How can you use the 70-20-10 model to create a blended sales coaching program? (2024)

70-20-10 formula reveals that individuals tend to learn ..10% from official training courses whether face to face or webinars. 20% from social interactions with peers, managers and acquaintances. (the 70%) is the most beneficial for individuals because it enables them to discover and refine their skills, make decisions, address challenges and interact with influential people such as managers and heads.The moral of this breakdown, is to focus and emphasize on role play, group activities, contests and presentations.

Being highly Valuable attracts success effortlessly. Value attracts success automatically. The most effective method to learn sales is by using real life learning situations that create value for prospective customers and staff . This will often result in exponential results and learning that sticks. Strive to deliver more Value to family, neighbors, community, and your customers! Becoming more Valuable causes success to naturally follow you without the need to constantly chase it. You will be happier, more resilient, and more successful. Here’s to Your Best Life,Jim RohrbachJim@ThoughtWerks.com

An element of the 70% that is missing here in relation to the article is the actual sales coaching, which is both experiential and provides direct experience in a safe and “simulated” environment. This allows learners (sellers) to learn, develop, and hone their skills so that they perform with increased confidence and capability.The important piece here is learning needs to be experiential, always on, and in the flow of work. It must also happen FOR you, not TO you.

An example I have seen is without proper product knowledge or love towards the product you are selling it is difficult to sell.So we say "with sweet tongue you can sell chillies but with such tongue you can't even sell honey"So what and how you present also matters along with product knowledge .

It can be applied so long as the 70% has a heavy dose of coaching, practice, and feedback that is always on and in the flow of work. Sellers should immediately feel the benefit and be able to apply what they’ve learned in their next customer engagement. This is where learning meets actual behavior change and business impact. Spending 70% of time learning through doing without knowing HOW to do it & investing in getting better at it runs the risk of forming bad habits that are hard to change. For example, if you have a tendency to talk too fast, talk too much, or frame things in your language and not your customers and never get coaching, practice, and feedback to address it, you’ll repeat these same behaviors and get the same results.

I give relevant resources to all my coaching and mentoring teams. Be it a book, a ted talk and some past experiences. Learning is food for the brain to connect the dots and anchor that; immediate practice is required.

The key is to make it:1. Simple, scalable, and repeatable2. In the flow of their work3. Applied to their unique situation4. (Psychologically) Safe, relevant and effective5. Benefits the learner. Happens for them, not too them. (Not a compliance exercise)

Every case is different in my performance coaching and mentoring activities with high-end managers and sales executives.What remains true is that 70 or 80% is about testing, implementing and improving. It is challenging to care for clients and build trust.I remind my sales teams that Always Be Learning, is more important than Always Be Closing.It s the addition of these three steps (more so than percentages) and consistency, that will make a real difference.

I see this as a general guideline rather than a rigid rule. The point is that most time should be spent actually working on the skills and behaviors you’re looking to drive rather than reading or learning about them. Knowledge is helpful, but skill and discipline in how you apply it is where the magic happens.

Agree with using the Kirkpatrick model. Most enablement orgs struggle to move past confidence and capability, but the true holy grail is mapping it to actual business outcomes. In my experience at Google, we were able to measure the key behaviors we were looking to drive and how they correlate with revenue.

The FIRST thing to consider is that the 70-20-10 model is not a requirement, and can be actively deceptive. It is based on research on how people have actually learned in practice, but that is NOT the same as what works best; instead, it means that most people have not received good training or coaching! The elements are not mutually exclusive, either, nor should they be: Research shows that people learn best by cycling through multiple approaches.One example is to provide introductory training for basic knowledge, interweave with on-the-job practice, and coach periodically to address specific job challenges. (Also, sales training is one of the most effective forms of training out there, providing very high behavioral change - use it!)