Sales training remains a priority investment for most organizations, but in many cases, that investment isn’t translating into a sustainable performance and sales results across the board. The reality is, no matter how effective and engaging standalone training is in the moment, the impact fades. Studies on “The Forgetting Curve” explain why: People lose up to 75% of newly learned information within days or weeks if they don’t regularly review it.
The deeper issue isn’t just retention, it’s behavior change. Most training leaves skills at the level of conscious effort: things reps know but don’t consistently do. Without reinforcement, those behaviors never become instinctive.
Event-based training, on its own, doesn’t build, reinforce and grow the skills and habits that are key to long-term behavior change and selling success, particularly in today’s fast-paced and constantly changing environment. Yet it’s that same fast-paced environment that often makes it even more difficult to fit ongoing learning into a busy salesperson’s workday. Our newest offering, the microlearning and AI-powered sales coaching and reinforcement program Elevate Selling™, addresses these challenges head on.
We recently spoke with Amara Hunt, Integrity Solutions’ Chief Product Officer, about Elevate Selling™, why it was developed and how it helps bridge the gap between the initial training and ongoing growth and sales success. In part one of the discussion, Amara shares more about the challenges and importance of sustaining sales learning in today’s environment. She also discusses how artificial intelligence and AI sales coaching can be trained to bridge the gap between learning and application and make it easier to track, measure and scale performance.
Why do so many organizations struggle with getting lasting impact from their sales training investments?
There are a number of contributing factors, but first and foremost, we know that standalone training events simply aren’t going to create lasting behavior change. As The Forgetting Curve shows us, learning new information or skills is like flexing a new muscle. If you don’t consistently use it, you’ll lose it. In fact, Hermann Ebbinghaus’ pioneering study, which has been replicated numerous times, found that most of the forgetting happens shortly after the learning takes place.
But his research also provides us with an antidote to the learning retention challenge: spaced repetition, or distributed practice over time. When the information is reviewed at deliberately timed intervals, it reinforces the learning before it has a chance to be forgotten. The curve becomes less step and retention goes up.
Most sales managers agree that ongoing learning, coaching and reinforcement are key to helping their salespeople become more productive and successful, but that doesn’t mean it’s happening in practice. Why not?
A lot of it can be boiled down to time scarcity. Sales managers today are feeling the squeeze from all sides. They’re overwhelmed with administrative tasks and firefighting, and they need their salespeople to step up, take accountability and achieve their goals. At the same time, a CSO Insights (Gartner) study found that nearly half of sales managers spend 30 minutes or less per week on coaching. Devoting time to effective sales coaching would actually take some of the burden off the sales managers’ shoulders, but they often don’t have the skills or bandwidth to do it. As one client shared, a typical one-on-one meeting intended for skill discovery will instead get hijacked by urgent pipeline updates, leaving the actual coaching gap unaddressed.
And it’s not just managers who are stretched. Salespeople are dealing with more as well, from administrative tasks to learning new systems and processes to handling more complex deals. In an increasingly competitive and volatile marketplace, many managers are reluctant to divert any more of their teams’ time away from selling and building customer relationships.
How does AI sales coaching help fill some of these gaps in sales performance and learning retention?
Sales reps need consistent feedback and coaching, but human managers can’t physically observe every call or email. So, one of the ways we can train AI on new methodologies that can be leveraged to help fill the gap by scaling that human element. By scaling management capabilities, not replacing them, we can ensure reps are receiving continuous, everyday support, not just one-off or occasional feedback.
AI also can be trained to help with personalization of the development journey by learning the unique skill gaps. Sales leaders agree that one-size-fits-all training is less effective than tailored, role-specific enablement, but that has historically been a pretty heavy lift. AI sales coaching is transforming that process and making it much easier to tailor the learning to the individual and their needs and goals.
Beyond just the efficiencies AI brings to the process, Elevate Selling™ uses AI-powered spaced repetition to help extend retention by reinforcing learning over time, counteracting The Forgetting Curve. And just as importantly, AI helps us bridge isolated learning and practical application by bringing workshop knowledge directly into the seller’s daily workflow. Rather than an ad hoc course that takes you away from your work, it analyzes real-time signals to prompt proactive coaching exactly when a rep is struggling.
All of these features help address that big challenge sales leaders and their salespeople are constantly having to navigate, now more than ever: how to best use their time. AI sales coaching empowers reps to practice and apply real-world skills in the flow of work and provides guidance to managers on where best to focus their coaching efforts – allowing them to focus on other areas critical to revenue generation.
Learn more about Elevate Selling at www.integritysolutions.com/elevate.
In part two of this Q&A, Amara shares more details about Elevate Selling and how sales organizations are adopting AI to boost efficiency, learning retention and results.
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