Why Sales Training Doesn't Stick (And How to Fix It)

In this episode of The Luxury of Choice, Steve Vaughan is joined by George James trainers Jonathan Slasinski and Christian Walter to explore one of the biggest challenges in sales development: making learning stick.

The team discusses why even excellent training can fail to deliver lasting results without coaching, reinforcement and leadership support. They share practical ideas for creating new habits, measuring the right behaviours, and building a culture where learning becomes part of everyday selling rather than a one-off event.

Whether you're a Sales Director, Sales Manager or Enablement professional, this episode offers practical advice for ensuring your investment in sales training delivers measurable, long-term results.

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche,  Jayne Green  and Jonathan Slasinski are Sales Trainers from george james ltd.  You can email the show at:  Podcast@georgejames-training.com

 The trainers on LinkedIn:

 Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/

Jonathan Slasinski https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-slasinski-449a655/

george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve (00:05)
Hello again and welcome to the Luxury of Choice, a B2B technical sales and business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan. I'm one of the training team here and I'm also the host and producer of this podcast. And I'm coming to you from a very, very, very, very little office in North Oxfordshire and what is probably the hottest June day in living history in the UK. But I'm joined by two colleagues from different locations in the world.

Jonathan Slasinski and Christian Walter So, Jonathan, you're in, guess, an air conditioned room in San Diego right now.

Jonathan Slasinski (00:36)
Well,

we don't need air conditioning in San Diego. know, it's always... I can't do the conversion 70 degrees. You know, it's perfect.

Steve (00:43)
Okay,

I think this podcast might not last very long if you carry on like that. And Christian, you're in air condition office somewhere in Switzerland, yeah?

Jonathan Slasinski (00:47)
Hahaha

Christian (00:48)
Ha ha ha.

in Switzerland but it's unbelievably hot in Switzerland. It's not it's un unseasonally hot and we're frankly we're we're struggling, you know, the sleep at night is not so easy and but but you know luckily we have the lake nearby so whenever we we need to cool down we can jump into the lake so that's the only the only saving grace really.

Steve (01:02)
Tell me tell me

Yeah.

Be careful if you are listening, by the way, if you jump into lakes and water, do it safely, of course, but I won't be doing that. Not in this part of world. The nearest thing to me is the canal and I'm going to jump in that. it does, completely.

Jonathan Slasinski (01:19)
Ahaha.

But it is crazy how much temperature affects your sleep. It's to me, it's

unbelievable. Like as soon as it gets hot here, it's like, oh, why am I awake? Why didn't I not sleep well last night?

Steve (01:30)
Yeah,

yeah, completely. We've got an owl actually outside our window, woke me up incredibly. An owl ⁓ hooting in middle of the night. Yeah, yeah, it is cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great. Yeah, it kept me awake, but in a nice way.

Christian (01:38)
No, that's cool. That's cool. I love I love the screeching of the owls.

Jonathan Slasinski (01:40)
You

Christian (01:46)
Don't get me started,

you know, otherwise I bore you with my ornithology.

Steve (01:50)
Okay, well, that's another podcast for another day, Christian. What are we going to talk about today? It might seem a strange topic for a training team to address, but we've got to go there because I think something comes up often when we're discussing training with potential customers and also people who've already booked training with us. And that's why, why does some sales training not stick? You know, why, why doesn't necessarily achieve the end result? I'm not saying all sales training does.

Jonathan Slasinski (01:50)
I love it.

Yeah

Christian (01:53)
Absolutely.

Steve (02:19)
But sometimes it can be, I think, fact that the investment in the training doesn't necessarily have the desired outcome in terms of the results for the team. So good topic to talk about. Both of you have got strong background in this. I know from your own training and your own careers. So we're looking forward to knocking this one around both of you. So right from the get go, first of all, Jonathan, in terms of, you know, why people buy training, why do companies

by sales training. Thankfully they do, keeps us in a job, but why do companies buy sales training first and foremost?

Jonathan Slasinski (02:56)
It's, know, they've, they've done some kind of needs analysis. They see some kind of gaps in skills or, or, or processes. And they're going to bring someone in that's going to, you know, hopefully help them, you know, up level their team into, you know, being more skillful or, or really being smooth throughout certain processes. I mean, when I was an enablement, that's all we looked for. was like, where's our gaps and where could certain people, you know, fill these gaps.

Steve (03:20)
Sure, sure. So I guess the first part of any training really is identifying what the training is going to be about, Christian, really, and what will be in the training.

Christian (03:30)
Yes, and and that's

also a a very important part of the pre-discussion, ⁓ to decide, you know, where exactly is a team maybe lacking or or or or or skills lacking, where can we help? and typically that's done in the discussion with the sales manager and and we we go through their daily life and and what is going well and maybe where they they need some help with and

Ultimately the the customer buys training because they want to see results, they want to they want to see an improvement in performance, they want to reach higher revenue targets, ⁓ they want to give less discounts. There is a a a clear return on investment also in our business that people are looking for.

Steve (04:13)
Or there should be at least. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

sure. So I guess the first thing to address and really is that that training has to be good. You know, it has to be well delivered, professional. mean, all the things you'd expect a training company to be. I've been on some shockers myself in years gone by.

Jonathan Slasinski (04:31)
Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you,

it's one of the things like I think of when I think of like, how do you get training to stick? You know, I've been in sales for 20 years. I've been through dozens and dozens of these training things besides delivering and building my own. And this was the first thing that I thought about was it's that foundation. Like, was the training itself good? Right. Was it delivered in a way that was impactful? Was it delivered in a way where it was like, oh, wow, this actually means something to me. Because I've been through trainings where I'm just like,

Steve (04:41)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (04:59)
what, why am I here? And then I've also been through trainings where I'm like, my God, all of this is relevant. I can't wait to, you know, I can't wait to go out and use it the next day. ⁓ and I know I can speak for myself, but I know I speak for, for Georgia training, you know, like we're in the ladder. We, we do these things that are impactful with engaging and, know, inspiring to people, but that's the foundation, right?

Steve (05:08)
sure.

Yeah.

Christian (05:18)
No, there's another reason

for that as well. So on a s sorry for interrupting, there's another reason for that. And and and it is because we've we've been there, ⁓ you know, walked in in the footsteps of the salespeople, of the sales managers, so we know what the the challenges are and and it it you know, it is relevant. People people believe us because we've actually sold in this industry ⁓ and and we have our track record, yeah.

Steve (05:21)
No, go ahead. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:22)
Nah.

Yeah.

Steve (05:31)
Mm.

Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:43)
Yeah. Cause

Steve (05:45)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:46)
Christian, you bring up a great point. It's about relevance, right? You know, I've been through sales trainings where people who were delivering it were not even salespeople ever in their career.

Steve (05:48)
Mm.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:54)
But then I've been through presentation skills training by a communications expert, right? And now all of a sudden here's a communications expert teaching you about presentation skills. And it just, it's just a different kind of switch that I think turns on, especially, you know, when we go out, you know, we've, as you said, we've, we've done these things, but that's the foundation, right? I mean, Hey, regardless, right? You've been through sales training. You're going to learn some things. There's going to be some tidbits that come out, but to me, it's all about what happens next.

Steve (06:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian (06:19)
it even if the training's

great, it's not easy to make it stick. You know, I I went on some leadership trainings with an absolutely great guy, a Canadian ice hockey coach who who who has a really deep, ⁓ deep leadership ⁓ strategy and approach and makes you really change your your outlook on life, but it's not easy to to stick with it because life happens after the training. You know, everyday life happens.

Jonathan Slasinski (06:23)
Exactly.

Christian (06:48)
You you need to do reports, you need to do your CRM, you need to do whatever and it it's all a distraction from what you've learned on

Steve (06:57)
So I think you're getting into the core of this topic really. I'm not going to do it now because it'd be hotter than the center of the sun, but I went into my attic right now. I could find folders and manuals and training courses that I went on 25 years ago. I've still got them, you know, and I could go up there and dust them off and, you know, blow the cobwebs off them and think, hey, this was really good stuff. I didn't do anything with it. And that's...

Jonathan Slasinski (07:15)
Yeah.

Steve (07:25)
Not acceptable, we can't afford that. ⁓ Training is an investment. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (07:27)
Yeah, it comes down to that behavior change, right Steve? mean, you what

we're trying to do is change behaviors. And a lot of people will come in with their own set of beliefs or set of ways of going about doing things. Now you can have an amazing training where people are like, my God, this is great. I want to implement this. But our natural instinct is to fall right back into kind of what we've done, which is where

as human beings and as adult learners, repetition, repetition, repetition comes in reinforcement comes in. I mean, I don't know how relevant this is anymore, but when I first went through sales training, was something somebody needs to hear something three to five times before it starts to stick in their head. Right? So cool that we're with people for two days, but that's one time or maybe twice that they're kind of hearing a concept. It's all about what happens next.

Steve (08:18)
Yeah, so he's not go ahead here. Yeah, go ahead.

Christian (08:19)
I you know, there's the sorry Steve, the there's

this there's this fantastic little book. I think it's an air court ⁓ business type book called Atomic Habits. And and in there basically it's all about ⁓ the psychology of of of ⁓ sticking with something. You know, in this case maybe it's you wanna lose some weight or you wanna do some exercise for your back or you wanna

You wanna eat healthier or you wanna, I don't know, brush your teeth more regularly or what whatever it may be. And and how can you make it happen? And and the idea is to break it down into really, really small tasks, you know, just five push ups a day. ⁓ that's a lot easier to do than fifty push ups a day. And and and and then the in in there it also says, you know, the improvement, you know, you have the the interest dividend.

Steve (09:02)
Right size chunks,

Yeah.

Christian (09:16)
Because if you put in if you get better one percent every day, it makes a huge difference after one year. And and I think that's the the whole ⁓ idea that we need to form habits and maybe just a few little things after a training. Not not to think we can re redefine our entire life, but maybe just change a few little things.

Jonathan Slasinski (09:40)
Christian, I love, I love where you're going with this because I think it's, it's fascinating that again, in my 20 year sales career, and I've been through many sales trainings, I never had a follow-up session until I started working with George James and doing the things that we've done. Right. It was always, Hey, here's your sales skills. Boom. You're off. As you all know, even through our trainings, we do follow-up sessions, but those follow-up sessions are exactly what you talked about. You work with management, you figure out what's that most important bite size thing that they want to get. And then we start with a.

Christian (09:55)
Mm.

Jonathan Slasinski (10:09)
review and then we dial in on that bite size. That's that change. Then what do we do the next week? Right. It's building off that bite size thing, but reinforcement is, the key. And again, I think like reinforcements, webs go all over the place because it is all about, how are your managers bought in? Where's the coaching, right? What's going on? But that's the first thing is kind of changing these habits is how are we reinforcing this?

Christian (10:27)
Mm.

Steve (10:32)
So let's

get into that then. So first of all, thanks for so far guys. The training has to be relevant, has to be well designed, has to be well delivered. Not too much, I think it's one of the things I sometimes struggle with. I try and put too much content into the training. have to pair it back. But assume we've got all that bit right. And without making this a commercial break for our own training, but we can obviously reference what we do.

What are the main causes of training not sticking? What are the four or five reasons that training cause doesn't stick and doesn't achieve the objective in your experiences? Okay, tell me more.

Jonathan Slasinski (11:04)
I think number one would be manager buy-in.

You know, you, you, you do, you have a training that's delivered to a bunch of reps. Now they're back out in the field. The manager needs to be coaching and providing feedback on those new skill, new or reinforced skills, whatever it is that was just learned. So I think that's really key is that manager buy-in right from, from that perspective.

Steve (11:24)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They've

got a coach in the field. They've got to live and breathe themselves. Yeah.

Christian (11:32)
Yeah, I agree and and and you

know I like the word the word coach because coaching is not telling. Coaching is encouraging to think, is encouraging to to take responsibility and and to decide what are the key levers to change the situation and and y you know, as a as a coaching style leader, you ask lots of questions and the salesperson

takes on the responsibility themselves. If you're a telling style manager, the sales guy can also can always say it didn't work, but you you know I never expected it to work but you told me to do it anyway, so I did. And and and that's not ownership and that's not responsibility.

Steve (12:05)
Absolutely.

We've covered coaching many times on this podcast and I'm sure we will again, but I think one of the challenges in the modern world when everybody's got so much to do and there's so much stuff coming in our inbox and workflows and whatever that managers when they're under pressure, just getting at the habit of just telling people what to do rather than taking the time to coach really. And if they don't coach the training and make the training come alive in the field with their team.

then that's one of the, in my experience, that's one of the biggest reasons training doesn't stick. That's one of the reasons we, we, we, we always suggest to customers that buy training from us that if the sales managers haven't had coaching training recently that we include that as well for that reason. Yeah. So what are the other reasons then? Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (12:49)
Yeah.

think the

next thing for me, the next step becomes is just reinforcement, Again, it's about having to work through and see these things multiple times. So for instance, say a new tool is delivered, right? Where you're learning how to work with XYZ sales tool. Well,

Are you using it? Right? So where's the reinforcement around that? ⁓ and in my previous jobs, when I was in enablement, we had a pretty cool part of our LMS that was able to send out these like little bite-size emails where it took like three or four, three or four minutes and you just answer a few questions. And then the week after you got another one where it just builds on those questions, kind of Christian, what you were talking about, just building on these habits, but are we reinforcing it? Right? If a new tool was introduced,

Christian (13:39)
Yes.

Jonathan Slasinski (13:45)
Who's there making sure that this tool is being used? are we, know, again, maybe an email, Hey, remember this tool. This is what the objectives are of it. This is what we want you to do with it. You know, do this, like that reinforcement needs to happen immediately after these trainings.

Steve (13:58)
And just to the point of reference, if people don't know what LMS is, that's a learning management system or learning management software, which we will come back to, I'm sure, later in the podcast. ⁓ What else do you do you think of this question?

Christian (14:11)
You know, one of the reasons we do this podcast is to give people some opportunity to to reinforce and to ⁓ to repeat maybe after the training. And you know, there's very little idle time in the life of a salesperson these days. But most of us still have to visit customers and we drive a lot and and the podcast is

Steve (14:18)
Yeah.

In that case, yeah.

Christian (14:35)
the best the best use of our time when we're driving because we can actually at the same time absorb some snippets of information and reinforce some maybe some learnings which we've done already ⁓ and and ⁓ keep that keep that topic fresh in our mind.

Steve (14:52)
Thank you, Christian. The cheques in the post for that. Thank you very much. Other reasons that training doesn't stick then. So we've talked about, yeah, gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (14:59)
Yeah, Steve, I think we go up another level, right? So we talked about

coaching. We talked about reinforcement. All right. Where is senior leadership bought into from a training perspective, right? ⁓ you know, is this a priority for senior leadership? Because in the most successful organizations that I've been a part of and worked for, when senior leadership's bought in on training, that usually trickles down to the district manager, which then trickles down to the coaching, which, you know, is built into having somebody there to do reinforcement.

Steve (15:07)
Yeah. Great point.

Jonathan Slasinski (15:29)
⁓ But senior leadership buy-in is going to be critical. It's not just a check the box. hey, we did sales skills training. Let's check the box. It's got to be lived and it's got to be lived and breathe throughout the organization.

Steve (15:35)
We've done training. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Very much so, very much so. And I guess that often would include the engagement of a HR department if the organisation is big enough to have HR department as well. yeah, so. ⁓

Jonathan Slasinski (15:46)
Yeah, big time.

Christian (15:51)
So one thing which I would also like to stress is that

mo most of our ⁓ most successful ⁓ customers or or you know, some of our biggest customers also look at training as a continuous journey and and maybe one year they do more of it and the next year maybe it's just one or two hours on a on the occasion of a sales meeting and

Steve (16:05)
Absolutely.

Christian (16:14)
If they have newer apps, they send them maybe to some ⁓ open training courses so they have the same level as the the rest. But it's not something you do once and then you you you leave the team B again. That ⁓ yeah, it it gets some results, but I think y you can achieve much more if you see look at it as a ongoing journey.

Steve (16:35)
Absolutely. Just come back to something you said earlier, Jonathan, about the importance of practice. I remember one of the things I was taught when I was trying to learn cricket as a younger man, there's a phrase that practice makes perfect. But actually what I was taught was practice makes permanent as opposed to perfect. So the more you practice something, the more embedded it becomes really. And hopefully eventually it becomes perfect as well. And of course, that's one of the reasons why we include role playing in lots of our

Jonathan Slasinski (16:50)
Yeah, I like that.

Steve (17:02)
training. ⁓

Christian (17:03)
Yeah,

you're absolutely right. You know, we we have ⁓ a conscription military service in Switzerland, so we we all need to go and ⁓ you're given a rifle and ⁓ you have to take it to pieces hundred times, thousand times, I don't know how many times, in blindfolded behind your back, you know, and ⁓ and actually i it it builds muscle memory and I think muscle memory never goes away.

Steve (17:08)
I know, yeah.

Christian (17:29)
I could you could still give me that rifle and I know exactly what to do with it and it happens automatically without me thinking. And so i i I do agree with you, ⁓ very much practice practice makes permanent. I think it's much it's actually much better than practice makes perfect. It's very it's very good. It's very good. Yeah.

Steve (17:45)
Well, hopefully both. Yeah, that's

what I'm saying for the day.

Jonathan Slasinski (17:48)
And I do love that saying,

but Steve, this brings me back to kind of where I've been in my career with having a great LMS or learning management system or software, right?

the amount of practice you can build into these things where say you did a course on objection handling, you know, the next week you can have them record, you can provide an objection and you can have them record a one to two minute of them, you know, you know, handling that objection and then having people watch them or read them with AI. There's a lot of new things where you can go back and forth now and have actually sales conversations within these role plays. But that kind of practice is key. And again, it's, it's going to be dependent on

Steve (18:20)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (18:28)
you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of, you know, support and what kind of, you know, offerings did different people or different companies have. But to me, that's, that was the crucial part was this reinforcement through doing some kind of video type role play or practice.

Steve (18:42)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Great points, guys. Another one for me in terms of why I think training sometimes doesn't stick really is that in the modern world, when we're all obsessed with KPIs and metrics and tracking everything and whatever, you know, what do most sales teams track? What all sales teams track? Revenue, you know, targets, sales, that kind of thing. But

Jonathan Slasinski (19:03)
Yeah, quota.

Steve (19:06)
Sometimes when we look into change behavior, perhaps there are other things we should think about tracking as well. Perhaps if the training, for example, was around appointment making or prospecting, could we track those kinds of things? How many new customers people have seen or setting goals or setting rewards are even based around those things as well. think very quickly when we leave the classroom and the pressure's on and it's the end of the quarter and we've all got to chase the numbers, we forget to focus on the things that we say we wanted to measure and monitor in the classroom.

I mean, just focused too much on revenue. Does that one ring true for you guys as well?

Christian (19:41)
Revenue is a consequence of of the right actions. Revenue is not revenue is not an activity itself. And and I always I got so cross over the course of my career and people pushed p you know, whether a sales rep achieves his target or not, ⁓ at least if it's a one off, is is not a qualification of that person or not. It could be a qualification of the target as well. It could be it could be external circumstances. So I think it's a lot

Steve (19:44)
I love that. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Christian (20:11)
better if you can measure, you know, are are they are they out and about? Are are they doing the the good work, as we used to say? Are they putting in the efforts? ⁓ do they send messages? Do they make phone calls? ⁓ because that eventually results in revenue. It may take a bit longer, but it will eventually result in revenue.

Steve (20:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Track the right things guys.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:35)
As Steve, you're, speaking

to the enablement specialist heart when they look at what, what actually constitutes ROI for these things, right?

Steve (20:43)
Yeah, great point.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:43)
So we

think about, we, we, we, you know, we have an outlay for this skills training or we have an outlay for this new tool. Okay. How do we figure this out? And to me, it's sure revenue, but it's exactly what Christian was talking about. It's all those underlying levels behind revenue. So, you know, we, I've done negotiation trainings in the past, and then we start looking at tracking discount percentages over the next six months and seeing the trends of that. do a prospecting session. Okay. Let's, let's look at a trend of how many appointments we have, how many new

Steve (20:56)
Hmm.

Yep.

Yep.

Jonathan Slasinski (21:13)
contacts are in your CRM things like that and Kind of just to speak to what Christian said, you know, I think we get so focused on revenue But you know, we did a you know after you know, one of my previous roles did a whole negotiation training We looked at revenue and there's reps who made plan But there's one rep who was giving a 14 % average discount and another rep giving an average of 4 % discount

Steve (21:15)
Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (21:35)
These are behaviors now that we can,

cool that you made revenue, but is it the right behavior and the right skill that we want to reinforce from this? So it's.

Steve (21:39)
Hmm. Yeah.

Great points, great

points. And in some of the businesses that we've worked in, and people listen to this as well, high value capital equipment, it takes time to change the revenue because it's a long sale cycle. if you just obsess on just the revenue and nothing else, then perhaps you're going to get disappointed in terms of that ROI of the training. Because to start with, you might not see that uplift. Hopefully you'll see an uplift in prospects and stuff on the CRM really. So if I'm a, yeah, go ahead, Christian. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (21:53)
without a doubt.

Exactly.

Christian (22:10)
Can I steer the discussion a little bit away

from the KPIs and measures and all the corporate stuff? because I believe there are other aspects which are extremely important, you know. Are the guys having fun? And that is during the training and also afterwards. ⁓ are are people having fun? Do they do they

Steve (22:16)
Please do.

Absolutely.

I love that.

Christian (22:35)
Because when they're having fun, they're more successful. When they're more successful, they're having more fun. So it it's a self-fulfilling situation. So you know, we really n need to look into that. And I think you know, learnings also stick better if you if you get results with the learning. So we need to celebrate successes as well. And that's what I like to do on these ⁓ you know, these these online follow-up calls. I always

Jonathan Slasinski (23:01)
Yeah.

Christian (23:02)
ask the reps, you know, who's had some success, be it be it with a phone call made, be it with a outreach message, be it with a ⁓ you know negotiation or objection handling or whatever. And I I remember one guy who came to me and and we looked at ⁓ you know at the my my excel tool which helps you to decide how many how many prospects how many opportunities you need to find in order to make target is like a mathematical model and

And and this guy's selling pipettes and and he realized shit, I need to do so many opportunities every month and he never realized. And he was struggling as a seller about the time. And the next year he he came to me and he actually said, Hey, I made ⁓ I made the Delta Award, which is the kind of president's club of that company. And and so that is and and then of course, you know, I I celebrated with him and congratulated him. And I think that that helps as well.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:48)
I love it.

Steve (23:51)
Wow, I love it.

Yeah, great point.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:59)
So Christian, I love that you bring

this back to the human aspect of what we do in sales, right? Or, you know, just being part of a commercial team. I think we do, we get so stuck on all these metrics all the time. how many calls did you make? How many? All right. How are you feeling about this skill? Right?

Are you having fun in your role? Are you enjoying what you're doing? Right. But this also comes to coaching, right? Cause these are things that we should be coaching too. Right. And these are things that managers managers should be asking. How are you feeling every once in a while? It just be, you know, walk me through your numbers, walk me through your funnel. Right.

Christian (24:25)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:34)
Hey, you just went through that sales training. What are you loving about it? What do you have in successes with? It's just simple questioning, but you're right. We forget the human. We always forget the human or the, least we put the human factor last. And I love the fact that you dialed in on that because it's so important to making this stuff stick.

Steve (24:39)
Yeah, super.

Many years ago, Christian, you gave me product training in the organization we both work for. And I can guarantee you, can tell you right now, it was a lot of fun. ⁓ But yeah, there are many career choices people can make with the technical background that our listeners and our customers have really. And sales isn't the easiest one by any means. Sales is hard really.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:56)
Hahaha

⁓

Christian (25:13)
Yeah.

Steve (25:13)
incredibly rewarding and fun when it works. And when you leave the classroom and you try something, you know, try something you've learned about negotiation skills or objection handling and it works. It's like, wow, it's fantastic, isn't it? Yeah. It's such a cool feeling. It is. It is.

Christian (25:25)
It does, yeah. ⁓ wow. You know, it's the hardest job in the world, but it's also the best job in the world. Because you know it has

this it has both of these aspects. I wanna one one point which I would also, you know, ⁓ I I think it is really a good idea to to to to schedule some soft skill training as part of your annual sales meeting.

Steve (25:35)
It absolutely is.

Christian (25:50)
Because I mean, what do you do in the annual sales meeting typically? You you look back in the year that's just passed, you know, you do a business review, you look at the market segments, key accounts that performed well and that didn't perform well. But actually this is all history. It's all history, it's all it's all in the rear view mirror. We need to look forward. What can we do to be better next year? And we can actually spend a couple of hours maybe with the sales team practicing a specific

Steve (26:10)
Correct.

Christian (26:20)
a specific weakness or practicing prospecting so we we get better next year.

Steve (26:26)
That's a great point. Somewhere in the library, the podcast, if you go back a number of episodes, Lister, you'll find one that we did about kickoff meetings. And I think we talked a lot about that, about incorporating, you know, a training element. Again, that wasn't a pitch for for business. It was recommending some skills training, because you say that, you know, you can learn from history, but you can also can't change it. History's gone. You know, it's all about what's going to happen. What's going to happen this year.

Jonathan Slasinski (26:27)
I love it.

Christian (26:50)
And

if it makes you feel bad, you know, there's there's there's this you need a positive frame of reference to go out and visit customers. And if your history, maybe last year was difficult, ⁓ for mon many companies in our world, last year actually was difficult. So I hope that in the kick-off meeting in January people didn't agonize too much over over last year's figures because the sales guys need to be optimistic, so otherwise they can't sell.

Steve (26:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, great points. So guys, if I'm a sales manager listening to this podcast now and I'm thinking about engaging some training from George James or whoever, you know, were the key sort of things, what key three or four things that they should think about in terms of making sure that if they do invest in training, that training actually changes behavior, has an ROI, you know, ⁓ is effective and used in the field. What three or four things would you recommend?

Jonathan Slasinski (27:45)
Yeah, I think the first thing is just making sure that they've properly identified what needs to be trained or what skills, because they might have an assumption about something that's going on. It really needs to be a team that gets together and identifies kind of these gaps and where the skills are. It's got to be specific to them, not just what the manager thinks. And then the other thing just becomes is, is, that coaching and that follow up. But I love kind of where Christian was going. It's got to be that human kind of follow up as well.

Steve (28:05)
point.

Yeah, I those.

Christian (28:14)
Yeah, and see

it see Jonathan, I thought just now I've been thinking, actually, you know, to send the participant a weekly email with a few questions, that triggers the brain, actually that, you know, could be automated, it could be whatever, but ⁓ i it's it's not necessarily only human, it's a blended approach which can bring the best results, isn't it?

Jonathan Slasinski (28:39)
Yeah, I

used to call it the weekly tickle because we wanted to tickle their brain. So they would just tickle their brain with something that we did. So it was kind of fun.

Christian (28:42)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I love that.

Steve (28:42)
You

Christian (28:46)
Yeah.

Steve (28:46)
of that too, yeah, I'm gonna steal that. Weekly tickle. So any of the final recommendations guys, before we wrap this one up, any things that, you you're thinking about training things that you must do, must and do's in terms of making that training stick. Or I could cover them all.

Christian (29:03)
Look, first first thing is to actually believe in the value of training and and there's ample evidence ⁓ you know that that we can improve a sales team's performance with with soft skill training. ⁓ we can be more successful if they qualify harder, more s more more comprehensively. ⁓ we can ⁓ get more appointments if we ⁓ practice prospecting and practice phone calls.

Steve (29:23)
Yep. Yep.

Christian (29:32)
We can ⁓ close more deals if we hand if we practice objection handling. That there's absolute evidence in many, many companies in our industry and other industries as well. So the first first thing is to invest and then make a plan how to make it stick, as and when you plan the training. Add one or two ⁓ follow-up calls online. I'm gonna do some emails, some weekly tickles in the future. And

Steve (29:58)
Please don't call it that.

Jonathan Slasinski (29:59)
There we go.

Christian (30:03)
I don't know. I like

it. And ⁓ and and then, you know, ⁓ maybe maybe we didn't touch on that. I like the quizzes ⁓ at the end of a training because it it pe salespeople are competitive guys and and you know that and if it can get so I I do this I I stole that with pride as well from our one of our colleagues, ⁓ fingers on the buzzer. So I I I bought some buzzers and we do this finger on fingers on the buzzer. And they love it, you know. And

Steve (30:12)
Yeah, me too. Me too.

Jonathan Slasinski (30:14)
Yeah,

it's just reinforcement.

Steve (30:17)
You better believe it.

Yeah.

Later.

Jonathan Slasinski (30:31)
Of

Christian (30:32)
It just helps to kind of keep it alive, keep the magic alive a little bit.

Steve (30:37)
Super, super points guys. Thank you for your thoughts today on this one guys. ⁓ Just to come back to this topic of LMS, Learning Management Systems or software, I guess both work. It's something that we're working on right now. So myself and my colleague, Jonathan Cooper, in conjunction with all the training team, we've been working on developing a whole suite of learning ⁓ on demand content. And just to put it in context, it's never going to be to replace classroom face-to-face training. That's what we do.

But as I think we hopefully we've got across on this podcast now, the importance of having that feedback follow up mechanism is so important. We see video training on demand or training that's on your phone or if you want to call it like you're coaching the pocket, whatever you want to call it as part of that sort of way of helping customers help their team make the training stick. So we're not ready with it yet. It's coming. We're hoping to get it ready for the autumn. you know, what's the space check out our

Jonathan Slasinski (31:30)
Mm-hmm.

Awesome.

Steve (31:36)
our website as well. So end of the commercial break. Guys, thank you very much for your time. I'm going to go and jump in a vat of cold water now, I think. Thank you.

Jonathan Slasinski (31:42)
Yeah, Christian and Steve, enjoy the heat and ⁓

Christian (31:43)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (31:46)
pleasure spending some time with you guys as always.

Steve (31:49)
As always, and well done for not mentioning the soccer world cup as well, all three of us. Yeah, we've not got that far. if you've enjoyed this one day list, don't forget to give us a review on Apple or Spotify does help us in weird and wonderful ways. And of course, if you're interested in coming on the podcast as a guest, or you've got ideas for future topics for the podcast, then of course you can contact any of us directly through LinkedIn, email, whatever we mean you want to use. And we'd be delighted to hear from you.

Jonathan Slasinski (31:53)
Hahaha

Steve (32:16)
We'll be back again in a couple of weeks time before we then have a little break for the summer period. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you soon.

Christian (32:25)
Otherwise.