I have built trainings that got great scores and changed nothing. More than once. Probably more than I am comfortable admitting in a newsletter that has my name on it.
The completion rate looks great. The survey says "loved the interactive elements." The sales leader sends a note. You have a nice Thursday. And then the next pipeline review has the exact same three complaints it always has, and nobody mentions the training, and you quietly update the LMS report and start building the next one.
This week is about why that keeps happening and what to actually do about it. Bloom's Taxonomy, the question nobody asks before anything gets built, and the coaching scorecard that is, by design, the thing that makes training actually stick.
This Week on the Blog
New Post · GTM Enablement
Everyone Passed the Training. Nothing Changed. Here Is Why.
Sam's training deck was genuinely good. Forty-seven slides. Real call recordings. A quiz that averaged 91%. The sales leader sent a note that said "this is exactly what we needed." Six weeks later, the pipeline review had the same three complaints it always had and nobody mentioned the training once. She hadn't built the wrong thing. She'd built the right thing for the wrong target. Bloom's Taxonomy explains why, and what to actually build instead.
Read the full postFree Tool · Apply-Level Enablement
The 4.0 Coaching Scorecard
This is Apply-level enablement. Not a training. Not a quiz. A weekly inspection of the actual behavior you are trying to change: handoff quality, discovery depth, territory prioritization, POV development. The behavior that gets inspected is the behavior that improves. That is the whole mechanism. Run it in your next 1:1 and see what you've actually been measuring versus what the business needs.
Read the full postRun This Monday
Ask this question before you build anything. Ever again.
Before your next training request turns into a slide deck that gets great survey scores and changes nothing downstream, run this three-step check.
- 01
1. Ask: how good do you actually need them to be?
Not "what do you want them to know." How good do they need to perform, under pressure, in the real environment. That question determines whether you need an hour or six weeks.
- 02
2. Map it to Bloom's. Remember and Understand, or Apply?
A training gets you to levels one and two. Apply requires practice, specific feedback, manager coaching in the weekly cadence, and a standard the rep knows before they are held to it. Name which target you are actually designing for.
- 03
3. Have the conversation before the build, not after the pipeline review.
"A one-hour training gets them to Remember and Understand. If we need them to Apply this under pressure on real calls, that is a different investment. How good do you actually need them to be by when?" That is not resistance. That is the most strategic sentence in the room.
70%
Of new information is forgotten within 24 hours. Up to 90% within a week. That is not a content problem. That is a design problem. You cannot train your way to behavior change. You have to build the system that reinforces it.
Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve · The case for Apply-level design
Unsolicited Recommendations
Book · Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
A scientist wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there or what the mission is, and has to figure out how to save Earth by solving one very specific, very interesting problem. It is the best kind of book: funny, genuinely smart, and impossible to put down. Nothing to do with sales. Everything to do with what it feels like to diagnose a problem from scratch with no playbook and limited resources. Which is also the first 90 days of any good leadership role, but that connection is optional.
Amazon
Podcast · Negotiate Anything, Kwame Christian
The most downloaded negotiation podcast in the world, which is either a credential or a sign that everyone is in a lot of difficult conversations. Kwame Christian covers negotiation strategy, conflict resolution, and persuasion in a way that translates almost perfectly to sales: how to handle objections without caving, how to have the conversation that nobody wants to start, how to get to yes without making the other person feel like they lost. The episode on having hard conversations with stakeholders alone is worth the subscribe.
Apple Podcasts
Book · Multipliers, Liz Wiseman
Two types of leaders: ones who multiply the intelligence and capability of the people around them, and ones who diminish it. The research Wiseman ran found that Diminishers use, on average, only 48% of the people's intelligence around them. Multipliers use 95% or more. This is not a feel-good leadership book. It is a deeply useful diagnostic for what kind of leader you are actually being versus what kind you think you are being. Relevant to every manager development conversation in the last three newsletters.
Amazon
One Bad Joke
I built a training on active listening. Nobody listened.
I'm choosing to see this as a learning moment.
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