Well, hello, everybody. It’s Bob Negen. And in this episode of Real Retail TV, we’re going to explore why your sales training doesn’t stick and what you can do about it.

I recently had a conversation with a retailer, a good retailer, and he was lamenting the fact that he kept trying to get his team to sell better, that he tried to train them, but it just wasn’t sticking. No matter what he did, they were reverting to bad habits. And this is common enough that it deserves an episode of Real Retail TV. But before we get into the topic at hand, I want to invite you to a deeper dive about what I’m gonna explore today.

And on February four at noon, there will be a free workshop called make every customer count. It’s a hands on workshop that’s gonna teach you how to teach your team how to sell naturally. It’s free. And if this is important to you, if creating a service culture that sells is important to you, you owe it to yourself to be there.

So why doesn’t sales training stick? And I’ve identified four. There’s more than four, but the four big culprits. Let’s explore them and let’s explore how you get around them.

And the first reason that sales training doesn’t stick is because the owner loses focus.

You know, you understand what a big difference having a great culture, what what we call a service culture that sells. You understand what it would mean to you, what it would mean to your business, what it would mean to your customer’s experience, and what it would do for your sales. You understand it, so you start to do some sales training, but you lose focus. I absolutely understand that you’ve got a million things to do.

You’re busy. You’re distracted. You get pulled here. You get pulled there. You get pulled from everywhere.

But let’s recognize this, that the number one job of your business is to sell stuff. That’s why you exist. You don’t sell stuff, you don’t have a business. You sell a lot of stuff assuming that you do a lot of other things correctly, you make a lot of money.

So staying focused on creating that service culture that sells is so important to your future, yet so often the urgent gets in the way of the importance. So I’m just suggesting that that’s the number one reason that you, I’m assuming you are an owner or if you’re a manager that cares, you get pulled away.

But I’m gonna suggest that creating that service culture that sells, that making your sales training stick is one of the best, most effective ways for you to grow your business. So that’s the first thing, losing focus. So how do you keep your focus? Well, that is up to you. Having a training program that helps you do that, like the Retail Sales Academy is one way. Another way is just simply to make a commitment. Make a commitment to doing the work, making a commitment to the coaching, making a commitment to the meetings, make a commitment to ongoing professional development.

Put it on your calendar and stick to it. Making a commitment to yourself and what you set out to do is what is going to make this work for you.

The second reason it doesn’t work is that does that sales training doesn’t stick, is that it gets treated as an event, not as a process.

So here’s how that scenario plays out. You decide you’re gonna do some sales training. Right? It makes sense. I’m gonna go do this. And so you have a meeting and you plan it all out and you do the sales training and then you believe that you have done what you have needed to do.

Not true.

Sales training is an ongoing event. It’s not an it’s it’s an ongoing process. I’m sorry. Not an event. There’s this thing called a forgetting curve that has been proven by social science, and it says that unless information is reinforced, it basically gets lost in someone’s brain within ninety days.

And I guarantee you this, and if you look at your experience, you’ll know what I’m saying is true, that if you give your team sales training and don’t reinforce it within two weeks at the max, Everybody’s back to their old behaviors. Hi. Can I help you? All the things they shouldn’t do, they’re doing again. So you can’t treat it as a one and done. You have to treat it as a process again, that you make a commitment to.

The third reason your sales training doesn’t stick is you don’t really understand the difference between product training and sales training.

Let me tell you a quick story. Years ago when we first introduced the Retail Sales Academy, I was at a trade show, a pet trade show, and I was there to promote the Retail Sales Academy. We had a booth, I spoke, but then we had a booth. And whenever anybody would come into the booth, we would ask the person, do you do sales training? And nine out of ten of the retailers we asked if they did sales training responded with some variation of, yes, our vendors come in and give us sales training. Yes, we have videos from our vendors that talk about what we sell. And it made me realize right then that there is an important distinction to put into everyone’s mind.

Product training is when you train your people about what you sell, features, benefits, what it does, why it works, all those things.

But there’s a difference between product training, what you sell, and sales training, how to sell what you sell. So you have to understand that they are distinct.

And one of the reasons that sales training loses steam is because you’re doing product training and people aren’t really learning how to sell.

And the final thing that I wanna talk about is sales training doesn’t have that momentum because there is not a process taught, right? You can teach people techniques to sell individual products, but until they understand a framework, a framework that makes it easy for them to remember and makes it simple for them to apply is what makes training effectiveness. I am not a very good golfer. I will admit that.

But I took a lesson with a friend of mine who’s an expert golfer. And the first thing he said to me is, Bob, you have to learn how to approach the ball. And he taught me just how Tiger Woods approach the ball. Right?

He steps back. He looks at it this way, this way, this way, does this, that, the other thing. And then he goes out and he hits the ball. And although I haven’t gotten any better as a golfer since then because I don’t golf very much, when I golf, I still remember that framework.

I I may not hit the ball right. I may make a lot of mistakes, but I set up the shot correctly because I was taught a process. I was taught a system for stepping up to the ball. And so when you teach your team a system, it becomes easier for them to remember.

And as long as you continuously coach and you treat sales training as a process, that it will become easier and easier for them to apply the process, to apply the, you know, the framework. And, you know, we teach the six steps to a perfect purchase.

And, you know, one of the things that I’m so proud of with this system that I developed is it’s incredibly customer focused.

And because it’s a framework that’s incredibly customer focused, when people are taught it and it is constantly reinforced. Again, it’s a process, not an event, that your people become comfortable.

They become comfortable selling and the more comfortable and confident they become, the more natural they become. I’m gonna look at you and tell you that yes, some people are born salesman. I’ll tell you what, I got on the floor of the Mackinac Kite Company and I could sell some kites. But what I realized was that even though it was easy and natural for me, it wasn’t easy and natural for many people on my team.

And so that is why I created the six steps to the perfect purchase. This is why I created a system because just because it was easy for me doesn’t mean it would be easy for them. Recognize this. Selling is a skill. And until you give people that skill, until you train them, educate them, you cannot expect them to be comfortable and confident. But that idea of building this confidence will make a huge, huge, huge difference in your business. So I hope that that helps you think about what you’re doing now and why what you’re doing now may not be as effective as you want it to be.

And I also hope that this short conversation we had, this ten minute conversation exploration that we just had, inspires you to be there on February second at noon. Because I guarantee you that at the end of that hour, you’re gonna go, oh, okay. I understand what I need to do as an owner. I understand what I need to do as a manager to give my team members the confidence and the skills they need to be able to go out on the floor and engage my customers skillfully, give them a great experience, and put a whole bunch of money in the bank.

So I hope to see you there. I hope you found this helpful. I’m Bob Negen, and we’ll see you next week.