The Importance of a Rep's "Learning Profile"
and Why It's Worth Knowing Yours
A friend of mine who is a professor turned me onto a brief online test he suggested we all should take, which shows us our most effective ways of learning. It took about 20 minutes and generated a learning profile, which measures how people actually take in and process new information.
There are four ways people learn:
Visual: learns best through symbolic/graphic information: charts, diagrams, flowcharts, color-coding, spatial layouts. Does not include video or photos.
Aural: learns best through listening and talking: discussion, being talked through something, explaining ideas out loud, phone calls, audio.
Read/Write: learns best through the written word: lists, manuals, bullet points, documents, glossaries, reading and writing things out.
Kinesthetic: learns best through hands-on experience: trial and error, real examples, demonstrations, practice, doing the actual task rather than reading or hearing about it. Video is a split between aural and kinesthetic.
Turns out I’m bimodal, Aural and Kinesthetic. I need to talk things through and I need to try things hands on before it clicks. A binder full of scripts and a slide deck full of bullet points does almost nothing for me. Put me on a call, let me hear how someone else handles an objection, then hand me the platform and let me poke around in it myself, and I’ll retain it in a fraction of the time.
Here’s the problem. Most sales training and onboarding is built for one type of learner. It leans heavily on the written word: onboarding docs, playbooks, scripts to memorize. That works great for someone with a strong Read/Write preference. It does very little for someone who’s Visual and needs a diagram of the sales process, or someone who’s Aural and needs to sit in on real calls and talk it through afterward, or someone Kinesthetic who needs to just get in the product and break things before it makes sense.
None of these reps are weaker learners. They just take in information differently, and if you only train one way, you’re only reaching a fraction of your team effectively.
The fix isn’t complicated. Give people options. Some reps should watch demo recordings. Some should shadow calls and talk through what they heard. Some need to just run a demo themselves, badly, a few times, before it sinks in. Identify the mode rather than force one mode on everybody.
Honestly, this isn’t just a sales training problem. Our entire education system runs on a Read/Write and lecture heavy model, and we wonder why so many capable kids get labeled as struggling students. Some of them just needed to build it, discuss it, talk through it and try it. There is a huge gap here that sales teams should capitalize on.