The purpose of ASTD’s The State of Sales Training, 2012 is to provide insight into sales training efforts within various organizations so that members of the sales training community can tailor their programs to help each sales team member reach his or her full potential. The Study’s findings are divided into four key topics:

• sales training personnel

• sales training and performance

• sales training efforts

• expenditures

Overall, the most training hours were spent on selling skills and product information.

Some other key findings include:

• Sales management must be prepared to lead, and demonstrate the skills they expect from their staff

• Sales representatives have unique training needs; they need training on a more need-to-know basis

• Sales training is most often commonly delivered in instructor-led courses, via Web 2.0 technologies (an array of applications, social media tools, and technologies), or hands-on methods.

• Spending for sales training from respondents, in comparison to industry standards for training and development, were quite similar.

For more of the Study’s findings, the complete report and whitepaper are available on the ASTD Store. The executive summary is free to download. Please fill out this form and receive your free executive summary.