How to Make Sales Training Stick

Dave Salter: 00:00:03

Hi, I am Dave Salter and you've landed on Connect and

Dave Salter: 00:00:05

Convert the podcast where we share insider secrets for small business.

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Success.

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I'm joined today, as always by Dennis Collins.

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And Dennis is our resident rockstar sales training expert.

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He's been successfully training salespeople for about 153 years

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and these folks tr consistently exceed their sales marks.

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Dennis, good morning.

Dave Salter: 00:00:29

Good to be with you.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:31

Dave, how are you today, man?

Dennis Collins: 00:00:32

I'm doing, I'm doing all right.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:34

It's always good, and we can spend a couple couple minutes together.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:37

Well, unfortunately, today I've gotta start with some bad news

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for our small business owners.

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I, I hate to do it, but hey, you know that sales training you

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invested in for your team last week?

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Great effort.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:50

Thank you for investing in your team and your sales training.

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Sometimes these things cost 50, 60, a hundred thousand dollars.

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Bad news, 90% of that was probably wasted, nine out of every $10 out the door.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:05

Sorry about that, but it's been forgotten.

Dave Salter: 00:01:09

That's not a good sign, but I, you know, Dennis I often forget

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what I have for breakfast and I'm also guilty of, you know, you walk into

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a room and you went in there to get something or cha or, or and then you

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get there and you're like, oh, crap.

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What was I, what did I come in here for?

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So I'm glad.

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We're gonna talk a little bit today about Sam's Training Day and

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the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.

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Give us a, your brief thoughts on forgetfulness and as

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it pertains to training.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:43

As it pertains to training, there's a very good chance that

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any new training that you deliver will be 50% forgotten in the first 24 hours

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and 90% forgotten in the first week.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:57

That's not good, but I have a story.

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Okay?

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I have a story and this is something a true story.

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We're gonna call this gentleman Sam.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:05

Okay, Dave, you ready?

Dave Salter: 00:02:07

Sounds good.

Dave Salter: 00:02:07

I can go with Sam.

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Alright.

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I can remember that.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:10

Yeah, Sam is easy.

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That's why I'm calling him Sam, cuz I forget too.

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Sam was a young sales rookie, gungho, and, but in, in spite of hearing

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all the negative stuff today about sales, he his father had been a

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successful salesperson and he said, you know what, I'm gonna do this.

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So he joined a business that seemed to fit him.

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Okay.

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He joined a business that believed in growing and training, especially rookies.

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Finally dun-da, the first big training day.

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Okay, Sam's all excited.

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A six hour in-person information rich workshop featuring a well-known speaker,

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a well-known trainer, had great content.

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The presentation was great.

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You couldn't have asked for more.

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Six hours of learning, discussing role plays, reflection at the end,

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after the after session cocktail party, all attendees said, you know,

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That was really a good session.

Dennis Collins: 00:03:06

Sounds good, huh Dave.

Dave Salter: 00:03:08

Sounds great.

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Dennis and I know I have been in those, scenarios before and you're

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all charged up, you've received all this great information.

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And then, a week later.

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You've either lost it, but most of the time, it just, it doesn't stick.

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So tell us a little bit about why that happens.

Dennis Collins: 00:03:30

In this case, like so, so many other training cases,

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the question that I would ask is, okay, great idea, great training.

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What happened after the training?

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Maybe some learners remembered some of the material.

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Maybe they gave it a try.

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If, if, if you're lucky, hey, if you're really lucky.

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Some of them may have actually internalized some of the things they

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heard and tried to install it in their day-to-day activity, but most probably

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group fell victim to what we call the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve the Ebbinghaus

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Forgetting Curve, Herman Ebbinghaus.

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He proved that we forget 50% of new information within 24 hours

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of learning it and 90% of new information within one week.

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Not good, especially, Dave, when you consider the wasted costs, they

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say that in the United States, $70 billion is spent per year on training

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- $70 billion with a B, with a B.

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Let's say 90% of that is gone within a week.

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By my quick mathematical calculations, that's over 60

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billion wasted training dollars.

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Wow.

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Let's bring it home.

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Let's bring it home to you.

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If you have a training budget of a hundred thousand, 150, 200,000, whatever it is,

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times 90, what's going out the door?

Dave Salter: 00:04:54

Wow.

Dennis Collins: 00:04:55

What's going out the door?

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That's pretty scary.

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It's scary.

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I was running radio stations and it should scare any small business owner that an

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investment that large is being wasted.

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Most of it gone.

Dave Salter: 00:05:10

So Dennis tell me.

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And there's a couple ways that, that gets lost.

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And you can talk about that a little bit, but the other question

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about is whose responsibility is it to reinforce that training?

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Once you've, you, you're done with this six hour seminar, you go

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home or you go back to the office, whose job is it to reinforce that?

Dennis Collins: 00:05:31

That's a great question.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:33

I have several thoughts about that.

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Generally speaking, it's the business owner's responsibility.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:39

Most sales trainers today that I used to hire, they don't

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have a training component.

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I think they should have a practice component.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:47

I think they should, but they don't.

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But let's go over a couple ideas.

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I have a little saying that some taught me years ago that I like to use.

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Knowledge without action is just entertainment.

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So if you wanna entertain your troops, not build skills, do traditional training,

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the one-off seminar, the workshop, fine.

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Be selective about the training that you invest in.

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By that, is it customizable?

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Can it be custom and relevant to your situation, your specific business?

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People remember things longer that are more relevant to their situation.

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Generic training, not so much.

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That's the 90% that's forgotten.

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How do you understand the value of space?

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Repetition.

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What is space repetition?

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It's been proven that if you take a piece of information that is learned on day

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one and repeat it in day two or three and then repeat it three or four days later,

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and then repeat it a week later, and then two weeks later, spaced repetition.

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But how many sales training programs have a space repetition module built in?

Dennis Collins: 00:06:59

None that I ever bought.

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I had to do it myself.

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Once I was victimized by the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, I had

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to establish the space repetition so it was my responsibility.

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Are there built-in modules for practice or is it just a one off?

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Is it a lecture?

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A seminar and then it's over.

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Are you willing and able to host at least one ,and ideally two,

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practice sessions every week?

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Commit to a practice session based on the training?

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Do you have a manager level person who's overseeing, providing constant feedback

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on your sales process and your training?

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I find that a lot of small businesses it's a d i Y by the owner.

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Acting as founder, owner and sales manager.

Dave Salter: 00:07:46

So that often won't work because they're not

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an expert in sales training.

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They're an expert at making the widget that they're trying to sell

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or whatever, and the sales part of it's not their area of expertise.

Dennis Collins: 00:07:58

It almost never works.

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And I give, a founder owner full of them and vigor and excitement for their

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business "I can do this, I can do this."

Dennis Collins: 00:08:07

Yeah.

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Not so much.

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I have found that they can't do it, mostly can't and shouldn't.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:14

So there needs to be someone overseeing the sales operation that can provide

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direction, feedback, practice correction, and hopefully build skills.

Dave Salter: 00:08:26

Dennis, it's one of the things you and I have talked about

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previously, and I think this is your most important bullet point on this is

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something you talk about is installation.

Dave Salter: 00:08:37

Yes.

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Can you elaborate a little bit about installation and why

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that's important to this process?

Dennis Collins: 00:08:44

Installation is where the rubber meets the road.

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It would be like a computer program.

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Dave, if you bought a new software program for your computer that's gonna

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make your life easier, make your job easier, and you put it on your desk

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and you never install it into the computer, what good does that do to you?

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I say the same as true for sales training.

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We need to have a new thought process about sales training.

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Yes, the training event is critical.

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I'm not saying skip those, but follow up with installation.

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I'm gonna refer our listeners, our viewers, to another one of our podcast.

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It's all about practice.

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Practicing With a Purpose is the title, and rather than spend the time here

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talking about the installation process, I would refer you to that podcast and

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in that we will get very detailed about how to install a training program.

Dave Salter: 00:09:44

That sounds great, Dennis.

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I appreciate that and I look forward to to going through that episode as well.

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So.

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Summarize for us, if you will.

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Sam's training day and and maybe we will maybe we'll finish up here.

Dennis Collins: 00:10:00

Okay.

Dennis Collins: 00:10:01

Sam's training day started off great.

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Sam was excited, but unfortunately Sam and his colleagues were not trained properly

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because there was no installation.

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There was no follow up.

Dennis Collins: 00:10:14

Okay.

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When you're going to do transformational training programs,

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okay, there's two types of training.

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There's educational and transformational, okay?

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Some training is just to educate someone on something

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like a technique or something.

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But transformational is behavior changing type of training.

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If you're going to do transformational training, you have got to

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have an installation process.

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And the installation as we will discuss in our practice podcast has

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many steps that need to be followed.

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You can defeat the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.

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It is not inevitable.

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Hermann gave us some very good ideas about how to defeat it, and that's

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coming up in a future podcast.

Dave Salter: 00:10:58

That's good because just listening to you, I just remembered that I

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had two eggs, Sunnyside up this morning on toast with some tea, and I'm ready to go.

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So Dennis, thanks for your wisdom and insight today, folks.

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That wraps up another edition of Connect and Convert, the podcast

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that lets you behind the curtain with some insider strategies for

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small business sales success.

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This is Dave Salter with Dennis Collins.