In this episode of Connect and Convert, Dave Salter and Dennis Collins tackle the common issue of sales training going in one ear and out the other. They share that most training material is forgotten within a week, wasting time and money. To help explain why this happens, they reference the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. But don't worry - they have a solution! Invest in sales training that is customized and relevant to your business and focused on spaced repetition. Dennis Collins emphasizes the importance of installation or follow-up to ensure the training sticks. He suggests setting up a team with a dedicated manager who can provide sales personnel with consistent feedback, practice, and correction. After all, owners can't always be sales managers too.

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

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

Success.

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

And Dennis is our resident rockstar sales training expert.

He's been successfully training salespeople for about 153 years

and these folks tr consistently exceed their sales marks.

Dennis, good morning.

Good to be with you.

Dave, how are you today, man?

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

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

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

for our small business owners.

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

invested in for your team last week?

Great effort.

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

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

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

Sorry about that, but it's been forgotten.

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

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

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

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

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

So I'm glad.

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

the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.

Give us a, your brief thoughts on forgetfulness and as

it pertains to training.

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

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

and 90% forgotten in the first week.

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

Okay?

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

We're gonna call this gentleman Sam.

Okay, Dave, you ready?

Sounds good.

I can go with Sam.

Alright.

I can remember that.

Yeah, Sam is easy.

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

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

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

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

So he joined a business that seemed to fit him.

Okay.

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

Finally dun-da, the first big training day.

Okay, Sam's all excited.

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

a well-known trainer, had great content.

The presentation was great.

You couldn't have asked for more.

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

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

That was really a good session.

Sounds good, huh Dave.

Sounds great.

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

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

And then, a week later.

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

So tell us a little bit about why that happens.

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

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

What happened after the training?

Maybe some learners remembered some of the material.

Maybe they gave it a try.

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

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

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

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

Forgetting Curve, Herman Ebbinghaus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By my quick mathematical calculations, that's over 60

billion wasted training dollars.

Wow.

Let's bring it home.

Let's bring it home to you.

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

times 90, what's going out the door?

Wow.

What's going out the door?

That's pretty scary.

It's scary.

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

investment that large is being wasted.

Most of it gone.

So Dennis tell me.

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

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

about is whose responsibility is it to reinforce that training?

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

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

That's a great question.

I have several thoughts about that.

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

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

have a training component.

I think they should have a practice component.

I think they should, but they don't.

But let's go over a couple ideas.

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

Knowledge without action is just entertainment.

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

the one-off seminar, the workshop, fine.

Be selective about the training that you invest in.

By that, is it customizable?

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

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

Generic training, not so much.

That's the 90% that's forgotten.

How do you understand the value of space?

Repetition.

What is space repetition?

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

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

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

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

None that I ever bought.

I had to do it myself.

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

to establish the space repetition so it was my responsibility.

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

Is it a lecture?

A seminar and then it's over.

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

practice sessions every week?

Commit to a practice session based on the training?

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

on your sales process and your training?

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

Acting as founder, owner and sales manager.

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

an expert in sales training.

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

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

It almost never works.

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

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

Yeah.

Not so much.

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

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

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

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

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

something you talk about is installation.

Yes.

Can you elaborate a little bit about installation and why

that's important to this process?

Installation is where the rubber meets the road.

It would be like a computer program.

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

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

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

I say the same as true for sales training.

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

Yes, the training event is critical.

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

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

It's all about practice.

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

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

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

That sounds great, Dennis.

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

So.

Summarize for us, if you will.

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

Okay.

Sam's training day started off great.

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

because there was no installation.

There was no follow up.

Okay.

When you're going to do transformational training programs,

okay, there's two types of training.

There's educational and transformational, okay?

Some training is just to educate someone on something

like a technique or something.

But transformational is behavior changing type of training.

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

have an installation process.

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

many steps that need to be followed.

You can defeat the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.

It is not inevitable.

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

coming up in a future podcast.

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

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

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

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

that lets you behind the curtain with some insider strategies for

small business sales success.

This is Dave Salter with Dennis Collins.