Sales training absorbs significant time and budget, yet sustained improvement remains elusive for most teams. The latest research from Objective Management Group explores a core reason this keeps happening and why training *alone* rarely changes behavior at scale. For sales leaders focused on 2026 priorities, this warrants closer review. @CSO Insights #salestraining #salesdevelopment #salesevaluation
Mike Carroll, Barbara Spector, Tony Cole, Lori Richardson, Ed Marsh 🇺🇸, Darrell Amy - what are your thoughts on "Diagnose before you prescribe"?
Ben Tagoe "Most teams dramatically overestimate how much real coaching actually occurs" is absolutely a main issue here. Organizations are fooling themselves even in the face of their sales team's underperformance. Coaching is a skill set like any other, but it is severely underdeveloped. Let's change coaching to teaching. And then let's say there is not enough sales teaching to cultivate sales acumen in reps. Training and skill development—coaching—are two very different things, and they are often confused. It is much easier to hold a training session than create a learning and development environment that cultivates skill development. Time is also an important consideration to this equation. It is also easy to hold a training session and expect the reps to develop the skills on their own rather than for the organization to invest the time, effort, and energy to cultivate skills.
Key point here Ben - "Training does not drive behavior change on its own. Coaching does....Most Coaching Is Tactical, Not Developmental Even when coaching happens, it often misses the mark. " If I had to choose between a world-class coaching engagement with typical management follow-up and a group read of a decent sales book combined with strong coaching, I'd pick the latter every time. Your further point, that diagnostics can guide the effort, applies equally to training and coaching.
Ben Tagoe this is spot on. Training is not a one and done - it requires consistent reinforcement and continued development in tactical skills and mindset shifts. This is where managers and leadership need to step up and proactively and consistently prioritize time and focus on this with their team. In addition, it commonly necessitates that the manager is sharpening their skills in some key competencies (which OMG measures): coaching, motivating and accountability, in particular!
The sustained improvement gap is the execution gap. Teams measure if reps completed the training. Nobody measures if reps can actually do it under pressure. Knowing the framework and delivering it when a buyer pushes back are completely different skills.
Added skills without behavior or mindset change will do little to sustain performance!!!
Objective Management Group•5K followers
2mohttps://www.objectivemanagement.com/research-blog/research/why-sales-training-fails-without-competency-diagnosis/