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Why sales training doesn't work and when is it worth the investment?

Hudson Sherr
Mar 31, 2019
2 min read

Whether you are currently implementing sales training, or it was the topic of your last meeting, there is a risk that it won't yield the results you're looking for.

Why Sales Training Doesn't Work?

About 80% of new skills are lost within 1 week of training if not used –ASTD
Up to 85% of sales training fails to deliver a positive ROI – HR Chally
87% of new skills are lost within a month of training – Xerox

Achieving significant growth isn't difficult, it's just about focusing on the right learning and retention criteria.

What is going wrong?

Improving sales performance is not just about building skills, but about changing how individuals behave in their day-to-day lives. Sales training isn’t a "1 and done" exercise; it’s only the start of the process.

The field of situational leadership shows us that there are two criteria that affect a salesperson's performance on a specific task: their motivation (will), and their ability (skill).

There isn't a magical silver bullet that will improve the effectiveness of sales training. The solution is in the follow-up process, and it needs to be treated seriously and properly managed.

After all, what would be the impact on your business if every salesperson was at least 10% more effective?

6 elements that will immediately impact your sales reps performance based off of Applied Excellence's experience with training effectiveness...

Motivation: Build Resilience! Keep your team in a mindset to keep moving forward regardless of outside, professional or personal, factors.
Participation: The perfect solution for an aging sales group! The more you encourage team participation, the better the retention.
Application: Skills mean nothing if not applied. Students need to be taught how to actually apply the information easily so it is more likely to be used and accepted.
Effective Communication: Effective communication helps employees with their personal and professional lives, making the content stick because it is being used every day, not just during the sales call.
Psychology: Sales reps need to know the psychology behind the skills to understand how to respond to every customer in any situation.
Different Stimulation: Understand that everyone learns in different ways, videos, cartoons, text, different environments, role playing, exercises, & knowledge checks.

If sales training has been a topic of discussion for your company, you may have considered it in the past, or maybe you just had a bad experience with it before, we are here to talk it over with you!