Teachback: Transforming Sales Training ROI
Post-Easter and drum roll….. it’s event season. Tomorrow, I head to Europe’s leading workplace learning event in London https://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/ , where I’ll explore how skills adoption and AI are impacting sales functions across various work models—from office-based to hybrid and even digital sales nomads.
As I prepare for the conference, I’ve been reflecting on methodologies that have the potential to revolutionise sales training. One approach that particularly stands out is teachback.
In a world where traditional training approaches are failing to deliver results, this deceptively simple methodology offers a compelling solution to a persistent problem.
The uncomfortable truth is that without reinforcement, people forget approximately 70% of what they learn within 24 hours and up to 90% within a week. This “forgetting curve” means the majority of your training investment is essentially evaporating. For sales leaders under pressure to demonstrate ROI on every dollar spent, this reality is sobering.
Most learning management systems focus on tracking course completion rather than knowledge retention or skill application. Your dashboard might show 100% completion rates, but when you listen to sales calls, you discover reps still positioning products incorrectly and struggling with objections.
This dis-connect between completion and capability creates a dangerous blind spot. Let me be clear; Teachback methodology addresses this gap by requiring learners to teach concepts back in their own words. This simple act transforms passive consumption into active demonstration, creating verifiable evidence of understanding. When sales professionals must articulate value propositions, handle objections, or explain complex features through teachback, they develop deeper comprehension and stronger communication skills.
The neuroscience is compelling: people retain only 10% of what they read but an overwhelming 90% of what they teach to others. By activating different brain regions associated with deeper processing, teachback creates stronger neural pathways that make knowledge accessible when it matters most—in front of customers.
What’s exciting is how innovative platforms are now operationalising this methodology. Companies I have engaged and are truly working like www.suada.com have developed mobile-first applications that enable sales professionals to record video demonstrations of their understanding, receive feedback, and build a searchable knowledge repository that preserves organisational expertise.
Organisations implementing teachback report impressive results: 40-60% reduction in time-to-competency for new hires, 15-25% increase in win rates, and significant improvements in deal size and forecast accuracy. The approach creates both immediate performance gains and long-term competitive advantages as the organisation’s collective knowledge becomes more accessible and actionable.
At the conference, I’m looking forward to discovering new approaches to sales training and sharing insights about methodologies like teachback. I’m convinced that the future belongs to organisations that can verify capability, not just track completion. In a world where products are easily matched and features quickly copied, the ability to articulate value clearly and consistently becomes the true competitive edge.
Teachback methodology delivers exactly that—not just the appearance of training, but the reality of capability that drives business results. Let’s go make the magic happen!
