What is product training?
Product training teaches people what a product does, how it works and how to use, sell or support it. It is given to internal teams such as sales, support and customer success, and to customers who use the product, and it needs updating whenever the product changes.
Example
A home appliance manufacturer is releasing a new line of smart ovens. Three groups need product training before launch. Retail sales staff learn which features to demonstrate in store and how the new model differs from the one it replaces. The support team learns setup, Wi-Fi pairing, error codes and the fixes for the problems most likely to come up. Customers get short how-to videos, linked from a QR code in the printed manual, that show the first setup and each cooking mode.
The product team records each walkthrough once, and the training team adapts it for each audience: more on benefits and comparisons for sales, more on troubleshooting for support, and only everyday tasks for customers. When a firmware update changes the setup screen, the team re-records that one step and swaps it into all three versions.
How it works
Product training starts from what each audience needs to do with the product, then teaches the features that support those tasks.
Internal product training
- Sales teams learn what the product does, who it is for, the problems it solves, how it compares with competitors and how to demo it. This is a core part of sales enablement.
- Support and customer success teams learn configuration, troubleshooting and known issues in more depth than sales.
- New hires in any role get a product overview during onboarding, so they understand what the company sells.
Customer product training
Customers learn how to set up and use the product for their own goals. This is usually part of customer training, and it focuses on the tasks customers want to complete rather than on the full feature list.
Common formats
- Live demos and hands-on sessions in a demo or sandbox environment
- Screen recordings and narrated walkthroughs of the product
- Short videos on a single feature or task
- Product sheets, FAQs and comparison guides
- Release briefings when new features ship, often a short video for each change
Keeping it current
Product training goes out of date with every release. Teams that keep up tie training updates to the release schedule: product managers flag what changed, the training team updates only the affected modules, and sales and support get a briefing before customers see the change.
Product training vs software training
The two overlap but start from different places. Product training is about a company’s own product. It teaches employees to sell and support that product and teaches customers to use it. Software training teaches employees to use the tools their company runs on, such as a CRM, an ERP system or an HR platform.
A software company that trains its customers on its own app is running product training. When the same company trains its sales team on a new CRM, that is software training.
Best practices
- Separate what each audience needs. Sales needs benefits and comparisons, support needs depth, and customers need tasks.
- Show the real product. Real screens and real devices are easier to follow than descriptions.
- Keep modules short and focused on one feature or task, so one module can be replaced when that feature changes.
- Check understanding with a practical task, such as asking a rep to run a demo, as well as a quiz.
- Record subject matter experts once and reuse the recording, instead of asking them to repeat the same live session.
Why it matters for L&D teams
- It feeds several programs. Product knowledge is part of onboarding, sales enablement, support training and customer education, so one set of product content can serve all of them.
- It changes more often than most training. Each release can make modules outdated, so fast editing matters more here than for stable topics such as company policies.
- Errors reach customers. A rep who misstates a feature or a support agent who gives the wrong fix causes problems that customers notice directly.
- Experts are busy. Product managers and engineers hold the knowledge but have little time to teach. Capturing their demos once saves repeated live sessions.
How Colossyan helps
Product walkthroughs often start as a screen recording. Colossyan's screen recorder runs in the browser with no plugins, so a product manager or trainer can capture a workflow, trim it, zoom in on the right part of the interface and add narration from 700+ AI voices or an AI avatar. When the product changes, you replace the recording instead of rebuilding the whole video, then share it by link or export it as MP4 or SCORM.
See screen recording in Colossyan
