Embedding Sales Training for True ROI
One of the things we get asked most often from sales enablement and training professionals is:
How do we make sure the knowledge and skills learned in sales training are embedded to drive the long term benefit?
It’s not surprising when the evidence shows that learning is quickly forgotten and therefore wasted…
Hermann Ebbinghaus’s research may be over 100 years old but it’s just as relevant and as much of a challenge today.
More recently, Gartner reinforced this by specifically researching B2B sales reps…
Gartner research finds that B2B sales reps forget 70% of the information they learn within a week of training, and 87% will forget it within a month
Given the ever evolving nature of selling, particularly in knowledge intensive, fast scale or Enterprise environments today, this is simply not an option.
The answer to not wasting money on sales training that will be forgotten is absolutely not to avoid training, that would be disastrous. In doing so you not only risk under skilled sales reps but you also risk losing valuable people because they are not being developed to their full potential. In a competitive recruitment market, employee development and retention just makes basic economic sense.
But if we should still invest in sales training, what’s the answer to avoid this forgetting trap?
Like any good story, our advice follows the familiar structure of the Before, During & After or if you translate it into ‘e4enable’ speak, Define, Develop and Measure…
Before
Start by being clear about your intentions BEFORE you embark on your training - if you have not defined the before, during and after expectations of your training program then how do you expect to hold people accountable?
Complete a gap analysis of the skills of your existing sales team before you even consider investing in training. Unless you are doing a wholesale new methodology introduction or transformation, there’s nothing more off-putting that sheep dipping your sales teams on skills they are already all over.
Benchmark and record where the sales team are against those today so you can measure the ‘after’
Tell everyone, sing it from the roof tops - make sure you cover the ‘What’s in it for me’ and ‘What’s expected of me’ angles. Having done the gap analysis first, it’ll help connect to the team’s motivations.
Define milestones that should be met or team based objectives that trigger at certain stages.
Engage the Sales Leaders - they are so pivotal in making this work and getting it to embed and stick for the long term.
During
We don’t need to go on about this - there are plenty of training best practices out there. However, a couple of thoughts:
Teach people how to give and receive feedback - so often overlooked but the best trainers we have worked with or been trained by have this at the heart of their delivery.
Get everyone to commit to what they will do next.
Have them write it down
Have them diarise it
Have them share it with their Manager
A big win is if you can get Sales Managers to attend the training too. Nothing says ‘this isn’t that important’ to a bunch of sales reps more than if their Manager is ‘too busy’ to attend. It’s also a massively missed opportunity on behalf of the Managers to observe their team in a different setting to the day to day grind.
After
Sales Leaders are pivotal in the success of any training program - make sure there is a consistent follow up action plan across the board
Have the sales leaders track the follow up commitments made by their team.
Coaching, coaching & more coaching - You defined the skills and behaviours the training was designed to impact, now double down on coaching activities around those competencies to get the value from the training. As a Senior Leadership team, set out coaching objectives for the sales leaders and teams.
Include this as a priority discussion point in your weekly roundup meetings.
Plan a follow up internal comms campaign - highlight areas of best practice, who’s doing well using the new skills, stories of gains using the new learnings. Communicate communicate communicate!!!
We like to have reps do a video replay of what they’ve learned. Way better than a ‘test’ to ensure the knowledge is embedded. Have them record their learning takeaways and have their manager feedback on areas they need to focus on in follow up coaching. One step further, have them include their plans to use and embed the new knowledge - it helps with personal accountability.
Give your sales teams a voice - Peer learning and reinforcement is a fantastic way to embed new ideas. If a new win was influenced by what was taught in training, have the sales rep write up a blog using the terminology. Gamify it with rewards for sharing.
Call / meeting observation and coaching - make sure sales leaders are held accountable for attending / listening to calls / meetings (and not getting involved) and providing feedback based on the use of the training elements.
Have individual goals and objectives that are tracked and linked back to those skills and behaviours learned.
Measure the milestones and take action if they are missed.
Measure the skills and behaviours the training was designed to impact and benchmark this against the starting point.
If you take one thing from this blog it’s to apply a structured, competency based Manager led coaching program following your training.
In doing this you’ll limit the memory leakage from the training itself and achieve a long term benefit from the training.
Put more simply…
There’s a handy download to go with this if you fancy it: Download the Whitepaper