No doubt everyone has experienced a great training event. It was fun to see your co-workers outside the office, the bagels were delicious, the speaker was engaging and the content was relevant. But about a month later, all those learnings flew straight out the window. They just didn’t stick! Research shows that 87% of the information learned in trainings and workshops is forgotten in 30 days.
One of the biggest reasons this occurs is a lack of learning reinforcement following the event. But there’s more to it than that. In fact, it’s not even the primary reason most sales trainings fail. There’s three critical reasons sales trainings fail to produce lasting performance improvements:
#1: Wrong Content
Most sales trainings focus on content and curriculum that are personality and motivation driven. The problem with that – salespeople can’t learn those things. Effective training content focuses on skills that can be actually taught, practiced, mastered and ultimately measured.
https://www.actionselling.com/5-basic-skills/
#2: Content Rejected by Salespeople
You’ve sat next to these players. The sales reps too cool to be at the training workshop with the all the attitude. Their body language alone says it all. Salespeople need to be sold on the need for the training and what’s in it for them. If they don’t buy in, they’re going to see the training event as a waste of time. For salespeople to perceive equity in the training event, they must have skin the game. Taking the time to fully explain what’s in it for them, or better yet, have them help plan the event, gives a better chance they’ll buy in.
https://www.actionselling.com/sales-training/
#3: Ineffective Transfer
To effectively transfer the learnings from the training event, salespeople not only need reinforcement of the key learnings but need to connect them to their real-world experiences to understand the relevance. They also must understand that there will be follow-up activities to assess and measure their knowledge and application of the content and they also must understand that they will be held accountable to demonstrate the use of these new skills and knowledge in the field.
https://www.actionselling.com/our-approach/sales-training-reinforcement/
No doubt making the necessary changes to create more effective sales trainings is a daunting task, but it is possible. It takes more than just strong and relevant content. It takes all these factors described above. But when sales organizations approach sales training in the way as described, it can be a powerful tool. Especially with Action Selling by your side.
https://www.actionselling.com/
https://www.actionselling.com/90-percent-of-all-sales-force-training-fails/