Three reasons. First, people don’t catch a ball they don’t want to catch, no matter how well you throw it. The people being asked along have to want to improve their approach for their own reasons. Second, learning is done by you, not to you. You can’t put a team through a sheep dip and expect new behaviours out the other end. You have to help lead new ideas and behaviours from them, and help them to build the ‘sales muscle’. The third is that the average learner forgets around 80% of what they learn within 24 hours, and most of that gets forgotten within about one hour! The odds are against you. But here’s how to stack them in your favour.
Key facts
- The average learner forgets up to 80% of what they learn within 24 hours, most of it within an hour, which is why sheep-dip training events produce zero lasting change.
- One-off sales training feels productive on the day but six weeks later your team has forgotten the bulk of it and reverted to old habits – the activity happened, the change didn’t.
- Generic training providers sell training days because that’s their commercial model, not the 6 to 12 month coaching and leadership reinforcement that actually creates behaviour change.
- Making training stick requires spaced repetition, just-in-time learning applied on live deals, and leadership leading the new behaviours from the front, not handing it off to a trainer.
- A free 5-minute starting point is the ROI & Capability Diagnostic, which reveals the revenue within reach for your team and the capability gaps standing in the way.
What’s the headline reason?
It just gets forgotten. The average learner forgets up to 80% of what they learned within 24 hours. Most of it within an hour. Sales training mostly happens as a one-off event with no real spaced repetition, no on-the-job application, no leadership follow-through. Of course it doesn’t stick. People used to say ‘if I get one or two new ideas from a learning session I’ll be happy.’ I always thought that was woefully inadequate. You should be able to capture every useful idea and embed it. But that requires know-how to do so. People can actually learn how to make sales training stick before they experience the sales training itself.
Why is one-off training so common then?
It’s what generic training companies sell. They turn up, toss the ball to the audience, and leave. The ball they’re tossing might already be out of date, and even when it’s not, the buyer ends up with one event expected to translate into new behaviours back on the job. It’s like going to the gym just once and expecting to build muscle. Cheap and easy to buy. It just doesn’t work.
What does ‘making it stick’ actually require?
A transformation programme over 6 to 12 months, not a session. Built around the team coming along, the real challenges they face, what they’ve tried that hasn’t worked, and how their customers actually buy. Just-in-time learning at the point of need on live work, not just-in-case content stored for later. Spaced repetition and reinforcement, because 80% of learning gets forgotten within 24 hours of being learned. A small number of sales muscles built incrementally over time, so the compound effects show up in results. And every opportunity to keep practising outside work as well as on the job.
Why do generic providers struggle to deliver this?
Because their commercial model is event-led. They sell training days. They aren’t structured to deliver 6 to 12 month coaching, leadership reinforcement, and on-the-job follow-through. The client buys what the provider sells, which is an event. The result is predictable. Most sales trainers haven’t sold themselves recently or ever. They know the theory but they don’t understand the surgical approach needed to help smart but didn’t sign up to sell technical people actually change behaviour in the real world.
What’s the practical fix for an MD who’s been burned before?
Three rules. One, no one-off events. Two, the work must be tailored to your actual customers and their buying process. Three, leadership owns the behaviour change, not the trainer. Anyone who can’t accept those three rules isn’t worth your money. The far majority of sales training doesn’t work because it’s sheep-dip one-size-fits-all training that just gets forgotten. You need surgical, evidence-based development tailored to how your team thinks and how your buyers buy.
Isn’t good training supposed to stick on its own?
This is the biggest myth in commercial development. Training providers want you to believe their content is so compelling it will naturally embed itself. It won’t. The far majority of sales training doesn’t work. It really doesn’t lead to change. Of the training that does, the change is usually minimal and slow, because people don’t have a smart approach to accelerated learning and application. Sticking requires architecture: spaced repetition, on-the-job coaching, leadership reinforcement, and just-in-time learning when the problem is live. Without that system, even brilliant content disappears within hours.
Three signals your team needs a systematic approach
First, people mention good ideas from training but you never see them applied in real customer situations. Second, your team reverts to old habits under pressure despite recent training investment. Third, you find yourself saying ‘we covered this in the training’ more than once. These aren’t signs of poor training content or lazy learners. They’re signs of a missing learning system. Without spaced repetition and on-the-job application, even brilliant people forget brilliant content. The weather keeps changing, but your team keeps using the same old umbrella.