5 Reasons Why Your Sales Training Doesn’t Stick

Why doesn’t sales training stick? Here are 5 reasons why many reps either don’t absorb new information, or simply unlearn it as fast as it’s learned.  Plus some suggested remedies.

1. Not Keeping The Salesperson in Mind

   Unfortunately, a lot of classroom teaching has little value in the field because of a lack of relevant content. A trainer with their finger on the pulse of the sales team is in a better position to recognize this, and focus on delivering more relevant content.  For example, trainers can facilitate more time between reps and mentors, push reps to shadow more experienced reps on their calls, and give them videos to watch of the top people in action.

2. Neglecting peer learning.

   The typical company devotes 90% of training time to onboarding and ramp up. But what matters most is peer-to-peer learning –shadowing, mentoring, watching demos and video role-playing. Research shows that top performing sales organizations are 76% more likely to utilize peer-generated video content for training than other firms. Salespeople want to learn from their peers, and these are excellent ways to deliver relevant information. If a salesperson isn’t getting information from a peer, then they’re not seeing what “good” actually looks like and the content won’t be as well-received.

3. The training is mandatory.

   Mandatory training is not as “sticky” as voluntary training. Rather than forcing reps to sit through mandatory courses, why not enable them to find the content they need – when they need it?
   This is the approach used at law schools. They don’t ask law students to memorize every statute. Instead, they teach a system that enables the future lawyers to access (and interpret) information when they need to. As sales trainers, we need to reject the idea that x, y and z learning content must be mandatory in favor of teaching reps how to find the content that’s useful to them.

4. Learning isn’t aligned with desired outcomes

   If your organization plans to hire 60 reps this year, and the goal is to ramp them up faster or increase quotas after six months, the training milestones should be aligned with those desired outcomes.This seems like a no-brainer, but at many companies there’s little or no alignment between what’s taught and what’s then expected from the sales force.  So we learn a bunch of things we don’t need yet, and then forget them by the time we do.

5. Not involving subject matter experts (SMEs)

   The information conveyed by SMEs is more likely to hold reps’ interest – as well as actually get absorbed and retained – than information recited from a training manual by a non-SME.

   If I’m getting trained on the company story from the CEO, the head of products or the product marketing director, not only am I thrilled to come to the classroom, I’m leaning in. I’m listening.  I’m hearing it from the horse’s mouth. I’m getting information from the person who came up with that idea, which allows me to tell better stories down the road.

It turns out sticky training is rare because the traditional approach to handling it can’t hold a candle to new systems and processes that mobile video technology enables.  To drive measurable business results with training make sure to always keep a finger on the pulse of the sales team and let them learn from each other. Break up training across a rep’s tenure and train against specific milestones and outcomes. Ease up on mandatory training in favor of giving the field on-demand access to tips, tricks and best practice videos by peers and SMEs.  

You might be surprised at how much training your reps will actually put themselves through as soon as they don’t realize it’s “training.”

For more on how Allego powers sticky training, watch our video on how Mike Ianni, Sales Development Manager at Nuveen, give sellers access to great content