don’t need a dedicated L&D team or endless resources to onboard well. You need intention. A simple enablement plan for new CSMs (even with limited resources): 1️⃣ Onboarding Buddy - Pair new hires with an experienced CSM for shadowing, Q&A, and feedback. 2️⃣ 30-60-90 Plan - Outline clear goals and expectations for their first 3 months. (Focus on learning before doing.) 3️⃣ Product Deep Dives - Host weekly “lunch and learns” where Product, CS, or Support walks through one feature in detail. Have them shadow customer onboarding or watch recordings. 4️⃣ Playbook Starter Pack - Even if you don’t have full SOPs, document 3–5 repeatable workflows (renewals, QBR prep, escalation handling). 5️⃣ Mock Meetings – Run practice customer calls internally before they ever face a real customer. 6️⃣ Leader Time - Block weekly 1:1s focused not just on performance but on coaching, context, and confidence-building. These aren’t heavy lifts, they’re discipline and focus. If you want your CSMs to succeed (and your customers to stay), stop spending all your energy on hiring the “perfect” candidate and start spending more on enabling them once they walk through the door.

The best products aren’t built by accident – they’re designed with the user in mind. But what about the programs and processes inside a company? Shouldn’t they be just as intentional? When I designed Duolingo’s Product Bootcamp, I didn’t just create a training program – I approached it like building a product. Just like building a great product, designing a great onboarding experience requires: 🔍 Understanding the user (new PMs!) – What do they struggle with? What’s overwhelming? What would set them up for success fastest? 🛠 Rapid prototyping & iteration – We explored different formats, gathered feedback, and refined the program just like we would in product development. 🎬 Thoughtful UX – No one wants to sit through hours of dry presentations. We made it hands-on, engaging, and deeply immersive, just like Duolingo’s approach to learning. The result? Instead of a long ramp-up period, new product hires leave Product Bootcamp confident and ready to contribute – fast. And just like a great product, we keep improving it with every cohort. One of my favorite signs of success is that this approach has scaled. Duolingo’s Engineering team developed “Hootcamp,” a hands-on coding onboarding program, and the Design org is thinking through its own version, too. 💡 What if we treated internal programs – onboarding, training, even meetings – with the same level of creativity & design thinking we apply to products? How much better could our workplaces be? 👉 What’s a work process you’d redesign (or have redesigned!) using product principles? 🔗 For a detailed look at Duolingo’s Product Bootcamp, check out the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eC45xXBZ Huge shoutouts to Miriam Tillar, Cem Kansu, and the many PMs who helped bring Product Bootcamp to life – it was an honor to build this incredible program with you all 👏 #productmanagement #designthinking #systemsthinking #duolingo

Customer success managers: most of us are failing our jobs every single day (but it's solvable)… Product knowledge gaps. The in-depth product knowledge is the MOST important thing you can provide to your customers. If you work for a complex platform, you need to know it inside and out. I see countless CSMs who are focused on being: • Besties! • The "strategic advisor" • The waiter • Support But we forget to learn the product. If you cannot operate your product, why would the customer take business advice from you? Exactly. They WON'T. And don't say "oh Noah, we don't have enablement resources" You have one. It's called your brain. If you're a CSM who feels lost in their role, you can gain confidence and conviction with your customers by knowing the platform. Because if you can guide them on the platform, you can guide their business. But if you cannot navigate a system that you represent, there will be no trust. Here's your 30-day product mastery plan: Week 1: Foundation • Block 1 hour daily for product learning (non-negotiable) • Complete every onboarding flow as a new user would Week 2: Deep Dive • Master 3 advanced features your customers struggle with most • Build a demo environment with real use cases Week 3: Customer Scenarios • Shadow 5 support tickets, solve them YOURSELF first • Run a mock implementation from scratch Week 4: Practice • Teach a new hire how to use the platform • Handle a technical customer call solo (no SE needed) Stop making excuses. Start becoming the product expert your customers deserve. Your credibility (and job) depend on it.

We ran a training recently with no slides. Just the team, a customer scenario, and hands on time building AI agents in the platform. I have sat through a lot of product trainings in my career (and helped build them in the past!). The ones where someone walks you through a bunch of slides that start to blend together and then says "any questions?" are almost never the ones that change how you work. The ones where you actually jump in to do the thing, make mistakes, ask questions in real time, and have to figure out the next step - those are the ones that stick. You learn by doing, not just seeing. This applies to how we train our own teams and to how we think about customer onboarding and adoption. Documentation tells people what something does. Doing it together shows them how to think about it and empowers them to do it themselves moving forward. If you are rolling out a new capability with your customers and adoption is slower than you expected, ask yourself: have they had a chance to actually do it, or have they only been told about it? There is a difference. What is the best training you have ever run or been a part of — and what made it work? #CustomerSuccess #ProductAdoption #ValueCSwithEmily #csm

I’ve been in conversations where “product training” felt like a dirty word. Too tactical. Too basic. Not “strategic” enough. Everyone wanted to talk about upskilling, community, or brand expansion instead. Big bold ideas that lit up the feed full of 🔥 . Honestly? I tried to dress my programs up—position them as something bigger than “just product training" too. Until I saw how it moved cash faster than any broad conceptual industry play. 💰 When I shifted from building broad, conceptual customer education to laser-focused product activation, everything changed. Early-stage MRR didn’t just nudge up—it jumped. What changed? We stopped trying to teach everything. And started mapping onboarding directly to the promise of value. Instead of a 30-day learning curve, we aimed for “aha” in 30 minutes or less. Here’s what worked: ✅ Identify the one action that proves your product’s value—make it the north star of onboarding. ✅ Remove every ounce of friction between sign-up and that first success. ✅ If you can pre-fill, pre-draft, or automate it—do it. ✅ Layer in just-in-time support—nudges, checklists, even a quick call—to keep momentum high. Key Takeaway: Product training isn’t a cost center. It’s your #1 revenue lever. Map onboarding to value—and watch the numbers follow.

In the past year we went from 6 Account Executives to 14 and 10 BDR's to (very soon) 18 We have no #salesenablement or sales trainer on our team. So how did we scale our teams while setting them up for success? We use a very simple three step process for all training we roll out. 👀 See it 🎧 Hear it 🗣️ Do it Every new product feature, process, or skill is rolled out with intention. The problem with a lot of manager-led training is it's often one & done. Over the course of three weeks, we teach the information in multiple formats. ✅ Week 1 (see it) - this is your traditional classroom setting type of training. Put a training deck together and explain what you're training on, why it's important, how it impacts your team, and the benefits your team will see from it. Have all your documentation ready to go including wiki's, talk tracks, and any other resources needed. ✅ Week 2 (hear it) - use real life scenarios to show the team how it should sound in practice. This can be live role plays between the SME's and/or recorded videos & calls showcasing the talk tracks. The team needs to hear what good looks like before they can implement it on their own. Create a Hall of Fame library internally for referencing later on. ✅ Week 3 (do it) - pair the team up and have them practice what was taught the previous two weeks together. Create a scorecard with success criteria so people can objectively know whether they've mastered a skill or new concept. The tools I use to get this done? Pitch for our training decks Guru for our internal knowledge base Loom for our training videos Workshop for all our post training emails and comms Attention for real time call intelligence and scorecards And a special shout-out to Erin Depa who brought this #salestraining concept to our team 2 years ago 🎉

I’ve helped dozens of companies build their outbound motion from scratch. And the one thing that still surprises me? No playbook. No onboarding. No process. Just tools + activity targets. SDRs get handed ZoomInfo, Outreach, Apollo, LinkedIn Navigator… Then told to: → Make X dials → Send Y emails → Connect with Z prospects But when I ask: “What’s your training plan? How often do you review calls or roleplay?” The answer is almost always: “We don’t.” Here’s the playbook I’ve implemented across every company I’ve worked with: 1. People - Daily, weekly and monthly expectations - What earns a promotion—or a PIP? - What behaviors do we actually reward? 2. Prospect - Who to go after and who to avoid (this saves so much time) - Persona cheat sheets, org charts, actual customer stories - Jill Konrath buyer matrix 3. Problem - What’s broken in your prospect’s world? - Why does it matter? - What’s the cost of doing nothing? 4. Process - Cadences, scripts, tonality - What to do if someone no-shows - How top reps handle the full funnel 5. Product - Not just what it does—but why it matters - Feature-by-feature talk tracks tied to pain - Proof that it works (if you can't show this to your team, it'll be hard to show a prospect) 6. Practice - Weekly roleplays, call reviews, speed training - Scorecards with tonality, confidence, and product knowledge Bonus tips: 1. SELL the Playbook (Yes—Sell it) - Reps don’t follow what they don’t believe in - “Top 3 reps use this” → builds trust - Show why each script, cadence, and objection response exists - Back it up with call recordings, success stories, and data 2.Build a "Record Wall". Sales people are competitive. Celebrate records: - Fastest ramp time - Most meetings booked in a day - Highest quota attainment - Fastest promotion to AE If you want repeatable pipeline, you need repeatable process. And that starts with a playbook your reps actually use. Want a copy? Just ping me or comment and I'll send it your way!

You're told to create a new customer onboarding training. What are your first steps? You may go straight to the product - how it's used, the key steps to set up, etc 🛑 But you'd you missing a critical step. Onboarding is often not one-size-fits-all. The first step is always: understand your audience. For software, you rarely have only one persona to onboard. At minimum, it's often an Admin and Daily User, both needing distinct training to reach their outcomes. The segmentation may continue further, where you'll see those that have used similar tools to yours, and those quite new to the tooling/process/solution. The first group typically needs quick-start training to reach the A-Ha moment quickly. The second group needs to learn concepts, workflows, and industry practices to reach the same goal. So now we're looking at four unique learning experiences. You may say, "I can't build four, I have to launch one yesterday!" This is where both prioritization and modularity comes into play. The four experiences will have overlap, so modular content frameworks are key. And prioritization levers will help you identify which experience will lead to the biggest impact first. If you miss this crucial step, building a general onboarding path, you risk: 👉 engagement 👉 retention 👉 impact 👉 scale #customeronboarding #customereducation #producttraining

I studied 100+ failed courses and digital products. Here's how to avoid the most common mistakes that can cost you millions of dollars and months of wasted time. 1) Transformation The most successful products deliver transformation NOT information or education But don’t overpromise! Help customers with ONE achievable outcome that can be done in 4-8 weeks (or less). 2) Do the homework, get the result Most programs have no homework. Big mistake! Customers must know exactly how to apply what they learned. If students complete all homework assignments, they should be able to achieve the main promise of your product, realistically. If they can't get there by doing the homework, make the program better or promise less. 3) Short, narrow, small Most people don’t use media products because of information overload. It’s better to leave customers wanting more. Use the short, narrow, small framework: ✅ Short: 2-12 hours to consume (or less) ✅ Narrow: Only solves 1 problem or delivers 1 outcome ✅ Small: Feature lite — Only 1-3 features (4 max) 4) Turn-key system No one wants a course, book, or program — they want results. So don't give customers more work, make it feel “done for you”. Create: Tools, templates, scripts, examples, AI prompts, checklists that DO the hard part for your customers. For example, imagine you have a program about email marketing… ✅ Teach your email marketing system (how-to content) And, ✅ Share examples of proven marketing emails, email templates, and AI prompts that write email drafts. 5) High touch, high ticket It’s better to sell fewer units at a higher price and work closely with customers. Here’s why: ✅ High ticket: Customers take it seriously, more likely to use it, and more likely to get results. ✅ High touch: With less customers you can support them more closely and get them better results. ✅ With more results: You get more testimonials, reviews, and success stories, so you can sell more later! 6) Have a guarantee You’ll make more money if there’s no financial risk if customers don’t get results. Your guarantee should be 1 of 3 options: ✅ Unconditional and time based (30 day 100% money-back guarantee) ✅ Conditional and time based (Complete all homework assignments within 30 days, and if you're not satisfied, get 100% of your money back.) ✅ Until you do (If they complete the criteria, keep working with them, free, until they get the goal result) Start with option 1. Then move to 2 or 3 after your program is proven. That’s it. This applies to all types of media products: Information products, educational products, coaching, courses, subscriptions, community, events, and more. 👉 P.S. Want my full guide with 20 rules for building a 7-figure media product? Comment “product” and I’ll DM you the link.