Making Training Stick

Many companies invest in training programs that initially seem promising, but over time their impact fades, leaving little lasting value.

In this post, Dean will explore four strategies to ensure that your training investment creates long-term benefits and potentially even drives cultural change within your organization. By implementing these techniques, you can transform your training programs into enduring assets that deliver ongoing value for your company and its employees.

To see how we make our training stick, check out our GROW-it and WIN-it programs.

How to Make Training Stick

One of the biggest challenges with professional training programs is that the value often fades over time. The question is: how do you make training stick? How do you ensure it creates long-term behavior change and sustained impact rather than being a one-off event?

From what I’ve seen, there are four core strategies that make a real difference:

  1. Practice regularly.
  2. Develop internal champions.
  3. Emphasize simple, applicable concepts.
  4. Build peer or cohort groups.

1. Practice Regularly

Skills only become second nature through practice. At SagePresence, we call this Presence in Practice. We design sessions that create a safe environment to rehearse communication and confidence skills—enough pressure to feel real, but structured so participants receive actionable, constructive feedback. Over time, those skills move closer to muscle memory and start showing up in real-world client interactions.

2. Develop Internal Champions

We often refer to these as Presence Champions—team members who are empowered to reinforce key principles after the training is over. They’re not trainers, but internal advocates who help keep the learning alive. With clear authority and a simple coaching framework, they can remind colleagues of what works, facilitate practice sessions, and model strong leadership presence within the organization.

3. Emphasize Simple, Applicable Concepts

Effective training should simplify complex ideas into usable tools. For example, our storytelling model—problem, solution, outcome—takes a deep topic and distills it into something you can apply in any meeting or presentation. The goal is to ensure participants can recall

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