The Ultimate Sales Training Success Guide: Transfer Success Skills to People to Learn More So They (and You) Can Earn More

by Miranda Martin

Trainers will often start a training session and try to cover a laundry list of items. The topics are often presented as a big run-on sentence. There is no breath while the trainer moves from topic to topic. It might be amazing material, but there is no possible way for anyone’s brain to keep up with the topic hopping or to digest everything that’s covered. With no signal from the trainer before switching topics, the participants wouldn’t be able to properly follow and store the information provided. There was no time spent testing the group to ascertain if they really understood what was being trained. Did they really get it? Did you know they got each point before we topic hopped our way on to the next one? I don’t know, they may have, but I am not sure. Occasionally the trainer feels they did test knowledge however, they used a close-ended question. Trainers habitually ask, “Do you have any questions?” The simple “yes/no” response begs for a “no,” so the audience can just get this painful ordeal over with. An open-ended question (How would you use that information in your next sales call?) requires the trainee to demonstrate comprehension and forecast how they might apply the training. Lastly, perhaps it was a refresher course on things the group had already demonstrated they have learned but had not fully implemented. Perhaps in this scenario the trainer’s objective was just to review material. In this case, the goal was indeed accomplished.