Sales training is a £multi-billion industry.
And yet most sales teams still miss targets, forecasts slip, and revenue feels unpredictable.
That isn’t bad luck.
It’s not the economy.
And it’s not because “salespeople just need more motivation”.
Most sales training fails for one simple reason:
It trains people instead of fixing the sales process they work in.
The uncomfortable truth about sales training
Sales training usually focuses on:
- Better questioning
- Better objection handling
- Better closing techniques
All useful skills. None of them sufficient.
Here’s the problem no one likes to say out loud:
skills decay fast when the process is broken.
You can send salespeople on the best course in the world. If they come back to:
- An unclear qualification standard
- A vague definition of a “real opportunity”
- No agreed buying stages
- No standard way of progressing deals
…then whatever they learned will fade within weeks.
Not because they’re lazy.
Because the system pulls them back to old habits.
Sales is a process, whether you admit it or not
Many organisations pretend sales is different.
They treat it as an art, a talent, or a personality trait.
That’s comforting — but it’s wrong.
Sales is a repeatable, measurable process that turns:
- suspects into prospects
- prospects into customers
- customers into repeat revenue
If results depend on having “good salespeople”, you’ve built fragility into the business.
When one person leaves, performance drops.
When another has a bad quarter, forecasts collapse.
When growth is needed, everything slows down.
That’s not a people problem.
That’s a process failure.
What Lean teaches us about sales
Lean thinking doesn’t start with training.
It starts with standard work.
In manufacturing, you don’t train operators first and hope a process emerges.
You design the process, remove waste, reduce variation — then you train people to run it well.
Sales should be no different.
Without standard work in sales:
- Every rep qualifies differently
- Every deal progresses differently
- Every forecast is a guess
Managers end up coaching opinions instead of facts.
Why training alone feels good but delivers little
Sales training without a defined process creates:
- Short-term enthusiasm
- Lots of activity
- Very little sustained improvement
People try new techniques inconsistently.
Managers can’t reinforce behaviour because there’s no baseline.
Results become dependent on individual effort rather than system performance.
That’s why organisations keep buying more training.
They’re treating the symptom, not the cause.
What actually works
Effective sales improvement follows a different order:
- Define the sales process clearly
What has to be true at each stage? What evidence proves progress? - Remove waste from the process
Chasing the wrong prospects, premature proposals, stalled approvals. - Standardise what good looks like
Not scripts — expectations. - Then train people to execute the process well
Training becomes reinforcement, not rescue.
That’s when skills stick.
That’s when coaching works.
That’s when revenue becomes predictable.
A question worth asking
Before you invest in more sales training, ask yourself this:
Could every salesperson in your business describe the sales process the same way — on one page — without arguing?
If the answer is no, training isn’t your priority.
Fix the process first.
Then train people to win inside it.