Learning & Development

Making Training Stick for Sales Staff

In a previous post, we discussed that although many organizations’ sales departments are often aggressive in their training efforts, the fact that salespeople are generally not held accountable for applying the skills they learn acts as a barrier to training retention.

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Here are six strategies to use to help boost training retention.

1. Create a Case Study that Highlights Skills

Use a recent example of a successful sales effort that utilized the skills being taught to demonstrate how they can be effective in the field.

2. Share Pitch Videos

Identify a couple members of the sales staff who would be particularly good at an “elevator pitch” for the company’s value proposition. Ask them to record themselves giving that pitch, and provide it to the rest of the team as a template.

3. Make the Link

Group your sales training assets together by sales stage, and send those videos or resources to staff as a just-in-time resource for those engaged in an active sales effort.

4. Create an Essentials Video Series

Survey your sales leadership to have each member provide what he or she believes are the top three to five current skills deficits. Then, create short videos that go over how to address each of them.

5. Host a Virtual Lunch-and-Learn

A virtual lunch-and-learn could be focused on the sales enablement group gaining insight from salespeople who have recently completed a particularly challenging sale and leveraging those insights to help others.

6. Pare it Down

Conduct a review of your older training material, and distill the particularly lengthy parts to focus on only the most relevant and useful content.
The sales department brings in the revenue that keeps a company operating and growing. It is a critical component of any organization and can benefit from training just as much as, if not more than, the rest of the company.
The challenge is often getting sales staff to apply this knowledge after the organization spends a great deal of time and resources teaching them. By following the strategies above, companies can possibly improve the level of retention among their own sales teams.
L&D is in a great position to support organizational agility through sales and other forms of training. Learn about five real-life examples of how L&D pros have done just that at our upcoming Workforce L&D 2019 conference.

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