B2B Sales Training: How to Make It Stick

One of the most common mistakes organisations make with sales training is treating it as an event rather than a process.

They invest in a programme. The team attends. The feedback is positive. People leave feeling energised and equipped. And then, three months later, nothing has changed.

This is not a training problem. It is a reinforcement problem.

Learning — real learning, the kind that changes behaviour — does not happen in a classroom or on a screen. It happens in the moments after the training, when a seller is in a real conversation with a real customer and has to make a real decision about how to respond.

Those moments are where the learning either sticks or doesn't.

What makes it stick?

Coaching. Specifically, coaching that connects the principles from the training to the actual situations the seller is facing right now. Not generic coaching. Not "how's your pipeline?" coaching. But coaching that asks: "You've got a meeting with this customer next week. What do you know about what they value? What are you going to find out? How are you going to handle it if they push back on price?"

That kind of coaching is what turns training into capability.

It is also, in my experience, the thing that most organisations under-invest in. They spend significant money on the training event and almost nothing on the reinforcement that follows it.

The 12% Club exists precisely to address this. It is a monthly coaching forum designed to maintain the momentum that good training creates — to keep the conversation going, to apply the principles to real situations, and to support the behavioural change that makes a lasting difference.

Because when the training stops, the learning doesn't have to.

Get in touch if you'd like to find out more.