According to the Association for Talent Development, $20 billion is spent on sales training in the US alone. With such a large investment, one might expect sales effectiveness to be on the rise, yet it isn’t.

In many cases, the sales training that is offered inside organizations doesn’t match up with the needs of a changing sales environment, or the needs of today’s salespeople. Even organizations that adopt new methodologies and strategies based in current reality often struggle to get their salespeople to retain and master the skills they need.

We’ve been working with sales organizations to improve sales effectiveness since our inception, and in that time we’ve looked hard at what works, and what doesn’t, for getting sales teams to adopt new approaches and apply their training in meaningful ways. Here are the four things every sales organization can do to get the most out of their sales training investment.

1. Avoid content overload

The traditional sales training model focuses on a single big training “event,” from which salespeople are expected to glean new skills and abilities, and apply them in their day-to-day jobs. Even organizations that offer ongoing “refreshers” tend to dump content on their salespeople and hope they learn from it, without offering substantial support for that learning.

We know from neuroscience that our brains are not built to retain large chunks of information all at once. We know from sales studies that most training, when it goes without reinforcement, is lost within 90 days of a training event.

To avoid this trap, organizations must take a longer-term view of their training; one that incorporates ongoing training and reinforcement, and provides content in bite-sized chunks that are available for use when and where the salespeople need them. We also need to arm coaches and managers with training assets and visibility into the salespeople’s progress, so that they can reinforce training when it is most useful to the salespeople.

2. Better training and development for sales managers

As Dave Brock pointed out in a recent discussion, the vast majority of sales training investment goes to salespeople, with only small amounts dedicated to sales management and coaching. Front line sales managers are responsible for overseeing the success of their entire teams, choosing the right tools and systems, providing guidance, and holding teams accountable. Yet these individuals are most often simply high-performing salespeople who have been promoted without significant support or development in the new skills required of them in a management position. As a result, they are poorly positioned to promote the ongoing reinforcement of sales training.

We recommend that organizations dedicate part of their training investment to developing sales managers and giving them the skills necessary to support high performance on their teams. Additionally, tools and software need to go beyond reporting, and focus also on giving managers visibility into what their salespeople are doing and what they need most from their managers – in real-time and actual job activities.

3. Align the curriculum map with the sales process map

Traditional training programs focus on skillsets mapped to a curriculum, often in a “level one,” “level two,” “level three” format. While this may be a useful method of grading how far a salesperson has progressed in their mastery of specific skillsets, it is a poor method for driving actual mastery of those skillsets and aligning it to their day-to-day jobs.

Learning occurs best when it is matched with the circumstances to which it applies. In other words, we learn fastest and best when we are able to apply the skill immediately, and/or have it reinforced at the point that we are ready to use it. 

For sales organizations that want to drive high performance, it pays to map training to a proven sales process, and then deliver training resources at the appropriate points in that process.

4. Invest in technology to support ongoing learning

Even in companies where training is ongoing, mapped to a proven process, and reinforced by coaching, most do not have the technological capability to truly track training effectiveness in relation to actual job performance. Generally, training assets are stored in a learning management system (LMS), with, at best, some connectivity to the CRM. Under these conditions, a few high performing salespeople may take the time to access learning resources from time to time, but their use will be limited and self-regulated.