As a sales enablement or learning & development (L&D) professional, you know that sales training is critical. But securing executive buy-in and budget for training requires more than just intuition—it demands a compelling business case backed by data.

The 3 Key Drivers of Effective Sales Training

Mary Flaherty
January 29, 2025

Most sales training disappoints. That's not just an opinion—it's a sobering finding from our latest research. In fact, 67% of respondents rate their organization’s sales training and development as only moderately, slightly, or not at all effective at achieving strong sales performance and productivity.

25 Ways to Maximize Your Sales Enablement Budget in 2025

Erica Schultz
January 15, 2025

Sales enablement leaders are under more pressure than ever. You’re tasked with boosting seller performance, driving revenue growth, and delivering measurable results—all while working with tight budgets and limited resources. In 2025, doing more with less isn’t just a goal; it’s a survival strategy. But here’s the good news: constraints breed creativity. The right strategies can transform limited budgets into big wins, turning challenges into opportunities for innovation and efficiency.

The State of Sales Training and Continuous Learning: Key Findings From New Research

Mary Flaherty
November 13, 2024

Effective sales training is widely acknowledged as a critical success factor for sales organizations. But how many companies are truly excelling in this area? And what distinguishes those with highly effective sales training and development from the rest? The answers may surprise you.

Planning Your Sales Training for 2025: A Step-by-Step Guide

Erica Schultz
October 30, 2024

There's no room for improvisation when it comes to sales training. In a recent study from the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, only 33% of respondents rated their sales training as extremely or very effective, indicating a significant gap for most organizations.1 However, some organizations still get training right. These organizations build training to address specific needs and plan their logistics from start to finish.

How to Make Online Sales Training Engaging

Erica Schultz
September 25, 2024

In today's digital age, online learning has become an integral part of sales training and development. Modern learners, having grown up in an era dominated by digital technology, are accustomed to engaging with content online. They expect learning experiences to be interactive, accessible, and relevant. However, engaging sellers in a virtual environment can still be challenging. As an L&D professional, it's crucial to understand the key components of driving engagement and adoption in online training programs.

Sales Skills Assessments: Building Better Training

Mary Flaherty
June 21, 2024

In today's competitive environment of complex sales, an organization's success is heavily dependent on the skills and performance of its sales team. Sales training is a critical component in equipping sales professionals with the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to effectively engage with buyers, understand their needs, and close deals.

Transforming Sales Enablement: Focus on Seller Behavior Change and Strategic Sales Alignment

Mary Flaherty
February 21, 2024

In the competitive arena of sales, the true game-changer is having a well-trained sales team whose behaviors result in the desired outcomes. Consider the case of a technology firm that revamps its sales strategy to focus on consultative selling. During training, a conversation planning tool is shared that helps reps prepare for needs discovery meetings.

The Nuts and Bolts of Running a Successful Sales Training Program

Mary Flaherty
January 24, 2024

If you're part of a sales enablement team, you know the pressure that comes with shaping a sales force into a team of top performers. To facilitate this transformation, a well-thought-out sales training program is essential. And when it comes to the logistics of running a successful program, there are a lot of moving pieces you must attend to. Here's a helpful summary (and checklist) to ensure you launch a training program that isn't just good, but exceptional.

How to Use a Field Advisory Board in Your Sales Enablement Strategy

Andy Springer
November 8, 2023

In the competitive landscape of B2B sales, organizations are constantly seeking ways to improve their sales training to drive better results. One highly effective approach we’re seeing gain traction among our clients is the establishment of field advisory boards.

Rethinking Self-Study for Sales Enablement

Mary Flaherty
October 11, 2023

Sales enablement teams regularly struggle to provide sellers with the skills and tools needed to get results like building pipelines, closing sales, growing accounts, and increasing win rates. It's a challenge to ensure sales training achieves desired outcomes, whether sales enablement is a team of one or many. Training programs must be developed, facilitators prepped, and programs delivered. Ongoing reinforcement and support must be supplied so learning sticks and sellers apply what they’ve learned to get results. And all this upskilling needs to be repeated when new sellers join the team.

Should You Focus On Short- or Long-Term Sales Training Outcomes?

Mary Flaherty
September 6, 2023

Sales training is an essential part of any successful sales enablement program. However, not all sales training initiatives are created equal. While some programs may produce short-term results, they often fail to deliver long-term success.

Sales Training and Enablement Metrics That Matter

Erica Schultz
June 21, 2023

Don’t be surprised to bump into discussions around metrics at any gathering of sales enablement professionals. Measuring the success of sales training and enablement initiatives is top of mind for these folks, and rightly so.

[Checklist] How to Choose a Sales Training Provider

Erica Schultz
January 25, 2023

When you invest in sales training, you’re committing time and resources with the distinct possibility of failure. From misaligned goals to lackluster adoption, there are many reasons why sales training doesn’t achieve desired results. Proper planning is a must for sales training that works. That means doing your research and finding an effective training provider to partner with and guide you through the process. Fortunately, you can set up your organization for success when it comes to sales training. The 22 green flags in this checklist give you a rubric to analyze potential providers, ask good questions, and form the foundation of your decision making. Download it as a quick reference or refer to our more detailed rationale below.

How to Make Hybrid Sales Training Work

Erica Schultz
November 21, 2022

Want to take this article with you or share with a colleague? . With the rise of virtual training, hybrid workforces, and self-directed learning, what is the role of in-person training? Is in-person sales training dead? Yes and no. It’s true the global pandemic radically changed how sales organizations think about live events, including salesforce onboarding, education, and SKOs that were once the norm. The pandemic challenged sales teams to try new and creative solutions for training, most of them digital-first.

What Is Sales Training?

Mike Schultz
October 26, 2022

Sales Training Defined  Sales training is the process of improving seller capabilities to drive behavior change and maximize sales success. Effective sales training should be viewed, designed, and executed as a change management initiative.

15 Sales Training Techniques for Building Elite Sales Teams

Mary Flaherty
October 12, 2022

During a now-famous interview on the Pierre Berton Show in 1971, Bruce Lee shared a simple philosophy: “be like water.” As fitting as Lee’s advice is for sellers, “be like a sponge” works just as well. To stay ahead, sales teams must continuously absorb new information and develop skills. Ongoing training and coaching and sustained effort over time is crucial. Otherwise, sellers (and their managers) risk not reaching their potential. Fortunately, there are sales training techniques that even the most experienced teams will soak up.

30 Sales Training Ideas for Top-Performing Teams

Mary Flaherty
September 28, 2022

For sellers, routine can be a blessing and a curse. It’s true that doing the same things day in and day out provides structure. It requires discipline, too. But it can also turn into a comfort zone in which many sellers stagnate. This is what makes recurring sales training programs so valuable. Yet even after the most engaging, resonant sales training programs, sellers tend to revert back to what they’re accustomed to doing. Which puts a heavy onus on sales managers.

Sales Training Topics to Drive Results

Mary Flaherty
August 17, 2022

TL;DR? Download the PDF and save it for later. If you’re responsible for designing or implementing sales training for your organization, you know the effectiveness of training varies greatly. It might not be implemented properly, land well with participants, be relevant to sellers’ daily work, or it might be forgotten completely in the days and weeks following the training. Sales training fails more often than it succeeds. But, for those who get it right, the payoffs are substantial.

Unlocking Sales Training: Four Keys to Driving Behavioral Change

Haley Katsman
November 18, 2020

Most people who enter the discipline of sales training and enablement have an intrinsic motivator to help people. They are teachers, inspirers, coaches, and cheerleaders. But sometimes, even the most skilled trainers are faced with obstacles that are difficult to overcome. Training is inherently challenging. Research on The Forgetting Curve shows that within one week, people will have forgotten an average of 90% of the information presented. What's more, training is difficult to facilitate, reinforce, and measure. This reality contributes to more than 25% of salespeople reporting that their training has little or no effect.

Virtual Training Best Practices: Transition, Setup, and Engagement

Andy Springer
July 1, 2020

Virtual training has become a necessity for remote teams. But designing and delivering effective virtual training is the exception more than the norm.

Sales Training Reinforcement: How to Get it Right

Mike Schultz
March 11, 2020

Reinforcement has been a trend in the world of sales training for a while now. All the research data in sales training—and learning and development in general—supports the need for robust reinforcement. But it’s still not happening often enough. According to Aberdeen, fewer than half (44%) of companies formally follow-up initial sales training with reinforcement. At the same time, the companies that do reinforce training see 20% more sellers achieve sales quotas.

Sales Training Best Practices: What World-Class Organizations Do

Dave Shaby
October 23, 2019

In most organizations, it’s easy to make the case that millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars in financial gain can be had through sales improvement. You can affect growth. You can affect competitiveness. You can affect stock price. These are common items on leadership top priority lists.

The Sales Training and Enablement Revolution

Mike Schultz
September 25, 2019

The cliché of clichés to open an article like this is to say change is afoot. So I won't open with "change is afoot." In the world of sales training and enablement, change is explosive. There's a revolution going on in training and sales enablement that organizations can no longer ignore.

Want the Best Sales Training? Focus on These 9 Outcomes

John Doerr
March 7, 2018

When you're considering sales training, it's important to know what results you want to drive. Before any initiative, you need to answer one simple question: What do we want to achieve? There are many possible targeted outcomes of sales training from growing revenue and improving margins to increasing the average size of sale and growing accounts. Make sure whatever sales training initiatives you choose match up with your desired outcomes. As you think about your own sales training efforts, consider these possible results and how to achieve them.

Making the Business Case for Sales Training: New Research on Supporting Top Performance

Mike Schultz
May 24, 2017

Executives are always on a mission to prove Kirkpatrick Level 4 measurement of training: Results. Specifically, they want to know to what degree targeted outcomes occur as a result of the training event and subsequent reinforcement. There is relatively little data on how sales training correlates to business performance and results. That is, until now.

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of B2B Sales Training

Ago Cluytens
January 20, 2015

There's one question I wish I got asked more when working with leaders looking to invest in B2B sales training. That question is, "What will it really take to get the best results?" If you're a seller, you can probably relate to the experience of a well-meaning trainer giving examples from an industry that had nothing to do with yours. Or maybe they didn't have a credible track record to back up their claims. And when the training was over, it was back to business as usual the next morning.

How to Set Up the Best Sales Training

Bob Croston
January 29, 2014

I recently returned from an industry conference. The speakers were excellent and it was great to get away from my desk, connect with the attendees, and have the opportunity to step back and think big picture about what I need to be doing to drive success in my position. I returned with all sorts of notes, to-dos, and grand visions for change.

7 Reasons Why Sales Training Fails

Mike Schultz
February 21, 2012

According to ES Research between 85% and 90% of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days. At the same time, companies are spending billions of dollars on sales training each year. That’s billions of dollars being wasted on limited sales performance impact and only short-term boosts in sales at best. Training can be a disappointment right away when it just doesn’t go well, or it can be a disappointment months later when results don’t materialize. Regardless, sales training strikes out a lot. When it does, it’s usually because of common and predictable reasons. But if you can avoid these mistakes, you can set yourself up for a successful training initiative that leads to increased sales performance and long-term revenue growth. Here are 7 reasons why your sales training might be failing:

How to Build Fluent Product Knowledge and Improve Sales Success

Mike Schultz
November 29, 2011

Salespeople know what they sell, and they sell what they know. When it comes to salesperson knowledge, people know too little about their particular industry, their customers’ needs, and their company’s products and services to be able to sell the full suite of solutions. Without this knowledge they can’t: Ask the right questions to uncover the complete set of customer needs Match the right products and services to those needs Position the value of their company as superior to other options available to the customer

RAIN Group Sales Blog

Get the latest in sales research and content directly to your inbox.

Contact Us