Because the nature of selling is very much like athletic competition where knowledge and skills must be mastered to the level athletes call Muscle Memory. Otherwise, under the competitive pressure of selling, the salesperson will revert to their old behavior. To be successful in the competitive sales environment requires a level of mastery that can only be obtained with personalized instruction and repetitive individualized practice. Finally, the practice must be with real world scenarios where salespeople record verbal responses so both the content and the verbal delivery can be evaluated.

Learning management systems play the components of a course in the same way to everyone regardless of their prior knowledge, rate at which they absorb information, or the amount of practice they need to reach mastery. Instead of real world simulations that require effective verbal responses, an LMS asks multiple choice questions. In competitive selling situations, prospects don’t ask multiple choice questions.

In head-to-head tests where the exact same course content on overcoming objections was delivered on an LMS and in the BrainX system, the LMS group saw no increase in performance because the salespeople didn’t master the material and therefore reverted to their old behavior. As a result the time the sales team invested in training was totally wasted. On the other hand, the group that used BrainX mastered the material, changed their behavior and produced a 22.5% increase in sales.