Dive Brief:

• The 2016 State of Sales Training report, surveyed 227 sales professionals to uncover the state of training. "48% of respondents indicated that sales training helps meet sales goals to a high or very high extent," says Megan Cole, PhD, a research analyst at the Association for Talent Development.
• Around half of the respondents of the ADT survey said that one of the barriers to effective training is that salespeople are not held accountable to demonstrating newly learned skills. The survey also revealed that the cost of training employees in sales is $1,459, which is $200 more than the amount spent in 2015 to train all workers. 
• David Lees, a principal with Applied Learning Associates, LLC., advises that one way to overcome these obstacles to sales training is to get all leaders and managers on board before developing any programs. Their involvement can demonstrate how important the training is to the entire organization. 

Dive Insight:

Sales training is vital so that the next generation of professionals has the right skills and techniques to drive their organizations forward. Yet, despite the increase in spending and investment in this effort, many companies are still facing barriers to getting sales pros trained well.

While the ideas of increasing e-learning and mobile apps in learning are both good suggestions, a better impact can be made by getting management buy-in to coach sales professionals through their training. This can help to solidify the link between training and actual sales performance on the job.