The spectrum of employee onboarding, training and sales coaching is an ongoing process that must be maintained for the duration of an employee's tenure. In cases where managers take shortcuts or inadequate training is offered, it's likely that companies won't get the return on investment they were seeking with educational endeavors. What's more, personnel may struggle to do their jobs completely or correctly, resulting in retention issues and other revenue problems. Finding sales coaching alternatives and mentoring options is the best way of avoiding these issues.

Recurring targeting errors
According to Sales Training International, this is an ongoing issue among many organizations. WhaTech reported the group did a study on aggregate training metrics in connection to sales coaching and training initiatives and compared these to overall effectiveness of personnel. The "Why Sales Training Often Fails" research showed that only about half of all content is remembered by employees within a month of receiving this learning. Much less than that ever gets applied to sales pitches and daily practices outside of the 3-month window, the source reported. In fact, within the first 90 days of receiving a one-off training program, as much as 84 percent of what staff members were taught will have been forgotten, the study stated.

In order to improve the uptake and retention of important workplace data, Sales Training International recommended that businesses need to ensure that the sales onboarding, coaching and overall training programs they're running are actually being created around a specific goal-driven curriculum. The source stated that many organizations have disjointed training courses and learning tracks that make it hard for personnel to remember and apply what they've learned. These lessons must be crafted with overall outcomes in mind, so if businesses are training staff members in order to make them better sales reps, they should know what qualities their personnel currently lack that keep them from enjoying that status already.

Identifying the right outcomes
Smart Company stated that this lack of focus is a common issue with companies of all kinds. Many managers may complain that their sales staff simply aren't spending enough time actually trying to sell products, but the underlying problem is really that businesses aren't helping their sales teams get the best tools or do these processes in the best possible manner. Companies should try to isolate the real issues holding personnel back before implementing educational courses and sales coaching initiatives.