Training Industry Magazine - Winter 2022 - 46

The Evolution of L&D:
From Sales Enablement to Sales Readiness
By Chris Lynch
As the wave of digital transformation
has swelled, businesses have invested
trillions into projects that aim to elevate
the customer experience, grow revenue
or achieve bottom-line efficiencies. In
fact, IDC projects companies will spend
$6.8 trillion on these projects by 2023.
But employees have been left out in the
cold. Approximately 70% of employees
say they don't have a strong enough
mastery of the skills needed to do
their jobs and 87% of executives report
readiness gaps in their organizations.
Sales employees feel this gap
most acutely. As new products and
competitors appear daily, companies
are investing significantly to ramp them
up in their job.
But simply providing a budget and
resources won't work without the right
strategy. Large-scale sales certification
and kickoff events create an initial
burst of knowledge transfer and skills
development to sellers - but then they
fall off in effectiveness in the following
weeks because they are designed simply
for completion, not knowledge retention.
In fact, according to a Gartner survey, B2B
sales reps forget 70% of the information
that they learn within a week of training,
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and 87% will forget it within a month. Many
call this the forgetting curve.
This knowledge erosion contributes
to a mediocre sales team. Forrester
reported recently that, between 2011
and 2019, the average seller quota
attainment actually dropped from 63%
to 43%. Faced with an underperforming
team, sales leadership is forced to
churn and burn through sales reps,
relying even more heavily on their top
performers. All of this may explain why
90% of sales training programs fail
after 120 days.
than not, the content isn't aligned to the
sales process, and thus, isn't delivered
at the right moment when it would have
the most impact. So, it turns out that the
massive content surge is a massive waste
of time: 90% of sales reps never use it
anyway, and knowledge gaps persist.
While L&D and
sales enablement are
functions, sales readiness
is a strategy.
Businesses have also tried to address
the enablement challenge with content
surges. Often led by marketing, this type
of program throws content at sellers at
every turn. The problem? More often
With traditional approaches like these
clearly failing, it's time for businesses to
address their enablement challenge with
a fundamental change. Rather than focus
on traditional learning and development
(L&D) for sellers specifically, they need to
embrace the discipline of sales readiness.
While L&D and sales enablement are
functions, sales readiness is a strategy.
When implemented correctly, sales
readiness provides comprehensive,
personalized and adaptive ways to forge
the skills and behaviors that today's sellers
need to succeed.
Let's take a closer look at sales readiness
and how revenue leaders can create it.
Creating Readiness
in 5 Steps
Simply stated, sales readiness is a
continuous state of excellence in
growing revenue, achieved through

https://www.trainingindustry.com/wiki/content-development/forgetting-curve/ https://www.forrester.com/blogs/sales-success-not-about-hitting-quota/ https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prMETA47037520 https://www.forrester.com/blogs/sales-success-not-about-hitting-quota/ https://www.mobilelocker.com/blog/2019/07/90-percent-of-marketing-content-never-gets-used/#:~:text=Sales%20reps%20never%20use%20up,sales%20reps%20never%20use%20them https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/role/learning-development https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-organization-blog/reskilling-in-the-age-of-covid-theres-no-better-time-than-the-present https://www.business2community.com/sales-management/sales-training-programs-improve-teams-selling-skills-01811301 https://www.business2community.com/sales-management/sales-training-programs-improve-teams-selling-skills-01811301

Training Industry Magazine - Winter 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - Winter 2022