How Will My Corporate Sales Team Ever Remember All They Learned in Sales Training

The human mind can be likened to a sponge which soaks up interesting new knowledge and stores it for later use. Unfortunately, a sponge is also full of holes which can evaporate its contents, similar to how a mind forgets new information within about 90 days. For companies which have just invested tens of thousands of dollars in corporate sales training for their staff, this is a big problem.

The solution? Re-soak the sponge!

Your sales team needs to revisit information learned, often many times, in order to retain it. And if you want them to competently apply it, then follow up is even more important.

Strategies for retention

There are a few things you can do to increase retention and improve application. First would be to repeat the corporate sales training whenever the chance presents itself. This is sometimes difficult from a cost or logistics viewpoint. Some trainers only visit an area every couple of years or so, and this is far too long to wait.

Second would be to take some of the material and go over it at every sales meeting. You could discuss a real-life sales situation and have the group discuss whether Learned Skill X, if used, would have been advantageous.

Even better would be to regularly role play using the skills learned. Objection handlers and closes are musts to practice using real-life partners. Asking for referrals is another one.

Incorporate into your processes

For true long-term impact, you should incorporate our corporate sales training into your sale processes. If the training emphasizes asking for referrals, you will get more participation if your formal sales process includes this as a step at certain stages of the customer life cycle.

Other items to incorporate include qualifying and focusing on only the top prospects (how do you determine this?), presentations skills (are you focusing on the buyer’s viewpoint rather than pitch benefits?), closing skills (will ‘puppy dog’ or ‘higher authority’ be used, and if so, have they been role played?)

Making the curriculum part of the day to day reality of your sales team will force them to use what they have learned.

Sales Coaching

One-on-one sales coaching which incorporates the material learned during the training offers an excellent ROI when used with high-potential salespeople. Asher Strategies monthly sales coaching consists of one half-day meeting on-site at your company and additional email and phone conversations throughout the month as needed.

The value of sales coaching lies in motivation first and accountability second. It is very hard for salespeople to make justifications for not applying their training when an external force is repeatedly encouraging them to do so.

Follow up and skills reinforcement is critical to apply the data learned at corporate sales training seminars.  For pricing on our webinars and customized sales coaching, please contact one of our training reinforcement specialists at (866) 833-9939.