To give you some context, OMG’s data goes back more than 30 years, and the assessment is independently validated on a regular basis. Their newest validity study, run across more than 3,000 salespeople, is their largest yet (read more here). No assessment is perfect; human behavior is too complex for that. But OMG earns the confidence its clients put in it, and it’s the best sales assessment I’ve seen in my 30+ year career.

Here’s why that’s important. As a partner, I had access to run reports against OMG’s database and slice the data multiple ways. That access gave me an idea for the webinar: pull ten years of competency data for salespeople assessed in Wholesale Distribution, then query the same ten-year window across every vertical OMG measures. This would allow me to report how distribution compared.

• Worth flagging: the “all verticals” comparison group includes distribution sellers too. I couldn’t isolate them out. If I could have, the gap you’re about to see would likely be wider.

What I found wasn’t flattering. Distribution lagged the broader market, though not because of mindset or coachability. Sellers were willing, and open to coaching. The gap was in the selling competencies themselves, the trainable, coachable stuff. I built that into the 2023 webinar, along with what distribution leaders could do about it.

Fast-forward to 2026. DSG invited me back to present another State of Distribution Sales webinar. I was hopeful going in that the data might have improved for distributors, but not particularly optimistic. Many distributors don’t invest in sales enablement or sales training in a way that materially moves performance, and three years is roughly the window it takes a large sales force to carry a methodology from adoption to mastery, if the investment is there. So, I reran the comparison, this time able to line 2023 up against 2026 using the same methodology.

Almost nothing had moved.

The Five Big Skill Gaps

There’s a lot more detail in the analysis, but the short story is this:

Five selling competencies separate distributor sellers from the broader market by the widest margins, and each one has a predictable pattern behind it.

Average sellers do average things. The top 4%—the elite performers OMG’s data identifies at the very top, and the same kind of performer I’ve spent sixteen years studying in my own top-performer analyses—are far more deliberate and nuanced. Here’s what I’m calling “the five big skill gaps”:

• Hunting: Most sellers open a prospecting call, email, or meeting leading with their company, their catalog, their price. The top performers lead with a problem a similar buyer already had, the outcome they helped that buyer reach, a brief mention of how, then a check for relevance before going any further.
• Reaching Decision-Makers: This is where multi-threading either happens on purpose or doesn’t happen at all. Work the one friendly contact who returns your calls, and you’ll stall the moment that contact changes jobs or loses influence. The sellers who reliably get to decision-makers map everyone touching the deal, by influence and by attitude toward the seller, and work out what each person needs before asking for anything.
• Relationship Building: Building relationships and trust is worth a second look, because most distributors would say they’re already great at it. The data says otherwise. On the relational half (empathy, kindness, active listening) distribution is close to parity with the rest of the market. Nobody needs to teach distribution sellers how to be likable. The real gap sits on the cognitive half: judgment, consulting skills, critical thinking, turning data into insight. Most sellers think relationship means friendliness. The best ones know it’s servant leadership, delivering value from the buyer’s perspective and making people feel genuinely understood.
• Consultative Selling: This critical competency is the lowest-scoring of these five in distribution, and the lowest of all ten competencies across every vertical OMG measures. Most sellers do light discovery and present or quote something. That’s not consulting. It’s order-taking. Real consultative selling means assessing the current state, the desired future state, and the gap between them before proposing anything. Distribution being lowest here is also the best opportunity on this list, since almost nobody in the market has closed this gap either.
• Value Selling: Selling value comes down to one question: do you know what each stakeholder in a complex deal with multiple decision makers truly cares about? Most conversations stay at specs, availability, and price, because that’s easy and safe. The sellers who preserve margin know each stakeholder’s primary value driver, whether that’s a financial or operational metric, a smoother process, alignment with their mission, or something personal to them, and they speak in those terms specifically. It’s buyer-centric, and it’s learnable. It just isn’t happening consistently.

What Closes These Gaps

Naming a skill gap doesn’t close it.

Each of these five has specific skills and tools behind it, and every one of them is trainable. Here’s the short version, one for each gap.

• Hunting: the POSE Value Story. POSE stands for Problem, Outcome, Solution, Explore. Describe a problem a similar buyer had, share the outcome you helped them reach, briefly mention how, then ask if it makes sense to explore further. You only get one value proposition, but you get a POSE story for every problem you solve. That’s a much bigger toolkit, and it means you open with something relevant to the buyer instead of a pitch about you and your company.

• Reaching Decision-Makers: navigating the buyer landscape. People often call this a relationship map, which is fair shorthand, but the buyer landscape is more than a chart of names. You’re plotting everyone involved by influence level and attitude toward you, identifying who’s a champion, a coach, a gatekeeper, a neutral party, or a detractor, and working out what each one needs to move forward. You can’t reach a decision-maker you haven’t identified, and the route up usually runs through someone who already trusts you.

• Relationship Building: the Human Differentiators and ACC. Start with what buyers say about us. Only 33% feel their sellers are well-informed about their business, and buyers think just 25% of sales reps are effective at engaging with executives (a juxtaposition of data from CSO Insights and ValueSelling Associates). Buyers do not feel understood.
  
  The Human Differentiators are the capabilities AI can’t replicate and buyers still want from a person: empathy, active listening, judgment, consulting skills, critical thinking, ethical persuasion, connecting dots, and turning data into insight.
  
  ACC is the active listening model built to close that understanding gap directly. Acknowledge what the buyer said with an empathy statement. Clarify with questions. Confirm by summarizing and asking them to verify you got it right. Do that consistently and buyers feel understood, because they actually are.

• Consultative Selling: a structured situation assessment with COIN-OP. COIN-OP covers Challenges and Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, and Priorities. Run it with ACC and you peel the onion, getting past surface symptoms to root causes.

The average seller skims the rock across the pond.
Top performers do a deep dive.

Average sellers hear a stated need and they present, quote, or propose. Going deeper does two things at once: the buyer feels deeply understood, which almost no one delivers, and you learn what really matters and where you can genuinely help. Watch the Impacts especially. Most sellers jump from a challenge straight to a need, skipping the part that builds urgency and proves understanding.

• Selling Value: know each stakeholder’s value driver. There are four, and different people in the same deal care about different ones. Business Value is the impact on financial or operational metrics: revenue, margin, fill rate, uptime. Execution Value is improving processes and experiences, whether that means removing friction or making something work better than it did before. Purpose Value is alignment with the organization’s mission, values, or strategic objectives. Personal Value is the impact on that individual: their workload, their credibility, their career. Learn which one a given stakeholder cares about, then talk in those terms.

None of this is innate talent. It’s all learnable. That’s what makes three flat years so frustrating.

How This Maps to My Top-Performer Analyses

I didn’t pull concepts like POSE, the Human Differentiators, COIN-OP, or Value Drivers out of thin air. They came out of twelve Top-Performer Analyses I’ve conducted over sixteen years, studying what the very best sellers do differently from everyone else. The patterns kept repeating across industries, so I built them into a sales methodology, The CoNavigator Method for B2B Sales Mastery.

This is one of the things I’ve enjoyed about working with OMG. We have two different bodies of evidence and the same gaps: my research keeps turning up the same behaviors that separate top performers, and OMG’s data keeps confirming distribution specifically hasn’t closed them.

That same validity study also showed something specific to this piece. Of the three competency groups OMG measures, Tactical Skills, the learned, executable side of selling that the five gaps above belong to, had the strongest correlation to actual job performance. Stronger than Will to Sell (a seller’s desire, commitment, and motivation to succeed). Stronger than Sales DNA (the underlying beliefs and traits that either support sales success or sabotage it, like needing approval or being uncomfortable talking about money). The category distribution has failed to close for three years is also the one that most predicts higher performance.

The Role Sales Managers Play

It’s one thing to define gaps or even determine what will close them. Important work, but incomplete. It’s quite another thing to close those gaps and improve sales performance. This is where sales manager engagement is critical.

Your frontline sales managers are a force multiplier. They’re the single strongest performance lever you have, and the change agents you need to truly transform your sales force.

That said, the sales rep owns their development, and their manager is like their guide or Sherpa. Both are accountable in different ways. As part of being that guide, managers should have a full sales coaching system available. I built that system out of the same top-performer analyses, since I included frontline sales managers in the research. It covers the inputs, the roles each person plays, a coaching process, a set of tools, the outputs you should expect, and four models.

The four models are what managers use to solve the gap identified: one for leading individual coaching sessions, a Field Training model for knowledge gaps, a Sales Coaching model for execution gaps (also used for counseling, when the issue is mindset or a self-limiting belief rather than skill), and a Feedback model for debriefing what you observed. Each has its own steps. I’ve written about the full system before, and there are links in the Resources section below.

That full system is what creates radical change, real performance improvement, and a coaching culture where managers and reps stay in a genuine cadence of continuous improvement. It’s also not something a manager adopts overnight.

So, for today, we’re going to skinny it down one step further, to three moves that will start closing the gaps above right now, while you build toward the full system. Call it a kickstart.

The Three Moves for Managers

First, decide whether you’re looking at a knowledge gap or an execution gap. If a rep doesn’t know what to do, why it matters, or how to do it, train it. If they know what to do and they’re trying, but they’re not good enough at it yet, training again wastes everyone’s time. Coach it instead. Most managers get this backward more often than they’d guess: they re-explain things to reps who already understand them, and skip the practice reps need to get better at doing them.

Once you know which one you’re dealing with, we’re back to the three moves:

• Practice with understanding checks: Role-play the skill until the rep can do it under pressure, not just describe it back to you. A rep who can explain a POSE story in a meeting isn’t the same as a rep who can deliver one on a cold call. Don’t move on until they’ve proven it in the room, in their own words, to their own satisfaction as much as yours.
• Feedback with the SOIL model: Debrief what you observed so it’s usable: Situation, Observe, Impact, Learn. Specific, not vague. “Good job on that call” changes nothing. “When the buyer mentioned budget, you jumped straight to price instead of asking what budget was protecting” changes something.

• Rolling reviews until it sticks: One good coaching conversation doesn’t fix a skill gap any more than one good workout builds a habit. Schedule the follow-up, check whether the behavior actually held, and stay on that same skill until it does. Then help the rep pick the next gap.

What Managers Can Inspect

Each of these gaps produces something concrete a manager can inspect, so you’re not guessing whether your coaching is working. Relationship building and consultative selling are combined here, because they share the record from a discovery call, showing both how well the rep understood the buyer’s situation and how well they connected with the buyer while doing it.

Here are four things to look at:

• For hunting: look at the rep’s POSE stories. Do they have more than one? Does each one start with the buyer’s problem, or does it start with your solution? How did they personalize it, and was it relevant to that buyer?
• For reaching decision-makers: look at their relationship maps. How many contacts do they have on a deal? Which roles are missing, compared to who is normally involved? Do they know what each person needs to move forward or grow the account (aka, buying process exit criteria)?
• For relationship building and consultative selling: look at their situation assessments and the COIN-OP information they gathered during discovery. Are the Impacts filled in, or did the rep jump straight from Challenges to Needs, skipping the parts that allow them to build a compelling business case? Did they use ACC to peel the onion and demonstrate understanding? Did the solutions presented align to the needs and desired outcomes?
• For selling value: ask the rep to give you a value driver read on each stakeholder in a live deal. Can they name what that person truly cares about, in that person’s own words, not generic language from internal product documentation?

By the way, if you lead a smaller team, lead an inside team, or work as a player-coach, you can still inspect all four of these. The methods and tools remain the same. (And while we’re at it, CEOs and CROs, it’s time we put the player-coach model to bed. Managers can’t be force multipliers and maximize rep development and coaching impact when they’re also working as a seller. Food for thought.)

Closing Thoughts

Three flat years of skill development isn’t bad luck. It’s what happens when a rep’s development and a manager’s guidance never turn into a habit on either side, meaning a repeatable, replicable process they both follow.

Closing these skill gaps doesn’t mean waiting until you can implement a new sales methodology or roll out the full sales coaching system (although you should eventually ensure you have both in place). It doesn’t mean a rep waiting for someone else to develop them. It means a rep is willing to own their gaps, and a manager is willing to guide them through the three moves: practice, effective feedback, and staying on it until the skills improve and the numbers follow.

The ball’s in your court now. Show us your moves, managers!

Resources

Links already in the body, repeated for convenience

• Objective Management Group—What Actually Predicts Sales Performance (the 2026 validity study): https://www.objectivemanagement.com/research-blog/research/what-actually-predicts-sales-performance/
• Objective Management Group (Sales Force Diagnostics | Hiring Assessments): https://www.objectivemanagement.com/

Sales methodology

• eBook: How to Choose and Implement a Sales Methodology That Delivers Results

Sales coaching system, referenced in “The Role Sales Managers Play”

• 4 Coaching Models That Sales Managers Need to Master (DSG)
• Your Sales Managers Think They’re Coaching, But They’re Probably Not (DSG)
• Sales Coaching Excellence Is a Competitive Differentiator (DSG)

Other related articles on Distribution Strategy Group

• The Influential Power of Storytelling in Sales
• How to Navigate the Buyer Landscape
• The Combined Power of AI and Human Differentiators in Sales
• Discovery Skills + Patience: The Superpowers of Selling

How to Improve Opportunity Management and Increase Win Rates

The post Three Years, No Progress: Why Distributor Sales Skills Haven’t Moved Since 2023 appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

Then his wife got a diagnosis that changed everything. Ray wants to be home, and no reasonable person would argue with him. Three years just became four months.

Now, let’s watch that same announcement land in two different companies.

One Announcement, Two Companies

In Distributor A, the news sets off a scramble. Nobody has mapped Ray’s relationships, so nobody knows which accounts are held together by Ray alone. The customer relationship management system (CRM) has contact names, phone numbers, and not much else. There’s no successor identified, so the region manager starts interviewing while Ray runs out the clock. The eventual handoff is a spreadsheet, a few joint calls squeezed into Ray’s last three weeks, and a sincere “call me if you have questions” that expires the first time Ray’s boat gets decent cell coverage.

In Distributor B, the same announcement still stings. Four months instead of three years is a sprint, no matter how prepared you are. A structured transition program doesn’t prevent the surprise, and it doesn’t eliminate the initial panic that comes with an accelerated departure like this. But in Distributor B, Ray’s key relationships are already mapped. His top accounts have more than one person from the company in them. His account plans are living documents, not annual paperwork. The CRM actually says something useful. The scramble in Distributor B is about accelerating a plan that exists. The scramble in Distributor A is an archaeology dig.

The difference between these two companies isn’t luck, and it isn’t Ray. It’s a system. The rest of this article is about how to become Distributor B.

The Silver Tsunami Has a Date Attached

However they refer to it, distribution leaders have worried about the silver tsunami for years, usually in the context of ownership transitions and the labor force in the warehouse and on the counter. It applies just as much to the sales force, and the numbers say it’s not a distant problem.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data (compiled by Data USA), the average age of wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives is roughly 46. More telling: the three largest age cohorts in the occupation are 50–54, 55–59, and 45–49, which together make up more than a third of the entire workforce. And in most distributors, age and book size correlate. Your most seasoned reps often hold your largest accounts, because those relationships took decades to build.

Investors treat the average age of a senior leadership team as a yellow flag when it’s high and there’s no succession plan in place. The same logic applies to your sales force. If a third of your revenue is managed by people within striking distance of retirement, and you have no transition discipline in place, that’s not a talent issue. That’s an enterprise risk sitting in plain sight on your org chart.

Here’s what makes this problem sneaky: accounts rarely leave at the retirement party.

They drift. A category moves to another supplier. A location starts buying elsewhere. A new project gets quoted with someone else “just to compare.” Meanwhile, the account still shows active in your system, still orders regularly, and still looks fine on the report. The revenue erosion happens one product line and one location at a time, which is exactly why nobody notices until the annual review, when someone asks why a $2 million account is now a $1.3 million account. (Wallet-share erosion deserves its own article, and I plan to write it. For now, know that a botched transition is one of its most reliable causes.)

What a Sloppy Handoff Really Costs

And let’s be honest about the competitive dynamics. Your competitors know Ray retired. Some of them sent a card. The months after a veteran rep leaves are the single best window a competitor will ever get to break into an account you’ve held for twenty years, because the one thing protecting that account, the personal relationship, just left the building. (Sidebar: this is amplified when the average age of your buyers mirrors the average age of your sellers—a separate but related risk that isn’t often discussed.)

Retirement Forecasting Is Succession Planning for the Sales Force

Companies run succession planning for executives. They identify critical roles, forecast likely departures, develop successors, and review the plan annually. Almost nobody does this for the sales force, even though a veteran AM’s departure can move revenue as fast or faster than most executive exits.

Retirement forecasting is the succession planning of the silver tsunami. It means maintaining a forward view of your sales team: who is within five years of likely retirement, which of their accounts matter most, and which of those accounts depend on a single relationship. It means starting transition work 12 to 24 months out, not 90 days out, so there’s a runway for mentoring, introductions, and knowledge transfer while the veteran is still engaged and earning.

One caution on ownership: the frontline sales manager should feel real accountability here and should actively support the incoming AM. But like leadership succession planning, this can’t be delegated down and forgotten. Executives and human resource (HR)/Talent own protecting the company. If retirement forecasting lives only in a manager’s head, it retires when the manager does.

Map the Landscape, Multithread the Accounts, and Solve the Comp Problem

This is the heart of the work, and it has three parts.

Map the Landscape

First, map the current state of the account. In The CoNavigator Method, I call this Buyer Landscape Mapping: documenting who the players are in each key account, their level of influence, their attitude toward you, and their role in decisions. Most companies, when they attempt this at all, do it blindfolded, spun around, and overly confident. The map gets built from assumptions and optimism rather than evidence. I jokingly call Buyer Landscape Mapping the business version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey: the skill is in placing every stakeholder and their buyer type and buyer role, in their correct spot on the map, considering those factors and their influence and attitude. Not by guessing, assuming, or hoping.

For each of the veteran’s key accounts, name the stakeholders, score the relationships truthfully, and ask the uncomfortable question: if Ray disappeared tomorrow, who in this account would take our call? If the answer is one name, or no name, you’ve found your exposure. A seven-figure account hanging on a single handshake is not a relationship. It’s a liability.

Multithread the Accounts

Second, multithread before the transition, not during it. Introduce the successor while the veteran still has equity to spend. Add technical specialists, inside sales partners, and executive sponsors to the accounts that matter most, so the customer experiences a team rather than a person. And keep qualifying. Ongoing qualification means watching for changes: new decision makers, shifting priorities, a competitor suddenly getting meetings. Those changes matter in any account. During a transition, they’re everything.

Solve the Comp Problem

Third, deal with the money, because this is where good transition plans go to die. The veteran has no incentive to hand off accounts early. In many cases, a veteran’s final working years are also their highest-earning years, and Social Security calculates its benefit from a lifetime’s highest-earning years. Cutting Ray’s commission in year 31 doesn’t just cost him current income — it can quietly shrink one piece of his retirement income, on top of whatever else he’s counting on. Meanwhile, the incoming AM won’t spend a year developing someone else’s book for peanuts. And distributor margins don’t leave a lot of room to pay two people generously on the same revenue.

There’s no free lunch or Easy button here, so stop looking for one. What works is a deliberate overlap structure: split books with a glide path that shifts commission gradually from veteran to successor, transition bonuses tied to retention milestones (measured 12 and 24 months after the handoff), and paying the veteran explicitly for mentoring and knowledge transfer as part of the job, not as a favor. It costs money. So does losing the account. Price both and decide. And when in doubt or concerned, engage an expert compensation firm to help you develop a plan that your leadership team and board or investors can live with.

The default knowledge transfer plan in many distributors is “ride along for three months.” Loose plans like this leave too much to chance.

Capture What Ray Knows Before It Drives Away

Structured knowledge transfer means a repeatable, account-by-account debrief: the history of the relationship, commitments made (formal and informal), pricing agreements and how they came to be, service quirks and workarounds, each stakeholder’s goals and pet peeves, and every open thread. Treat it like the interviews you’d conduct if you were writing the biography of the account, because that’s what you’re doing.

Then make it findable. Sales enablement platforms like Allego (I’ve worked with them since 2017 and fully endorse them) and similar content management systems are built for exactly this: short, searchable videos of Ray walking through each major account, in his own words, that the new AM can revisit six months later when a situation Ray predicted actually happens. A binder gets written once and never opened. A series of three-minute, searchable videos gets watched, during transition and on-demand, as needed.

Make Your CRM the Brain of the New AM

Here’s a simple test: pick one of your veteran’s top ten accounts and read the CRM record. If a stranger read it, could they have an intelligent conversation with that customer next week?

For most distributors, the honest answer is no. And that’s the problem in one sentence: if it isn’t in the CRM, it retires with the rep.

CRM data quality is usually framed as an administrative annoyance, something sales managers nag about and reps grudgingly minimally comply with. Reframe it. Complete account records, documented relationships, buying history with context, and current opportunities are succession assets. The company that treats CRM hygiene as a succession issue builds a brain the new AM can actually use. The company that doesn’t hand its new AM a phone book.

Account Planning Makes Handoffs Survivable

If you’ve read my work here before, you knew this was coming. Living account plans, the kind that get reviewed and updated in a regular cadence rather than built annually and filed, change the nature of a transition entirely. (I laid out the full process in How to Build Key Account Plans That Get Results, right here on the Distribution Strategy Group blog.)

With a real account plan, the new AM inherits the account’s history and direction already worked out: the COIN-OP analysis (Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, Priorities), the PCF-L account objective (Past Performance, Current Performance, Future Potential, and Likelihood — the analysis that determines whether an account should be Acquired, Grown, Retained, Reactivated, or Retired), the buyer landscape and relationship map, the growth strategy, current initiatives, and the open risks. The transition becomes a driver change, not a rebuilt race car on a new track. The race, the car, and the course don’t change just because someone new is behind the wheel. Without a plan, the new AM isn’t taking over a lap in progress — they’re handed the keys to a car they’ve never driven, on a track nobody mapped for them, mid-race.

Don’t Forget Who This Is Hardest On: Your Customers

Amid all the internal planning, remember that the customer didn’t ask for any of this. From their side, a trusted advisor is leaving and an unknown is arriving. Handled badly, a transition feels like a downgrade they have to tolerate. Handled well, it can actually strengthen the relationship.

Two concepts from my value drivers work apply here.

Execution Value is the value of making things run smoother: reducing friction in day-to-day processes and interactions. Purpose Value is alignment with the customer’s mission and strategic objectives. A well-run transition delivers both. Low friction, because the customer never has to educate the new AM on their history, their pricing, or their quirks. And genuine upside, because a transition is the perfect occasion for a forward-looking business review: fresh eyes on the account, a re-examination of the customer’s goals, and visible proof that the company, not one individual, stands behind the relationship.

Plan the customer communication with the same care as the internal plan. Who tells them, when, and how. What they hear about continuity and what they see that proves it. The goal is a customer who finishes the transition thinking, “That was easier than I expected, and our new rep seems well-informed, caring, and attentive.”

Closing Thoughts

The retiring rep problem is not a surprise. The demographics have been public for years, the pattern is well known, and every distribution executive can name the veteran reps whose departures would hurt. What’s missing in most companies isn’t awareness. It’s a system: retirement forecasting owned at the executive level, honest buyer landscape and relationship mapping, multithreading done early, compensation structures that make the handoff workable, structured knowledge capture, CRM records that function as a brain/memory aid, account planning discipline, and a customer experience that turns a risky moment into a moment of value.

Distributor B isn’t a fantasy. It’s a set of decisions, made before the announcement instead of after it.

Because somewhere in your sales force right now, a rep is planning a retirement you haven’t forecasted. Do you know who? And if they walked into your office Monday morning and gave you four months, could you name every relationship and the associated revenue that walk out with them?

If yes, congratulations on the purposeful management of the silver tsunami. If not, you have some work to do and a way to go about it.

The post The Retiring Rep Problem: How to Transition Accounts Without Losing Them appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

Introduction 

In B2B distribution markets, conditions have become increasingly volatile. Supplier increases, tariff pressure, supply chain delays, unpredictable lead times, and labor constraints affect everyone.

When the entire market is dealing with the same volatility, claims of reliability or availability no longer differentiate. Buyers shift their attention to something far more practical: how well distributors operate when conditions are not ideal. They judge communication, coordination, adaptability, and whether their work gets easier or harder because of you. For the examples, I’ll use electrical and industrial B2B settings, but the concepts we’ll cover can be applied to any sector.  

This article introduces the concept of Execution Value, defines it clearly, connects it to the other Value Drivers that buyers care about, and shows how to apply them in day-to-day distribution work. You will also learn how to use the Value Stack to maintain momentum through buying decisions, how to frame field-ready POSE stories, how to make the economic impact visible, and how managers can systematize these practices to escape price-driven conversations. 

What Execution Value Means 

• Execution Value is the value customers experience when you improve their ability to execute something that matters to them. People with this value driver look for better experiences and the ability to execute more efficiently and effectively.  

This may include improved skills, stronger capabilities, clearer or more reliable processes, and enhanced experiences such as customer (CX), employee (EX), or candidate (recruiting) interactions. It also includes better SOPs, reduced frustration or friction, and improved performance metrics that result from better execution. 

Execution Value can also extend to better experiences working with you as a vendor or partner. In this case, it is not a claim of perfect availability. It reflects the operating discipline that keeps projects, plants, and business moving despite market unpredictability. 

For communicating value to buyers and customers, Execution Value becomes even more effective when positioned alongside any of the other three value drivers (as relevant): 

• Business Value represents improvements to financial or operational metrics such as revenue, cost savings, profitability, efficiency, compliance, risk reduction, scrap rates, processing time, and downtime. 

• Purpose Value represents alignment with an organization’s mission, vision, values, brand priorities, and strategic initiatives such as sustainability, DEI, employee wellbeing, or community impact. 

• Personal Value captures individual benefits that make work easier or safer for stakeholders, including recognition, peace of mind, reduced stress, political safety, and reputation. It also includes personal motivators summarized by my PAM Orders Power BARS mnemonic: Purpose, Autonomy, Mastery, Order, Power, Belonging, Achievement, Recognition, and Safety. 

Execution Value is what customers feel in the day-to-day—fewer surprises, smoother coordination, and visible competence. Business Value explains the financial “so what.” Purpose Value ties the work to enterprise/cultural goals. Personal Value makes the decision comfortable, safe, and beneficial for the individuals involved.  

The Value Stack and Decision Momentum 

Customers move through decisions when they experience enough Awareness, Interest, and Relationship/Trust to advance to the next step in their buying process. These moments are called Decision Thresholds. Awareness means they know who you are and what you do. Interest means they see relevance and potential value. Relationship/Trust means they have confidence in you and your ability to deliver. 

If any part of AIR is insufficient, the conversation slides back toward price. To restore momentum, identify which part of AIR is missing and use the value driver that matters most to each stakeholder.  

How to Sell Execution Without Relying on Perfect Supply 

Execution Value can be delivered consistently using a short list of operational disciplines that customers feel immediately. Each maps directly to the definition of Execution Value—capabilities, processes, reduced friction, and measurable improvements. 

• Line-level order accuracy and completeness. Track accuracy and completeness by line item, not just at the order header. You eliminate avoidable delays and friction when the correct materials arrive together, as promised. 

• ETA accuracy standards and update cadence. Commit to a specific accuracy target, such as 95 percent accuracy within one day, and establish a proactive update rhythm. This reduces uncertainty for planners and supervisors. 

• Preapproved alternates and substitutions. Maintain meets-spec alternates by category and secure customer approval in advance. This allows frontline teams to pivot instantly when constraints arise. 

• Critical-path protection and delivery sequencing. Align deliveries to the job schedule or maintenance windows. Make the plan visible to procurement, supervision, and maintenance teams so they can plan confidently. 

• Coordinated handoffs across inside, outside, technical, and logistics teams. Use one coordinated plan and a single source of truth for open lines, alternates, risk flags, and changes. Customers notice when the left and right hands work together. 

These disciplines do not require perfect availability. They require thinking ahead and applying critical thinking to support predictable, disciplined execution. It’s the same principle used in Six Sigma’s FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis): When you know what is likely to go wrong, you can take steps to prevent it—or have a solid plan ready for when it does.  

Two Role-Based POSE Talk Track Examples 

POSE Value Stories help communicate value in a structured, buyercentric way: Problem, Outcome, Solution, Explore. These examples are tailored for electrical and industrial distribution buyer roles but can be easily applied to other sectors.  

Electrical Distributor to Procurement Manager (Multiple Site Manufacturer) 

• Problem: A regional manufacturer we worked with struggled with inconsistent delivery completeness on project critical components. On a major panel build project, two partial deliveries caused a crew of nine electricians to lose half a day of productivity each time while waiting on missing line items. That added up to 9 × $94/hour × 4 hours × 2 events, or $6,768 in lost labor, not including schedule compression and overtime to catch up. 

• Outcome: After we stepped in, their next three phased drops arrived fully complete and correctly sequenced to their task plan. As a result, they avoided two additional delays that would have cost an estimated $6,000–$7,000 each. Across the full project, they attributed $18,400 in labor avoidance and schedule protection to the changes, and their project manager reported cutting two days off the final schedule float. 

• Solution: We created a critical path delivery plan with them, established a 95% ETA accuracy standard, implemented line-level accuracy checks before staging trucks, and built a preapproved alternates list that allowed the inside team to pivot quickly when supplier constraints appeared. 

• Explore: Would it make sense to build the same type of delivery and sequencing plan for your next two project releases so we can prevent similar delays? 

Industrial Distributor (Automation/Motion Control) to Maintenance/Reliability Leader 

• Problem: A large packaging plant running two high-speed lines was repeatedly missing maintenance windows because replacement drive components were arriving late or incomplete. One missed window forced the plant to take a line down during production hours, costing about three hours of downtime. At 450 units/hour and a contribution margin of $2.10/unit, that single event cost the plant $2,835 in margin, plus $1,200 in overtime for recovery. 

• Outcome: Over the next quarter, after implementing our readiness and sequencing process, they reported zero missed windows on 14 scheduled changeouts. Based on their historical miss rate, they would have expected four disruptions. Avoiding those four events protected approximately 4 × ($2,835 + $1,200) = $16,140 in combined margin and labor value. They also improved their maintenancewindow hit rate from 71% to 100% in that period. 

• Solution: We partnered with their maintenance planner to create a shared dashboard of open lines, lead-time risk, approved alternates, and delivery sequences aligned to maintenance windows. We also added early-warning triggers to flag components with risk before they threatened the schedule. 

• Explore: Would it be helpful to run a similar readiness and sequencing review for your next set of PM‑scheduled changeouts? 

Show the Math: One Avoided Delay Beats a Discount 

Economic comparisons need to reflect the real stakes in electrical and industrial environments. Delays don’t just inconvenience a team—they ripple through labor costs, overtime, throughput, project schedules, and even customer commitments. When you quantify the operational impact honestly, the comparison to a 2%–3% discount becomes obvious. 

Electrical project example
A commercial electrical crew of eight typically costs about $92 per hour per person when you factor in fully loaded labor. When a delivery arrives incomplete or late, the impact usually extends far beyond a simple two‑hour inconvenience. Crews shift to lower‑value tasks, supervisors scramble to re-plan work, and downstream subcontractors lose sequence. A four‑hour slip costs 8 × $92 × 4 = $2,944 in labor alone. That does not include the ripple effects on schedule flow, productivity on the following day, or penalties tied to contractual commitments. 

On a $20,000 materials drop, a 3% discount equals $600. One four‑hour disruption costs nearly five times that amount. 

Industrial MRO example
A packaging line running 420 units per hour at $2.15 contribution per unit generates roughly $903 per hour in margin. When a component arrives late or the wrong part arrives, the line may not slip by 90 minutes—it may miss a full production window. A three hour miss costs 3 × $903 = $2,709 in lost contribution, not counting labor premiums, downstream bottlenecks, or late-order penalties. A two percent discount on a $25,000 weekly parts buy is $500. Protecting a single three-hour window is worth more than five such discounts. 

These examples illustrate a simple truth:  

Execution failures are expensive, and the financial impact grows exponentially with scale and complexity.  

When you operate in ways that prevent schedule slips, idle crews, missed windows, and rework, you are delivering value that no small discount can match. 

Handling Price Pushback 

When concerns arise, respond using a simple model that keeps the conversation productive:  

• Acknowledge what the customer said, with empathy. Use “you statements” vs. “I statements:” Example: “You’re under pressure to ensure your projects run smoothly.”  

• Clarify the concern by asking questions to fully understand what’s behind it and get to the root-cause concern.  

• Categorize the concern (in your mind) as Disbelief (skepticism), Distortion (misunderstanding of the facts), Disadvantage (an unchangeable characteristic of the product, service, or solution that the buyer doesn’t like), or Disruption (something that has changed that makes the sale unlikely).  

• Respond with a relevant recommendation based on the type of concern. For Disbelief, offer relevant proof. For Distortion, clarify the customer’s need and explain how you can meet it. For a Disadvantage, weigh the one thing they dislike against all the things they do get and ask if they can still proceed. For a Disruption, explore what changed and whether you are still a good fit. 

• Confirm that your response helped and that the concern is resolved.  

Quick examples 

• If a competitor is 3% cheaper, acknowledge the desire for fairness, clarify whether the bigger issue is budget or risk, categorize whether it is disbelief or a narrow focus on unit price, respond with a concrete comparison of delay cost versus discount, and confirm whether this addressed the concern.  

• If availability is the concern, acknowledge the desire for assurance, clarify which items or windows feel at risk, categorize whether the concern is a misunderstanding about guarantees, respond by emphasizing how you manage volatility with ETA standards, alternates, and sequencing, and confirm whether this provides the needed confidence. (ETA standards—the accuracy and update commitments distributors make about when material will arrive—are a critical part of Execution Value.) 

• If prior change-order issues surface, acknowledge the frustration, clarify where the breakdown occurred, categorize whether it was disbelief or disruption, respond with your change order SOP and update cadence, and confirm whether the approach prevents repeat issues. 

Executive Playbook: Making Great Execution a Habit 

Leaders play a crucial role in embedding Execution Value into a culture.   

• Publish an execution standard. Document ETA accuracy targets, completeness expectations, alternates procedures, critical-path sequencing, and the single source of truth for open lines and risk flags. Train to it, coach to it, and use it in reviews. 

• Measure and monitor the essential metrics. Track ETA accuracy, line-level completeness, alternate adoption, and time to escalation. These are the operational metrics customers feel and leaders can manage. 

• Coach to AIR and Decision Thresholds. In reviews, ask what each stakeholder needs to see or understand to advance (aka buying process exit criteria). Identify which value driver will build interest for that person and coach your team to deliver it. 

• Equip the field with role-based POSE value stories. Create ready-to-use POSE examples for common buyer roles and teach sellers to adapt them based on research and observation. 

• Involve customers as co-creators. Use implementation meetings and kickoff sessions to co-develop delivery sequences, alternates lists, and communication rhythms. Buyers support what they help build. 

This playbook serves a dual purpose. First, it fosters an operational discipline that will better serve customers and differentiate the company. Secondly, you are setting up the system that will support your sales force in selling execution value over negotiating price. 

Closing Thoughts 

Every distributor feels the pressure of price conversations. But in a volatile market, buyers rely on the partner who helps them execute reliably and confidently when conditions change. It’s like the old self-help saying that it’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond. 

If you improve the experience and ability to execute for your customers, and connect that execution to the financial, strategic, and personal outcomes they care about most, price becomes only one of many inputs. The more consistently you operate this way, the more you differentiate, the more trust you earn, and the more growth you unlock. 

Related Reading 

• The Sales Activity Trap: Why Sales Teams Stay Busy But Don’t Improve
• The Two Buyer’s Journeys in Distribution: A Practical Guide for Sales Leaders
• Over the Top: How Distributors Can Grow with Radical Customer Centricity & Extreme Coaching
• How Does Your Sales Methodology Compare to What Top Performers Do Differently?

The post Stop Competing on Price: How Distributors Can Sell Execution Value appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

In distribution, onboarding’s not as simple as handing over a laptop and a pricing strategy. Your sellers face complex territories, thousands of SKUs, and customers who expect flawless execution from day one. If onboarding is treated as a quick orientation or a “boot camp,” you’ll pay for it later in slow ramp, missed opportunities, and costly turnover.

The truth is that onboarding isn’t just about teaching product knowledge or checking compliance boxes. It’s about equipping new hires to do the real work that drives revenue, whether that means managing reorder cadence and programs for MRO lines or co-creating solutions for automation and IioT [Industrial IoT]. Done well, effective onboarding accelerates confidence, competence, and contribution. Done poorly, it becomes an expensive guessing game.

This article explores why traditional approaches fail, what to avoid, and how to build a system that gets results—twice as good in half the time.

Why Onboarding Must Be Tailored to Your Business

Distributors sell in more than one mode. Solution model roles (automation, IIoT, engineered systems that are implemented) require discovery, feasibility, and cocreating implementable solutions with sales engineers. Supplier model roles (catalog and configured products) focus on territory coverage, great service, cross‑sell and upsell, pricing hygiene, and buyer conversations that drive reorder quality and growth. And yes, in some companies, both models exist.

This is why onboarding should mirror the real job, not a generic boot camp. Teach the job from left to right, the way you expect sellers to execute with customers.

This article focuses on the costs of getting onboarding wrong, the benefits of getting it right, and a proven way to make onboarding twice as good in half the time.

The Cost of Getting Onboarding Wrong

When onboarding is event-based, content-heavy, and light on reinforcement and coaching, ramp times stretch and attrition rises—an expensive combination.

• Replacing a sales rep adds up: Ranges commonly run from $100,000 to $150,000 when you include separation costs, recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, and territory disruption. In higher-quota roles, total impact can exceed $500,000 once missed revenue during vacancy and ramp is included.
• Ramp time drags revenue: New sellers often require 3–9 months to reach full productivity, and, in organizations without structured onboarding and coaching, parity with tenured reps can take far longer.
• Early attrition compounds the loss: Weak onboarding correlates with lower commitment and higher turnover, which means more replacement costs, disrupted customer relationships, and ongoing manager distraction.

The Benefits of Getting It Right

When onboarding is designed around performance milestones, teaches need-to-know content in workflow from left to right, and reinforces learning with practice and coaching, you get faster ramp, steadier execution, and measurable business impact. In implementations using this method, I’ve helped companies both shorten ramp times and increase the productivity of new reps at the same time:

• Ramp-up times: cut by 23%, 34%, 47%, and 52% across four separate companies.
• 120-day performance: new hires outperformed a control group of five-year reps by 21%.
• Post-onboarding impact: in the 90 days after onboarding, sales per rep increased 48%, driving $36.6 million year-over-year new-hire production, with profitability up 11% and win rate up 16%.

Customers feel the difference. They get availability, reliability, and sensible programs—and you get cleaner growth.

Why Training Fails

Training fails when it is misapplied or poorly designed. Common culprits include:

• Wrong content: Training that does not produce real-world results when applied will never move the needle.
• No performance milestones: Without clear checkpoints, onboarding becomes a blur of content with no sense of progress.
• Poor learning design: Information overload, low interaction, and “death by slides” crush retention.
• No sustainment: If you do not plan to beat the forgetting curve, people forget.
• Too few skill development loops: Knowledge without practice does not become skill.
• No transfer plan: If you do not plan how reps will apply what they learned on the job, they won’t.
• Little or no coaching to mastery: One-and-done training does not lead to mastery.
• No measurement plan: When you do not have leading and lagging indicators for both learning and selling, you cannot manage or troubleshoot them later.
• Weak performance management: Managers must inspect what they expect and hold reps accountable for using what they learned.
• No change management: Treating the initiative as an event instead of a managed change effort undermines adoption.

What Else to Avoid in Onboarding

Avoid the patterns that derail even well-intentioned programs:

• Combining logistics, orientation, and onboarding: Uncoordinated efforts derail the job-related learning sellers need to do the work.
• Too much content, too soon: Cramming everything before it is needed reduces retention and delays execution.
• Slide parades from SMEs: Long, one-way presentations without practice produce very little you can use in the field.
• Event-based approaches: Boot camps with no reinforcement or continued tracking toward milestones become “check the box” experiences.
• No checkpoints or readiness validation: If you do not gate progression, you will advance people who are not ready.
• No sustainment, transfer, or coaching: Without reinforcement and on-the-job application, learning decays quickly.
• “Go get ’em, tiger” launches: Tossing reps into the field because “they’re experienced” ignores how your business actually works.

How to Get It Right

Start With Performance Milestones

For shorter sales cycles, common examples include the first sale, first month at quota, and three successive months at quota. For longer cycles, expand the count and interval. Track leading and lagging indicators for both learning and selling on the way to each milestone.

• Learning indicators: assessment timing and scores, role-play scoring, readiness validations, or certifications.
• Selling indicators: stage progression, qualified pipeline created, wins, revenue, velocity, profitability.

Teach the Job from Left to Right

• Chunk the content: Group like topics together in bite-size units.
• Sequence logically: Teach in the order the work happens.
• Layer appropriately: Add new knowledge and skills only when the previous ones have been retained and validated.

For solution roles, teach consultative steps, feasibility checkpoints, and buyer decision requirements that advance complex opportunities. For supplier roles, teach territory coverage strategy, value conversations, pricing hygiene, and the cross‑sell/upsell motions that create growth.

Use Proven Learning Methods

• Bite-sized learning: Break content into small, digestible chunks to improve retention and reduce overload.
• Spaced repetition: Use refreshers at intervals to reinforce learning over time.
• Retrieval learning: Include knowledge checks that require learners to recall information from memory, strengthening retention.
• Flipped classrooms: Keep live time for practice, feedback, and coaching; let knowledge acquisition happen asynchronously.
• Simulations and role plays: Create “deliberate practice loops” that convert knowledge into skill.
• Social and informal learning: Use buddy systems, best-practice sharing, and structured ride-alongs.
• Readiness validation: Use light certifications or skill validations with checklists to gate progression so people advance when ready.

Execute with a Sales Training System

• Learn: Acquire the knowledge with examples and short assessments.
• Remember: Purposefully sustain the knowledge so it is available when needed.
• Practice: Convert knowledge to skill through realistic practice with feedback loops.
• Apply: Transfer and apply skills on the job with job aids and workflow support.
• Master: Coach consistently to raise proficiency and cement behavior.

Example: An Eight-Week Progression for Account Managers

This framework is an example. Context matters and your approach will vary by situation (solution co-creation for IIoT/automation; program stewardship for MRO/consumables). Milestones are the performance checkpoints any AM can hit in a territory.

Week 1: Territory Map and Prioritization

Build a territory map—major sites, buyer personas, influencers, decision flow. Publish a coverage strategy for named/target accounts and a weekly activity plan. Flag at‑risk accounts and high‑potential targets.

• Performance Milestone: map and coverage plan published; manager review complete.

Week 2: Pipeline Creation and Cadence

Create target lists and outreach cadences by segment. Launch campaigns across channels (email, phone, social, events). Clean CRM data (contacts, firmographics, contract references). Book first five discovery meetings.

• Performance Milestone: cadences live; CRM hygiene verified; discovery meetings scheduled.

Week 3: Discovery Quality and Qualification

Run high‑quality discovery. Qualify with discipline. Use a simple meeting rubric (purpose, objectives, plan, outcomes, next steps).

• Performance Milestone five discovery calls completed and qualified; action plans documented.

Week 4: Solution Co‑Creation

For solution roles, co‑plan feasibility conversations with a sales engineer; frame outcomes and decision criteria. For supplier roles, build business‑value options (cross‑sell, upsell, substitutes). Document value hypotheses and success metrics.

• Performance Milestone: one solution path or value option documented with decision requirements.

Week 5: Business Case, Proposal, and Pricing Hygiene

Develop proposals with an executive summary, outcomes, economics, and risk mitigation. Confirm pricing integrity and exceptions. Align approval workflow. Practice negotiation prep—trades, walk‑aways, and agreement language.

• Performance Milestone: one proposal submitted; pricing approvals clean; negotiation plan ready.

Week 6: Advancing Deals and Buyer Alignment

Run proof steps (demos, trials, site walks) where appropriate. Map the buyer landscape—stakeholders, influences, and concerns. Build a mutual action plan with dates and responsibilities.

• Performance Milestone: mutual action plan accepted; deals advancing per plan.

Week 7: Commitment and Handoff

Confirm decision criteria, finalize agreements, and secure commitment. Manage order steps accurately. Set a first value review with the customer to confirm outcomes and address early issues.

• Performance Milestone: one closed‑won or stage progression to final decision; value review scheduled.

Week 8: Next‑90 Plan and Coaching Review

Publish a 90‑day plan—pipeline coverage, quota pacing, target accounts, and activity mix. Document leading indicators (meetings set, discovery completed, qualified pipeline created) and coaching focus areas.

• Performance Milestone: plan approved; leading indicators tracked; coaching cadence set.

Teach Product Depth Without Overload

Give them the confidence to prepare for conversations, know when to pull in subject matter experts, and keep discussions centered on business outcomes rather than technical trivia.

Here’s how to make that happen:

• Find answers fast with spec sheets, comparison charts, and job aids.
• Prepare smart with three must‑know questions before any engineering or commercial conversation.
• Use experts wisely (sales engineers for solution lines, product specialists for complex configurations)
• Translate to outcomes—safety, uptime, throughput, cost reduction, compliance, and simplicity.

Coaching from Managers That Improves Performance

Here’s what that looks like:

• Observe one interaction: program check-in, value review, or feasibility call.
• Score with a simple rubric: purpose clarity, outcomes discussed, next steps confirmed.
• Fix one leak: clean a price file, rewrite a follow-up, update a job aid, remove friction.
• Set one target for next week: a review date, a cross-site introduction, or a cadence improvement.

Light, repeatable, and focused. That is how performance improves weekly, not annually.

Leading Indicators That Predict Results

Dashboards should help managers focus on what drives performance—not drown them in data. While revenue and margin matter, they’re lagging indicators. To improve onboarding outcomes, track the leading indicators that predict success and can be managed week by week.

Examples include:

• Cadence adherence: planned touches for top targets and named accounts.
• Discovery completed: forms completed with quality checks.
• Qualified pipeline created: by segment, stage, and seller.
• Stage conversion rates: diagnose friction and coach to decision criteria.
• Proposal velocity: time from solution alignment to proposal and decision

Lagging indicators still matter—revenue, margin, retention—but manage the leading indicators that create them.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Even well-intentioned onboarding plans can go off the rails if you’re not careful. These missteps can derail learning, slow ramp-up, and frustrate both managers and new hires. Here are some of the most common traps—and how to steer clear of them:

• Cramming everything before Week 2: Teach in sequence aligned to workflow; gate progression with readiness checks.
• Shadowing without practice: Pair observation with role plays, simulations, and feedback loops.
• Orphan initiatives: Don’t launch and vanish; put key steps into the weekly cadence and track completion.
• Data mess: Clean CRM and pricing references early; publish an overrides playbook.
• Manager drive‑bys: Coaching can be light, but it must be consistent; set a weekly observe‑score‑fix‑target rhythm.

Closing Thoughts

Onboarding in distribution isn’t a one-size-fits-all checklist; it’s an adaptive system built around your business model and sales motions.

Build a system that mirrors your business—solution co-creation where you sell automation and program stewardship where you run the supplier model. Teach the job left to right, reinforce in small doses, coach weekly, and organize everything around performance milestones. Eight weeks later, you will have sellers who own their territory, keep programs healthy, and move opportunities forward when the line demands it.

Customers get what they care about, availability, reliability, outcomes—and your team gets a cleaner runway for growth.

Related Reading

• The Talent Imperative: Why Investing in Frontline Sales Talent Is the Key to Distributor Growth
• The Real Reasons Distributor Sales Training Doesn’t Stick and What to Do About It
• The Two Buyer’s Journeys in Distribution: A Practical Guide for Sales Leaders
• How to Use Sales Enablement to Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement

The post Sales Onboarding That Works: How Distributors Can Ramp New Reps Faster and Better appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

In a market where differentiation is increasingly difficult, with tariffs, pricing pressures, and economic pressures, your people may be your most powerful and sustainable competitive advantage.

This article makes the case for a strategic shift: treating sales talent not as a cost center, but as a growth engine. We’ll explore how distributors can fund talent investment through smarter pricing, margin management, and operational efficiencies, and how buyer-centric sales methodology and frontline coaching can deliver measurable return on investment (ROI) and competitive differentiation. We’ll also examine the human differentiators that separate top-performing sales teams from the rest.

The Problem: Talent Treated as a Cost Not a Catalyst

In many companies, frontline sales talent is viewed as an expense to be controlled. Training budgets are lean. Formal sales methodology and process management are rare. Coaching is inconsistent. Sales managers are promoted but not prepared. And new sellers, especially, are often left to figure things out on their own.

This mindset is not only outdated – it’s dangerous. In today’s environment, where buyers (especially the younger generations) are more informed, independent, and skeptical than ever, the ability to build trust, communicate value, and guide decisions is paramount. That requires skilled, well-developed sales professionals.

According to McKinsey, frontline labor accounts for over 70% of a distributor’s direct expenses, and top-performing distributors invest even more. To be clear, this figure reflects payroll and benefits, not proactive investment in capability-building. Paying for people is not the same as investing in and developing them. Companies that treat talent as a strategic asset – not just a line item – see twice the shareholder return and three times the labor productivity compared to peers.

The Funding Challenge: Where Will the Money Come From?

If investing in talent is so critical, why don’t more distributors do it? Often, the answer is simple: budget constraints and unfamiliarity with how to maximize those investments to achieve an ROI.

If you haven’t seen training and talent investments deliver improved sales results and an ROI, it’s hard to imagine it’s possible. But it is. – Mike Kunkle

But here’s the good news:

• There’s a path to funding talent investment that doesn’t require new capital.
• And another path to improve results and get an ROI.

It starts with strategic pricing and operational efficiencies to improve margins.

Strategic Pricing as a Funding Source

Distributors have long struggled with margin erosion. But pricing is one of the most controllable performance levers in the business. By investing in pricing analytics, segmentation, and governance, distributors can:

• Identify and correct underpriced SKUs.
• Align pricing with customer value and willingness to pay.
• Reduce unnecessary discounts and overrides.
• Improve gross margin by 100–400 basis points.

Even modest improvements in pricing can generate significant incremental profit—profit that can be reinvested in talent development.

Automating the Mundane to Free Up Cash and Focus

While this article avoids deep dives into artificial intelligence (AI), it’s worth noting that automation and intelligent systems can significantly reduce the time sellers spend on low-value tasks. Tools that integrate with existing platforms – such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence (BI)dashboards, and guided selling systems with prescriptive recommendations – can provide sellers with data-driven insights and prescriptive recommendations that guide daily actions.

These systems analyze account health, purchase frequency, product mix, and share of wallet to identify gaps and growth opportunities. Many of these tools can also:

• Alert sellers to overdue re-orders and at-risk accounts.
• Recommend upsell and cross-sell opportunities based on customer behavior and their comparison to like-customers who order more or more often.
• Highlight underpenetrated product categories.
• Benchmark accounts for performance against similar customers.

By embedding these insights directly into the seller’s workflow, distributors can shift reps from reactive order-taking to proactive account development. This not only improves seller productivity and revenue generation but also reduces administrative overhead and enables sellers to focus on high-impact activities.

The result is a more efficient sales force, better territory coverage, and freed-up resources that can be redirected toward training, coaching, and enablement. Because it’s one thing for systems to make prescriptive recommendations, but it’s quite another to have the skills and capabilities to execute those recommendations effectively.

The ROI of Talent Investment

Investing in frontline sales talent isn’t just a feel-good initiative, it’s a business decision with measurable returns.

Adopt a Buyer-Centric Sales Methodology

Distributors who adopt a buyer-centric, full-cycle sales methodology see improvements in:

• New business development.
• Average sales cycle duration.
• Opportunity conversion rates.
• Average deal size.
• Customer retention and expansion.

These gains come from better alignment with buyer expectations, deeper discovery, clearer value communication, and more confident conversations with buyers to gain commitments.

It’s important to note that in wholesale distribution, there are two distinct buyer’s journeys that every sales leader needs to understand and manage when they apply to their company.

• The Supplier Selection Journey: This is the more transactional path. A customer who needs supplies to use or resell evaluates suppliers to select one. This first part is more of a consultative sale. Then, the customer places an order, stocks it, uses or resells the products, and eventually reorders. It’s a repeatable process loop, and recently it is sometimes (but not always) a self-service model and increasingly digital.
• The Consultative Solution Journey: This is the more complex path. A customer is facing a challenge or hoping to capitalize on an opportunity. They need more than a product – they need a solution. It needs to be the exact right solution and may be a bespoke one. This journey involves deeper discovery, solution design (co-creation with the customer), maybe a protype or pilot, eventual implementation, and post-sale support.

This article focuses primarily on the consultative solution journey, where the need for skilled, buyer-aligned sellers is most acute. But note that those same skills apply to the initial supplier selection and ongoing account management of the supplier process.

See this previous article here for more on this topic: The Two Buyer’s Journeys in Distribution: A Practical Guide for Sales Leaders

Implementing Training Effectively

• Align training content with a formal, buyer-centric sales methodology.
• Deliver training in digestible modules that build cumulatively.
• Reinforce learning through practice, role play, and manager-led coaching.
• Embed models and frameworks into customer relationship management (CRM) and daily workflows.
• Measure adoption and mastery – not just completion.

This is the foundation of the Sales Training System in the image above: a structured, repeatable approach to developing seller capabilities, aligned with content that’s consistent with how buyers buy and how top performers sell. Without this system, training becomes an event. With it, training becomes a catalyst for transformation.

For more detail on the system, read this article, right here on DSG: How to Get Business Value from Sales Training

Sales Coaching and Frontline Sales Management

• Win rates increase by 28%.
• Quota attainment improves by 32%.
• Revenue plan attainment rises by 15%.

These are not insignificant results, are they? What would those improvements mean for you and your company?

Why aren’t these lifts from coaching more common? Well, great coaching doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a structured system, a regular cadence, and managers who are fully equipped to coach – not just inspect pipelines, transactional order flow, or territory and account growth. And coaching shouldn’t just be opportunistic, based on something managers just happen to observe when they’re with their rep.

Managers must be able to diagnose skill gaps that tie to performance, get to the root cause of the gaps, determine the best solution for that root cause issue, lead the sessions with their sellers effectively, and apply models for training, coaching, counseling, and feedback that are proven-effective at guiding behavior change and improved performance.

For more on this type of coaching, see: Your Sales Managers Think They’re Coaching, But They’re Probably Not

Human Differentiators: The Sustainable Advantage

• Demonstrate buyer acumen and business insight.
• Communicate with clarity and empathy to help buyers feel understood.
• Build trust through consistency, credibility, service, and interpersonal skills.
• Guide buyers through complex decisions.

These are learnable skills. But they require intentional development, coaching, and reinforcement.

Strategic Recommendations

1. Reframe Talent as a Growth Lever

Stop treating sales talent development as a cost center. Start viewing it as a strategic investment that drives revenue, margin, and customer loyalty. Just be aware that ROI doesn’t “just happen” without purposeful implementation, reinforcement, and ongoing coaching to mastery.

2. Fund Talent Investments Through Pricing & Operational Efficiency

Use margin improvement through better negotiation, and the above-mentioned strategic pricing and operational efficiencies to generate the cash needed to invest in people. Then, also automate low-value tasks for your sellers to free up time to spend more time on customer-facing activities.

3. Adopt a Buyer-Centric Sales Methodology

Implement a full-cycle, buyer-centric sales methodology that’s based on top-performer practices to align with modern buyer expectations and improve execution quality. This requires giving up the free-for-all sales mentality that exists today in many distributors.

This always reminds me of a line in The Knight’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer:

“Each man for himself.” – Chaucer

In fairness to Chaucer, in context, the meaning of the phrase was closer to, “If you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will.” It was not meant to be selfish. But when we’re talking about organizational behavior, customer experience, and sales effectiveness, it’s simply not an effective mindset nor strategy.

To get an ROI, you will need to foster both adoption and mastery of a consistent, buyer-centric, aligned approach to selling.

4. Equip Sales Managers to Coach

Train frontline managers to coach effectively. Teach them a coaching system and provide them with models, tools, and a cadence to guide developmental conversations – not just deal, account, or territory reviews.

As mentioned above in more detail, managers need to be able to identify and assess skills gaps and then train, coach, counsel and/or provide feedback to close the gaps and raise performance.

If you stop and think about it: what else should your managers be doing?

5. Measure What Matters

Find a way to track execution quality, not just activity. This means tracking both leading and lagging indicators. Use diagnostics to assess skill mastery, buyer alignment, and value communication.

I teach the ROAM model to help with this. ROAM is a root-cause analysis method meaning Results versus Objectives, and Activity, plus Methodology.

When results are less than the objectives, managers and reps explore the rep’s activity (what they’re doing, with whom, how much, and if applicable, when and where), and then the methodology, or the quality of the activities (how and how well they are performing them). When results are less than the objectives (a meaningful gap worth closing), the answer for performance improvement will always lie in the analysis of the activities and the methodology.

Most organizations only measure and report on results or lagging indicators. While you can analyze past results to get an idea of where to focus on the present, you should also be able to identify where opportunities in motion or accounts are veering off-track, while you can still influence the outcome.

6. Create a Culture of Sales Mastery

What gets measured gets done and what gets asked about gets attention and focus. To create a culture of sales mastery, it starts with the previous steps and continues with a focus on adoption and mastery through coaching. That requires top-down commitment and a coaching culture with a sustained focus on continuous improvement. And all of this leads to a culture of sales mastery.

Another critical enabling step is to embed foundational practices into your ERP, CRM, workflows, and leadership rhythms. You need to stay the course on all the above, until it becomes “The way we do things around here.”

Do you want the tangible results and ROI that we talked about in this article? If so, the above content and steps are your path to success.

Closing Thoughts

In the race to grow and outpace competitors, many distributors focus on technology systems (especially AI now), products, and pricing. Those are important, in fact very important. But the real differentiator – the one that buyers remember – is your people. Your sellers. Your managers. Your frontline teams. How they delivered for them and acted in their (the customer’s) best interests – and, how your sellers made them feel and the results they (or your company) delivered.

Without developing your sellers’ capabilities, you will see improvement from other initiatives, but you won’t maximize the full potential.

Investing in talent isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s the smart thing to do. It drives performance, protects margin, and builds loyalty with your staff and customers. And with strategic pricing and other operational efficiencies, it’s more affordable than you think.

If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of your sales organization, don’t neglect your people. Equip them. Align them with your buyers. Get a formal sales methodology in place and adopted. Coach them. Because in the end, it’s not just what you sell – it’s how you sell it. And that’s where the real growth begins.

The post The Talent Imperative: Why Investing in Frontline Sales Talent Is the Key to Distributor Growth appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

Despite all the activity, performance isn’t improving. Quotas are missed. Forecasts fall short. Leaders are left wondering:

How can a sales team work so hard
and still not deliver better results?

This article explores the disconnect between effort and outcomes—what I call The Sales Activity Trap—and introduces a practical framework for diagnosing and improving sales performance.

For many years, the sales function in distribution was a black box. The sales force was entirely self-directed and was a mystery. You got what you got. And because many distributors have worked with their customers for a long time, the production operated on what I call “momentum fuel.” Orders kept coming, almost despite the sales force.

If you’ve ever felt like your team is spinning its wheels or stuck in a loop of “more of the same,” this article is for you.

The Illusion of Activity

It’s a positive thing that more distributors are now working to measure sales activity. Activity is relatively easy to capture and measure. It’s comforting to see dashboards filled with visits made, emails sent, meetings booked, and quotes delivered. But motion isn’t momentum. And activity isn’t impact.

In distribution, where many companies are only now evolving and modernizing their sales infrastructure and GTM [go to market] models, it’s common to rely on activity metrics as a proxy for performance. But this creates a dangerous illusion. Teams look productive, but the numbers don’t move. Why?

Because volume doesn’t equal value. Without a way to assess execution quality and strategic alignment, activity becomes a false indicator. It’s not that activity doesn’t matter, it’s that it’s often not enough.

What Many Sales Leaders Miss

Even well-intentioned efforts to improve sales often fall short. Here’s why:

• No single sales methodology employed
  Sellers use different approaches, leading to inconsistent execution and unpredictable outcomes. Without a shared language or formal sales process and methodology, coaching is scattershot, and results vary wildly.
• No clear performance model
  Leaders lack a structured way to define what “good” looks like across roles and stages. This makes it hard to diagnose issues or replicate success.
• No formal coaching methodology
  Managers offer ad hoc advice rather than structured, developmental coaching. As I’ve written in Why the GROW Model Is Not Sufficient for Sales Coaching, popular coaching models often fall short in sales because they don’t address details, execution quality, or root causes. Too much is left up to chance.
• No practice with feedback loops
  Reps rarely get opportunities to rehearse key conversations and receive targeted feedback. Sales is treated as a live performance, not a skill to be developed.
• Limited focus on sales competencies
  Skill development is often reactive, not tied to a defined competency model. Without clarity on the skills that drive success, training becomes variable, based on the manager, and is often incomplete or ineffective.

These gaps make it difficult to connect activity to outcomes—and even harder to improve performance systematically.

Introducing ROAM: A Framework for Diagnosing Performance Gaps

ROAM stands for:

• Results: The actual performance delivered.
• Objectives: The goals set for the rep—quota, forecast, or other performance targets—whatever your company calls them.
• Activities: What the rep is doing, how much, with whom, and when/where.
• Methodology: How and how well the rep is executing those activities using the sales methodology. This is the quality measure of the Activities.

When there’s a significant gap between Objectives and Results, ROAM helps leaders explore whether the issue lies in:

• Activities: Are the right actions being taken, with the right frequency and focus?
• Methodology: Are reps executing those actions effectively, using the sales methodology with skill and precision?

Often, the root cause is not just what reps are doing—but how well they’re doing it. ROAM helps pinpoint where to focus coaching efforts and whether the gap is tactical or skill-based.

As I shared in Uncover Root Causes of Performance Gaps, diagnosing performance issues requires more than just looking at lagging indicators. You need a way to trace the problem back to its source—and ROAM provides that path.

It has been 22 years since I first documented this model, and in all the time since, I have never seen it fail to uncover the root cause of a performance gap or opportunity for improvement. Not once.

Real-World Example: Diagnosing The Sales Activity Trap

Let’s say an account manager is consistently missing territory growth targets. They’re making calls, visiting customers, conducting quarterly business reviews, and submitting quotes. On paper, they’re active. But the growth isn’t there.

Using ROAM, the sales manager compares Results (actual sales) to Objectives (growth targets). The gap is clear and worth addressing, so they move forward.

Next, the manager examines Activities: His account manager is:

• Spending a lot of time on low-potential accounts that they’ve worked with for years (comfort zone)
• Quoting others without qualifying (easier and faster)
• Failing to follow up after quoting.

Then the manager observes to assess Methodology. The AM isn’t:

• Executing discovery conversations well
• Uncovering context and needs
• Upselling, cross-selling, or positioning value effectively

Apart from avoiding qualification, the issue here isn’t effort; it’s execution.

Coaching shifts from “do more” to “do better.” The manager trains and coaches on account prioritization (based on growth potential), discovery skills to determine content and full needs, qualifying skills, how to upsell/cross-sell, and value messaging. By the end of the next quarter, performance improves. This is not because the AM worked harder, but because they worked smarter and more effectively.

What Sales Leaders Can Do Differently

To improve performance, leaders must go beyond managing results because results are lagging indicators and offer no lever for producing a better outcome.

Instead:

• Track, manage, and coach to Activities
  These are leading indicators. They’re observable, measurable, and coachable. But don’t stop there.
• Evaluate Methodology
  This is the quality measure. It’s not just what reps do, it’s how and how well they do it. Are they executing with skill, using a consistent sales methodology?
• Use ROAM in one-on-ones and team reviews
  ROAM offers a structured way to diagnose gaps and guide training and coaching conversations.
• Align teams around a single sales methodology
  This creates consistency, improves coaching, and drives better outcomes.
• Build coaching capabilities
  As I emphasized in Teach Your Sales Managers Diagnostic Skills, managers need to move from cheerleaders to performance diagnosticians. Coaching isn’t just encouragement, it’s targeted development.
• Use structured feedback loops
  Create opportunities for reps to practice key conversations and receive feedback. Treat selling like a skill, not just a job.
• Define and develop core sales competencies
  Know what “good” looks like. Build training and coaching around those competencies.

Supporting Data and Insights

Research supports this approach.

• According to CSO Insights, companies with a formal coaching process see win rates improve by 28% compared to those without one.
• A study by the Sales Management Association found that organizations with a defined sales methodology outperform those without by 23% in quota attainment.
• Salesforce reports that only 34% of sales reps believe their CRM helps them sell more—a reminder that technology alone doesn’t drive performance. It’s how you use it.

And in distribution, where CRM adoption is still uneven, the need for structured coaching and performance diagnostics is even greater.

Closing Thoughts

Sales performance doesn’t improve just because reps are busy. It improves when leaders diagnose the root causes of underperformance and coach with precision. ROAM offers a practical way to kickstart moving from motion to meaning, and from activity to impact.

If your team is stuck in The Sales Activity Trap, it’s time to shift the conversation. Stop asking only, “What did you do this week?” and start adding, “And how well did you do it—and what impact did it have?”

The post The Sales Activity Trap: Why Sales Teams Stay Busy but Don’t Improve appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

It’s not that your reps didn’t learn anything. It’s that they didn’t change. They may have forgotten what they learned (the forgetting curve) or didn’t apply it. Or if they did apply it, it didn’t feel comfortable, and they didn’t stick with it. And worse, because they didn’t stick with it and eventually reach mastery, there were no discernable results or ROI.

Basically, the training didn’t stick.

And that’s not just frustrating, it’s expensive. Worse, it’s a missed opportunity to improve sales effectiveness, drive revenue, and build a competitive advantage.

This isn’t a salesperson problem. It’s a system problem. And it’s time we talked about why sales training fails so often, and what to do differently.

Why Sales Training Fails

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: most sales training programs are doomed from the start. Not because the content is bad (although sometimes it is), but because the conditions for success don’t exist.

Here’s what typically goes wrong.

1. Training isn’t the right solution for the problem
   Leaders who are inexperienced in performance consulting (aka human performance improvement) or training needs analysis often misdiagnose sales performance issues. If the root cause is a hiring mistake, a broken process, unnecessary bureaucracy, or poor sales management, training your salespeople won’t fix it. See the above links if you’d like to learn more, and click this link to view two root-cause diagnostic tools.
2. The training content won’t produce results in the real-world
   Even when training is the right solution, the content can miss the mark. If it’s outdated (not designed to work with modern buyers), disconnected from the realities of distributor sales (all new business development without account management), or not based on what top performers do differently, the results will be poor. According to Korn Ferry, only 17% of companies report having an effective training program. Having worked in the sales performance improvement field for over 30+ years, I find this mind-boggling, but it is a sad reality.
3. Poor learning design
   Many programs aren’t designed for how adults learn. This is especially true for internally designed programs that weren’t developed by an expert instructional designer. They rely on lectures, cram content, and fail to engage learners or provide practice. Adult learning theory emphasizes self-directed, problem-centered learning with immediate relevance.
4. No reinforcement or sustainment plan
   Training is often treated as an event, not a process. Reps attend a workshop or watch a video, then go back to work with no follow-up. Research shows that learners forget 90% of training content within one week unless it’s reinforced. (Source: Brain Science: The Forgetting Curve–the Dirty Secret of Corporate Training – Learning Guild)
5. Lack of practice and feedback
   This is part of reinforcement and sustainment but is a very specific and effective type–deliberate practice with feedback loops. Reps don’t get enough opportunities to apply what they’ve learned, receive expert feedback, and refine their skills. Rote repetition alone does not improve performance. Deliberate practice, especially when paired with feedback, is essential for acquiring expertise. (Source: Practice for knowledge acquisition)
6. No transfer plan
   Transfer is a learning term for getting students to apply what they learned or “transfer” their learning from the training to the workplace. When there’s no structured approach to help reps apply new skills in their day-to-day work, the learning stays in the training program.
7. No coaching to mastery
   Far too often, managers aren’t equipped or expected to coach reps through the learning curve to achieve sales mastery. Yet companies with effective coaching see an average revenue increase of 8.4% year-over-year (meaning continuous improvement—often the initial performance lift is much higher if the content is right).
8. No measurement or analysis
   There’s no plan to track transfer, adoption, behavior change, or business impact. So, leaders can’t tell what’s working or what needs adjustment.
9. No performance management
   As the image above reports, in many companies, reps aren’t held accountable for using what they learned. Training transfer and adoption become optional, and behaviors don’t change at all or soon revert to the old way of doing things.
10. No change management
    To make an impact, training requires behavior change, which means managing resistance, aligning stakeholders, and supporting the transition. These things rarely happen organically, without a purposeful and well-constructed change management plan.
11. No executive support
    Without visible, top-down commitment, training and the related behavior change we’re discussing feels optional. Reps and managers don’t take it seriously. We know that what gets measured gets done, but we sometimes forget that what gets asked about gets attention and focus. Especially when leaders are asking.
12. Too much content is delivered all at once

Overloading reps with information in a short time frame strains what researchers call working memory, which leads to cognitive fatigue and poor retention. In simpler terms, the “firehose” approach doesn’t work.

13. No integration into workflow and systems
    Training lives in a vacuum. It’s not embedded into CRM, sales process, or daily routines—so it’s forgotten.

The Solution: A System That Makes Training Stick

Use bite-sized learning
Break content into digestible chunks that reps can absorb and apply. Think short videos, summaries, and worksheets—not marathon classroom training. This aligns with adult learning principles and improves retention.

Apply spaced repetition
Revisit key concepts over time to reinforce learning. This fights the forgetting curve and supports long-term retention. Research shows spaced repetition can improve recall by up to 200%. (Supported by multiple studies, including one by Karpicke & Bauernschmidt in 2011 at Purdue University.)

Use retrieval learning
Ask reps to recall and apply what they’ve learned, rather than just re-reading or re-watching. This strengthens memory and understanding.

Engage managers in reinforcement
Train managers first and then have them lead weekly reinforcement sessions. This builds accountability and creates a coaching culture. IBM’s coaching-centric approach led to measurable improvements in win rates.

Teach reps to think, not just recite
Move beyond scripts and playbooks. Help reps understand buyer needs, think critically, and tailor their approach. As I’ve written before, “rote messaging doesn’t win deals—thinking does.” Read more here: Beyond the Playbook: Why Teaching Salespeople to Think Is Your Best Competitive Advantage

Spread training over time
Deliver training weekly, not in a single event. Use a mix of formats: video, content summaries, worksheets to prepare to apply what was learned, and manager-led reinforcement sessions with practice and coaching. This keeps it engaging and actionable.

Focus on buyer-centric consultative selling
Teach reps to create, communicate, and confirm value effectively. Help them become trusted advisors and problem-solvers, not just order-takers.

Ditch outdated sales techniques!

Forget “overcoming objections,” “closing,” and especially stereotypical, old-school manipulative selling. You might think these things are in the past, but I’m surprised how often I still see them in action and recommended by “selling gurus.” These combative, manipulative tactics don’t work in today’s buyer-driven market, especially with the younger generations who are moving into higher-level positions in customer organizations. Instead, teach reps to understand needs, raise, and solve problems, resolve concerns, gain agreement on logical next steps, influence ethically, and communicate far more intentionally and effectively. They need high degrees of business acumen, critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and exceptional communication skills.

Measure what matters
Track behavior change, adoption, and business impact. Use performance dashboards, conversation intelligence analysis, and feedback loops to monitor progress and adjust as needed.

The Proof: What Happens When You Get It Right

When distributors implement a system like this, the results speak for themselves.

· 19.1% more sales per order

· 12.1% overall sales growth

· 14.5% higher gross margins

· 2.5x more new accounts opened

· 25% growth in total sales

· 9.8% higher median gross margin

· 7.4% better top-line sales growth

These results come from multiple studies across industrial and electrical distributors, comparing trained sellers to their untrained peers. The data are clear: when we do the training right—and reinforce it through coaching and systems—it drives real performance improvement.

And when you layer in negotiation training, the impact grows:

· 16.8% reduction in discounts/overrides

· 3.9% additional lift in sales results

· 2.3% increase in strategic sales mix

· 45.6% overall increase in sales

These aren’t theoretical improvements. They’re real-world outcomes from distributors who invested in training that sticks and implemented as discussed in this article. It’s entirely possible to achieve these results.

Closing Thoughts

Sales training doesn’t fail because reps are lazy or incapable. It fails because the systems around the training are broken. This is a leadership, cultural, and organizational issue.

If you want real behavior change and the very real business results that come with it, you need a system that supports learning, practice, application, coaching, and accountability. And one that incorporates change management with a “stick-to-it-iveness” rivaling a Dachshund with a bone. (Fellow Doxie owners will know what I mean.)

If you want your managers to lead that change, you also need to train them first and to have strong sales management foundations with a sales management operating system, and a formal sales coaching methodology.

Easy? Maybe not, but it’s what gets results. Worth it? You tell me… would a 25-35% improvement in revenue be good for your company? Yeah, I thought so.

The post The Real Reasons Distributor Sales Training Doesn’t Stick and What to Do About It appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

• “Our salespeople are great at building rapport.”
• “We’ve got strong connections with our accounts.”
• “Our account managers know their clients inside and out.”

The salespeople will, of course, confirm this. They don’t need help here.

But press a little further and ask how those relationships are built, what framework guides them, and how they’re coached or measured, and the confidence starts to crack.

Because the truth is, most salespeople don’t have a purposeful plan for building business relationships. They have instincts. They may have charm. They have access and some awareness. But they don’t have a system. And they don’t pressure test it.

And that’s a problem. Especially for a vertical industry where relationships are so important.

Peeling the Onion: What Sellers Say vs. What They Know

Let’s look at a few real-world scenarios that play out every day in sales organizations:

• Sales Manager: “How’s your relationship with ACME Industrial’s VP of Ops?”
• Account Manager: “Oh, we’re in a great spot. She really likes me.”
• Sales Manager: “Great. What are her top goals this quarter?”
• Account Manager: “Uh… I think she’s focused on efficiency.”
• Sales Manager: “What’s she struggling with?”
• Account Manager: “Not sure. She hasn’t said.”
• Sales Manager: “What’s her passion project right now?”
• Account Manager: “I’m sorry… no idea.”

Or this one:

• Sales Manager: “You said you’ve got a strong relationship with their CFO. What makes it strong?”
• Account Manager: “Oh, we’ve worked together for years now. He always takes my calls.”
• Sales Manager: “Does he see you as a strategic partner or a vendor?”
• Account Manager: “I think partner…?”
• Sales Manager: “What value have you added that he’s confirmed?”
• Account Manager: “Well… we’ve had some good conversations.”

These aren’t isolated cases. They’re symptoms of a broader issue: We’ve confused being likable or known with being valuable. We’ve mistaken access for trust. And we’ve assumed that relationships just “happen” if you’re good at talking with people or delivering product that they need.

These things are all pieces of the puzzle, but they are not the whole puzzle. Nor do they signify a deep, trusted relationship that differentiates you or shields your company from competitors.

The Relationship Gap: What Sellers Think vs. What Customers Feel

• A recent Gartner study found that only 23% of B2B buyers said sellers helped them navigate their buying journey. That’s not just a product problem—it’s a relationship problem.
• CSO Insights reported that only 33% of sales organizations have a formal relationship-building methodology (meaning, of course, that 67% do not).
• According to Dun & Bradstreet, “Relationships are the longest-standing, most proprietary differentiator for any company,” yet most organizations fail to observe changes in relationships until it’s too late.
• Strategic accounts represent a disproportionate share of revenue, yet 51% of companies that prioritize only spend when determining key accounts are less likely to see increased revenue. It’s about more than the dollars, by themselves.

We’ve spent decades training sellers about product knowledge and selling skills. But building strategic, durable relationships that can survive market cycles, leadership turnover, and changing buyer priorities? That has been left largely to chance. Some do excel. Many do not. And that isn’t a sound strategy.

The Case for Intentional Relationship Development

Here’s the paradox:

Relationships are known to be the most durable competitive advantage in sales, yet they’re often the least formally developed.

We train sellers on discovery. We train them in negotiation. We train how to resolve concerns. But when it comes to building deep trust, uncovering what truly drives a buyer, and becoming a strategic partner—we assume or hope that sellers will just figure it out.

That hope is expensive. It costs deals. It costs growth opportunities. And it costs influence, in the accounts that matter most.

The good news is that strategic relationship-building skills aren’t a mystery. They can be taught. They can be scaled across an organization. And they can be measured—if you apply the right framework and make them “how we do things around here.”

A Proven Framework for Lasting Relationships

In his book Business Relationships That Last, author, speaker, and relationship expert Ed Wallace lays out a structured, human-centered approach to transforming business contacts into enduring, high-performing relationships. It’s not about being charming. His model replaces “winging it” with intentionality.

Let’s explore some of the core principles.

Relational GPS^®: Know What Drives Them

Every business relationship is powered by three things:

• Goals: What they’re trying to achieve professionally or personally.
• Passions: What energizes them—inside or outside of work.
• Struggles: The challenges they face that you might help alleviate.

Most sellers stop at surface-level goals. They know the KPIs, the budget cycles, and the org chart. But they don’t dig into what really matters to the person behind the title.

Relational GPS is about empathy, relevance, and value alignment. It’s the difference between selling to a role and partnering with a human.

Sidebar: Another alignment between what I teach and Ed’s principles is understanding, delivering, communicating, and confirming receipt of value from your customer’s perspective—which I call Value Drivers.

CIA: Build Trust That Sticks

Trust isn’t just a feeling. It’s a consistent pattern of behavior. Wallace’s CIA model breaks it down into three essential traits:

• Credibility: Demonstrated expertise and reliability.
• Integrity: Consistency in values and actions.
• Authenticity: Being genuine and transparent—no hidden agendas.

These qualities aren’t just nice-to-have moral virtues; they are competitive differentiators that determine whether a buyer listens to you or your competitor.

Sidebar: This is not something in Ed’s book, but I’ve always appreciated how this aligns with what I refer to as The Human Differentiators.

Worthy Intent: Lead With Other-Centric Purpose

This is the mindset shift that separates relational leaders from transactional ones. Worthy Intent means:

• Helpful: Approaching relationships with a sincere desire to help.
• Other-centric: Prioritizing the other person’s success, not just your own.
• Intentional/Mutual: Being intentional about creating mutual value.

In Modern Sales Foundations, I teach that “buyer-centric” means operating in your buyers’ and customers’ best interests. It’s what makes your actions feel trustworthy and your advice welcome. It’s part of what turns a transactional seller into a trusted partner.

The Relational Ladder: Move Up, Not Just In

Wallace introduces a five-step progression for deepening relationships:

1. Establish Common Ground: Find shared interests or experiences.
2. Display Worthy Intent: Show you’re invested in their success.
3. Communicate Personal Value: Offer insights or help that matters.
4. Elevate the Relationship: Move from vendor to trusted advisor.
5. Partner for Success: Collaborate toward shared outcomes.

Each rung supports the next. Skip one and the relationship lacks stability. Climb them intentionally and you create something resilient.

Common Pitfalls in Relationship Building

Even with the best intentions, sellers often fall into traps that undermine their efforts to build strategic relationships. Here are some of the most common pitfalls:

• Mistaking Friendliness for Trust: Being likable is important, but it’s not the same as being trustworthy or delivering value. Trust is earned through consistent actions, showing worthy intent, and delivering value (from the customer’s perspective).
• Relying Solely on Product Knowledge: Knowing your product inside and out is essential, but it’s not enough to build a relationship. Sellers need to understand the buyer’s goals, passions, and struggles. Sidebar: I expand this to COIN-OP in Modern Sales Foundations (Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, Priorities), but the concept is the same.
• Skipping Steps on the Relational Ladder: Trying to jump straight to “trusted advisor” without establishing common ground or demonstrating worthy intent can backfire.
• Focusing on Short-Term Gains: Building “relationships” with the sole aim of closing a deal (often referred to as “rapport”) can lead to transactional interactions that don’t foster long-term trust.
• Neglecting Follow-Up: Relationships require ongoing effort and attention. Failing to follow-up or follow-through after meetings or milestones can erode trust and credibility.

Weaving Relationship Principles into Workflow

To make relationship-building a core part of your sales strategy, integrate these principles into your team’s daily workflows.

Internal Meetings

• Pipeline Reviews: During pipeline reviews, assess the relationship part of the buyer landscape. Ask questions like: “What’s their GPS?” and “Where are we on the relational ladder?”
• Account Reviews: Use account reviews to evaluate the strength of relationships within strategic accounts. Identify gaps and opportunities to deepen connections.

Managing Opportunities

• Relationship Assessment: Incorporate relationship assessments into opportunity management. Evaluate the level of trust, credibility, and authenticity with key stakeholders.
• Buyer Landscape Analysis: Map out the buyer landscape to understand the dynamics of relationships within the account. Identify champions, coaches, detractors, and other influencers and their roles. This is something else we do in Modern Sales Foundations that I have seen make a significant difference in building effective account plans.

Strategic Account Plans

• Relationship Goals: Set specific relationship goals as part of strategic account plans. Define actions to build trust, uncover GPS, and climb the relational ladder.
• Coaching Cadence: Establish a coaching cadence to reinforce relationship-building skills. Schedule regular check-ins to review progress and provide guidance.

What Good Looks Like

To help sellers recognize when they’ve built truly strategic relationships, here’s a checklist of signals that indicate success:

• The buyer shares internal priorities and seeks advice beyond product scope.
• The relationship survives turnover, pricing pressure, and competitive noise.
• The seller is viewed as a trusted advisor, not just a vendor.
• The buyer proactively reaches out for insights or collaboration.
• The relationship drives mutual value and aligns with long-term goals.

Why This Matters for Sales Leaders

If you’re a CEO or head of sales, here’s the real question:

Are your sellers building relationships that survive turnover, pricing pressure, and competitive noise? Or are they just getting along with people who like them?

Strategic relationships aren’t just about access. They’re about insight. They’re about influence. They’re about being the person your buyer turns to when the stakes are high.

And that kind of relationship doesn’t happen by accident.

It happens when you teach it. Reinforce it. Coach it. Measure it. Ask about it.

Bringing It to Life: Coaching with Relational Concepts

Imagine a sales manager asking a rep not just “how’s the relationship?” but:

• “What’s their GPS?”
• “Where are you on the relational ladder?”
• “How are you demonstrating Worthy Intent?”
• “What’s the next step to elevate the relationship?”

Suddenly, relationship-building becomes a discipline—not a personality trait nor a guessing game.

And for enablement leaders, it opens a new frontier: relationship development as a skillset. Not just soft skills, but strategic soft skills.

Closing Thoughts

If you want your salespeople to build better business relationships, you must teach them how. Not just “be likable.” Not just “follow up.” Not just be friendly. Not just service accounts well. But how to build trust, uncover GPS, and climb the relational ladder—intentionally.

Ed Wallace’s principles give us the playbook. And with the right tools, we can turn relationship-building into a repeatable, scalable capability across the sales organization. As you endeavor to do this, keep these two axioms in mind:

• What gets measured gets done.
• What is asked about by leaders gets attention and focus.

I hope this helps you evaluate the level of relationship-building skill in your sales force and evolve it toward a true competitive advantage for your company.

Resources

Book

• Explore Ed’s book on Amazon. He has others, as well, including Fares to Friends, Creating Relational Capital, and his most recent, The Relationship Engine.

Course

• Explore the Relationship Quotient course, built in partnership with Ed Wallace. This course translates these principles into a practical, teachable system for sales teams. If you’re ready to close the relationship gaps that put your company at risk, this is another option.

Related Reading

• Relationship Selling May Be Dead, But Relationships in Selling Are Not
• The Combined Power of AI and Human Differentiators in Sales
• How to Navigate the Buyer Landscape
• Buyer Acumen is the Best GTM Foundation

The post You Think Your Sellers Are Good at Relationships – But Are They Really? appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

Too often, entrenched habits and legacy mindsets set the bar lower than necessary.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of industry sales challenges, but these are the ones I’ve seen that repeatedly hold back smart, capable distributors from achieving more.

Persistent Problems That Stunt Distributor Sales Growth

Inconsistent Sales Approaches

Sales methodology is often a free-for-all. When every sales rep improvises their own methods without an aligned approach to new business development, opportunity management, or even territory and account management (which is where most distributors focus), the organization loses more than just consistency. You end up with:

• Widely varying results: Star performers may excel, but average reps get left behind without replicable strategies or shared best practices.
• Management challenges: Sales leaders struggle to coach effectively—there’s no “right way” to reinforce, so improvements happen by accident, not by design.
• Territory imbalances: Without standard processes, some territories outperform while others underperform, regardless of market potential.

The result? Sales effectiveness is left to chance, initial momentum fades, and scaling growth becomes a herculean effort.

Coaching That Doesn’t Build Capability

This makes it nearly impossible to manage consistently across territories or even to coach to close identified skill gaps. Speaking of coaching, when it occurs, it is mostly opportunistic, deal focused, and more feedback than true sales coaching that will raise performance across a territory. Sales leaders often confuse deal-chasing or feedback with coaching. The pain points here:

• Sporadic, transactional guidance: Coaching is event-based: focused on closing THIS deal, not building long-term ability.
• Missed development: Long-term skills, such as strategic questioning or account planning, don’t get the attention they deserve.
• No ripple effect: When feedback is all about the current opportunity, there’s no mechanism for scaling improvement across the whole territory or whole team.

This leads to limited talent development and more frequent plateauing of individual and team results.

“Great Relationships”— But Cheap Talk Without Visibility

Relationships are a cornerstone in distribution. Sales teams and their leaders cite deep relationships with customers as a reason for their success, yet most can’t produce a relationship map for even their key or strategic accounts. Specific, logical account objectives with documented, regularly updated account plans designed to achieve those objectives are often quite rare.

• Few can produce a relationship map for key accounts, showing who the decision-makers, influencers, and users truly are with their attitude toward your company (positive, neutral, negative) and their level of influence on a sliding scale (influencer, decision maker, approver).
• The illusion of depth: Years of “getting along” are mistaken for real influence. If a key contact leaves and your business evaporates, was that a relationship, or just transactional comfort?
• Misaligned priorities: Without understanding the customer’s goals and politics, reps react to surface-level requests rather than shaping real solutions.

The real pain sets in when unexpected churn or missed opportunities reveal just how little you truly know about what drives your customers. This could include the passing of the torch from a retiring ex-buyer to one from a younger generation without a personal relationship or history with you.

Lack of Working, Living Account Plans

Account planning, when done at all, is too often a one-and-done activity. The side effects:

• Outdated plans: Account plans are created for an annual review and then promptly forgotten, gathering dust instead of guiding action. (Pardon the silly reference, but Elf isn’t the only thing on the shelf gathering dust.)
• Reactivity rules: Sellers are consumed by fire-fighting mode, dealing with whatever comes their way rather than proactively shaping outcomes.
• Missed growth levers: Opportunities for upselling, cross-selling, reversing declining orders, or tweaking service delivery fall through the cracks, especially as account needs may evolve over time.

This means significant potential sits untapped while competitors with structured plans chip away at your market share.

Poor CRM Adoption and At-Risk Institutional Knowledge

CRM usage is non-existent, low, or poorly adopted. Things like “Who Sells What To Whom and How” are not documented, and neither is COIN-OP or the Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, and Priorities for each key account. Without consistent CRM usage:

• Critical data lives in heads, not systems: The understanding of “Who Sells What to Whom and How” or the customer’s COIN-OP (Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, and Priorities) are tribal knowledge, not organizational assets.
• Onboarding and transitions are painful: When a salesperson leaves, they take irreplaceable account context with them, as well as deep product knowledge gained over years of work.
• No shared intelligence: Teams can’t quickly analyze trends, spot warning signs, or collaborate on key pursuits.

For leaders looking to scale or step up customer experience, this is a massive roadblock.

Overwhelmed by SKUs and Territories, Lacking Guidance

Distributors often offer vast catalogs and cover huge territories. In fact, territories are so large and SKUs so plentiful, that without a guided selling analytics tool (which most don’t use) to guide account managers on where the best upsell, cross-sell, overdue, or declining orders are, sellers rarely optimize their territory potential. This leads to:

• Information overload: With thousands of SKUs and hundreds of accounts, frontline sellers struggle to know where to invest their effort.
• Blind spots: High-potential accounts for upsell, cross-sell, or recovery are missed, purely because there’s no data-driven prioritization.
• Non-strategic approaches: Relying on intuition leads to focusing on noisy accounts, not necessarily the most profitable ones.

This lack of direction results in wide “potential gaps” where untapped opportunities remain invisible and untouched.

Pricing Issues Tied to “Being Liked”

Speaking of SKUs, many distributors’ sales forces price based on “last price paid” without regard to strategic pricing guidelines—and even when strategic pricing is in place, there are many manual overrides.

Reasons vary but include the fact that pricing is often an emotional battleground for sellers. There is often an overconcern about “being liked” (which is how they gauge “relationship”), poor negotiation skills, and—as mentioned above—a lack of predetermined account objectives and no analytical approach to account optimization to provide guidelines and guardrails.

• Legacy pricing habits prevail: “Last price paid” becomes the de facto benchmark, regardless of changes in cost, order size, value, or market conditions. (I was kind not to mention tariffs, right?)
• Manual overrides undermine value: Even when strategic pricing guidelines are set, reps bow to convenience or fear of friction with customers, making manual overrides far too often.
• Margin erosion: Over-concern for being “liked” turns into leaving money on the table, especially when teams lack negotiation skills or the confidence to communicate value.

The consequence? Profitability suffers and the organization sends mixed signals to the market about the true value they deliver.

While these problems are the most common and impactful that I encounter, every organization is unique. There may be other pain points depending on your size, structure, markets, or strategy—but if you’re being honest with yourself, you’ll likely recognize at least several of these challenges.

The Payoff: What High-Performing Distributors Do Differently

For every pain point above, there are proven solutions that unlock far greater outcomes. Here’s what I’ve seen separate leaders from the pack:

Adopt Clear, Practical Sales Methodologies

High-performing distributors:

• Establish unified playbooks for new business development, opportunity management, and account management and growth. These aren’t just “shelfware”—they guide everyday activity.
• Teach and reinforce best practices: Methods are learned in onboarding, coached weekly, and celebrated in team meetings. We know what gets measured gets done but we sometimes forget that what gets talked about and asked about regularly gets attention and focus.
• Embed sales methodology, negotiation, value articulation, and territory planning and execution as central skills, not afterthoughts.

The payoff: Predictable processes make success scalable, not isolated.

Use Competency Assessments to Drive Coaching

In best-in-class organizations:

• Competency models clarify expectations: Everyone knows what good looks like at each stage of the sales cycle.
• Regular assessments identify individual strengths and opportunity areas (skill gaps or sales competencies to close), so coaching is always personalized and relevant.
• Coaching is structured, not sporadic: It happens in a cadence, tied to development goals, and tracked over time.

This creates a culture of coaching and a cadence of continuous improvement which accelerates the growth of capabilities across your team, steadily improving results.

Treat Sales Management as a Discipline

Top distributors make sales management systematic:

• Weekly cadence calls: Consistency in performance discussion keeps everyone aligned and accountable.
• Structured pipeline and account plan reviews: These aren’t box-checking sessions, they’re opportunities to solve challenges and spot risks early.
• Skill-development meetings: Teams practice selling scenarios, resolving concerns, and value communication in a safe environment.

This discipline turns management from a reactive firefight into a proactive leadership function.

Maintain Current, Actionable Account Plans

Exceptional teams:

• Update account plans regularly: Plans should evolve with customer needs and the plan tasks that you complete, not just after annual/biannual reviews or QBRs.
• Use relationship maps strategically: Identify key influencers, detractors, and champions so outreach is targeted, and relationship management is purposeful.
• Tie every customer touch to a goal: Sales calls, service check-ins, and executive meetings should all support specific objectives on both sides of the table—the customer’s and yours.

The result is a coordinated, intentional approach that maximizes account potential.

Build Relationships Purposefully and Intentionally

High-impact sellers are deliberate about relationships. They:

• Invest time to understand customer priorities: They research market trends, competitor moves, and internal customer goals.
• Act as partners, not just vendors: By proactively suggesting improvements and aligning with what matters, sellers are invited into deeper strategic conversations.
• Anticipate shifts before they happen: Early signals from accounts are caught because trust runs deep, not just wide.

This intentionality dramatically raises the seller’s value in the customer’s eyes and creates defensible differentiation.

Leverage Data-Driven Tools for Territory Optimization

Data and analytics transform potential into results:

• Guided selling technology surfaces which accounts are ripe for upsell, cross-sell, or recovery, down to the SKU and timing.
• Dashboards track opportunities so no hot lead goes unaddressed, and trends are visible to both reps and leaders.
• Proactive focus: Salespeople spend time where impact is greatest, not just where they’re most comfortable.

This adds clarity, focus, and ROI to every sales hour and marketing dollar invested.

Enforce Pricing Discipline with Enablement

Winning organizations reinforce pricing disciplines:

• Arm reps with tools: Price calculators, margin impact analyzers, and talking points support value-based conversations.
• Ongoing training: Teams practice negotiation techniques and learn to navigate price pressure confidently.
• Outcome-focused mindset: Salespeople shift from “being liked” to “delivering value”—and margins improve as a result.
• A focus on change management: Very little change happens in companies because managers “say so.” This is a far-larger topic but consider that you will need to lead and manage change to get new behaviors to stick and become “the way we do things around here.”

Strategic pricing discipline can be transformative for both the top and bottom lines.

Closing Thoughts

Most distributors know their teams could do better. The critical question is:

How much better could you be if you addressed these root causes?

The CEOs and senior sales leaders of top-performing organizations don’t leave growth to chance or let tribal knowledge and past practices set the bar. They put foundational sales systems and coaching routines in place that make excellence the standard, not the exception. Your competitors aren’t waiting.

Are you ready to reclaim untapped potential and define what “great” looks like in your market? If so, I hope this article is helpful and I would enjoy hearing about your successes or challenges, along the way.

Additional Related Resources

• Article: 9 Steps Distributors Can Take to Radically Improve Sales
• Book: The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement
• Courses:
  • Modern Sales Foundations
  • Sales Coaching Excellence
  • Sales Management Foundations

The post Distributor CEOs: Your Company Could Be Doing SO Much Better! appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.

This article explores the critical need for structured training for first-time sales managers, early-career leaders, and even possibly seasoned managers who never received formal development. Drawing from my experience, research on what top sales managers do differently than the average, and industry insights, I’ll examine why companies must rethink how they prepare their sales leaders. This includes the business risks of skipping proper development, outlines common challenges new managers face, and provides a roadmap for preparing sales managers to succeed – from day one (or before).

The Hidden Gap in Sales Leadership Development

Sales organizations are notorious for promoting top performers into management roles without adequate preparation. It’s a well-intentioned move meant to reward success with the hope it will scale, but it often backfires. The skills that make someone a great seller don’t automatically translate into effective frontline management.

According to research by CEB Global, 85% of employees receive no new manager training prior to switching into the role of manager. Due in large part to their never learning best practices and how to avoid the top new-manager pitfalls, 60% of new managers underperform during their first two years.

Sales managers are the linchpin of revenue execution. They are the vital connection between company strategy and field implementation. They shape daily behaviors, drive performance, build culture, and reinforce priorities. In distribution, where sales cycles rely heavily on relationships, solution selling, and territory stewardship, frontline managers matter even more.

The cost of this underperformance is staggering: lost revenue, higher turnover, and missed opportunities for growth. Yet, many companies still rely on informal, ad hoc learning, if any at all.

The problem isn’t just a lack of training. It’s a lack of intentional development. Sales managers are expected to coach, forecast, hire, onboard, motivate, and lead – all while hitting their own targets. Without a clear understanding of their new responsibilities and the skills to execute them, many flounder.

The Unique Challenges of First-Time Sales Managers

The transition from individual contributor to manager is one of the most difficult shifts in a professional career. For salespeople, this leap is even more complex. They’re moving from a role where success is personal and performance is measurable, to one where success is collective and leadership is nuanced.

Distributors often promote from within, which is commendable. But it comes with a hidden risk: sellers are elevated into leadership roles without clarity on how their role is changing or how to succeed in it. The result is predictable confusion and missed potential.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Early missteps can have long-lasting consequences. New managers often fall into traps like micromanaging, avoiding conflict, or trying to be everyone’s friend. These behaviors erode trust and undermine team performance.

Structured training helps managers recognize and avoid these pitfalls. It provides a safe space to explore scenarios, reflect on their instincts, and build better habits from the start.

Some of the most common challenges include:

Role Confusion

Many new managers are unclear about what’s expected of them. Are they still responsible for selling? How much time should they spend coaching? What does “managing performance” actually look like?

Without a clear role definition, managers default to what they know – selling. This creates a leadership vacuum and leaves their team unsupported. You must address this head-on, outlining the core responsibilities of a sales manager and how to balance them effectively.

Moving from Peer to Leader

One of the first hurdles new managers face is redefining relationships with former peers. This shift can be awkward and emotionally charged. Without guidance, new managers may struggle to assert authority, set boundaries, or hold team members accountable.

The Sales Management Foundations course begins with this exact challenge, helping new managers step confidently into leadership. It’s not just about mindset; it’s about equipping them with the communication and emotional intelligence skills to lead with clarity and empathy.

Lack of Coaching Skills

Coaching is often cited as the most important responsibility for sales managers. But most new leaders have never learned how to coach. What passes for coaching is often advice-giving, deal rescue, or war stories. Real coaching requires structured conversations, diagnostic listening, behavioral feedback, and a development mindset.

Fear of Conflict

New managers often hesitate to hold others accountable. Whether it’s from a desire to preserve relationships or fear of making mistakes, avoidance becomes common. But failing to address underperformance or behavior issues creates resentment and erodes team trust.

Time Management Struggles

Sales managers must juggle one-on-one meetings, forecast calls, pipeline reviews, team meetings, rep development, hiring, onboarding, customer escalations, and internal reporting. Without a system, many feel overwhelmed, reactive, and ineffective.

Why Sales Management Isn’t Just “Selling Plus”

There’s a persistent myth in sales organizations: that great sellers will naturally become great managers. But leadership is not an extension of selling. While there is some overlap that can be built upon, it’s mostly a different discipline with a different focus.

Here’s just an example of what changes:

• Instead of focusing on your pipeline or territory, you focus on ten pipelines or territories.
• Instead of optimizing your own approach, you learn how to develop others.
• Instead of solving problems directly, you help others solve them.
• Instead of relying on personal accountability, you create team accountability.
• Instead of just measuring activity, you drive behavior change and improvement.

These are not natural extensions of selling success. They require training, tools, and practice. In distribution, where reps often manage territories independently, have long-standing customer relationships, and make judgment calls daily, managers must be skilled in influencing rather than controlling. That’s not intuitive. It must be learned.

Coaching Is a Skill, not a Trait

One of the most important responsibilities of a sales manager is coaching. Yet, most managers have never been taught how to coach effectively. They may give advice, share stories, or offer encouragement, but that’s not coaching.

Effective coaching is structured, intentional, and focused on behavior change. It requires listening, questioning, observing, and guiding, not just telling. Managers must dive deep into this skill to build a repeatable coaching rhythm that drives continuous improvement.

Sales Excellence Requires Systems Thinking

These are not intuitive skills. They require frameworks, tools, and practice. Managers must focus on team leadership, while developing a structured approach to managing performance, pipeline, territories, accounts, and process.

When managers operate without a system, they rely on gut instinct and reactive decision-making. A structured system brings consistency, clarity, and scalability.

The Cost of “Learning on the Job”

When organizations take a sink-or-swim approach to management, they assume that new managers will figure it out over time. But this approach is not only inefficient; it’s expensive.

Revenue inconsistency

Without coaching and inspection, sales results become uneven. Rep performance varies widely. Managers spend more time reacting than improving execution.

Inconsistent Coaching and Development

Without training, managers coach inconsistently or not at all. This leads to uneven performance across the team and missed opportunities for growth. Sellers don’t get the feedback they need, and managers don’t know how to help them improve.

Poor Forecasting and Pipeline or Territory Management

Untrained managers often struggle with forecasting accuracy and pipeline discipline or management of multiple territories. They may rely on rep-reported data without scrutiny or fail to identify risk early. This creates surprises at the end of the quarter and undermines credibility with senior leadership.

Rep Disengagement

When reps don’t receive feedback, support, or development, morale drops. High performers get frustrated. Low performers fly under the radar. New hires flounder.

Perhaps the most damaging thing is the impact on team morale. Poorly trained managers often create environments of confusion, frustration, or neglect. High performers leave. New hires flounder. The team becomes reactive instead of proactive.

The cost of replacing a salesperson can exceed 1.5x their annual salary. Investing in manager training is not just a development expense – it’s a retention strategy.

Manager Burnout

New leaders who lack structure quickly become overwhelmed. They struggle to manage competing priorities, fall into reactive cycles, and experience high stress. Burnout or turnover becomes likely.

Customer Impact

Poor leadership trickles down to customer interactions. Inconsistent support, missed follow-ups, or low rep accountability all diminish trust with clients.

These are not hypothetical risks. They show up in the data – in missed quotas, declining margins, higher turnover, and lower customer retention.

What Effective Sales Manager Training Looks Like

So, what does good manager development look like? It’s not a single event. It’s a structured path that addresses role transition, skill development, and long-term support.

Effective programs include the following elements:

A Clear Role Definition

Start with clarity. What does the role of sales manager entail in your business? What are the core responsibilities? How should time be allocated across coaching, hiring, team development, pipeline inspection, forecasting, and internal collaboration?

Mindset Shift Support

New managers must understand that their job is no longer to be the top rep. Their role is to enable others to succeed. This requires humility, patience, empathy, and a focus on long-term development over short-term wins.

Coaching Frameworks and Models

Systems and Tools

Practice Opportunities

Don’t just teach concepts. Offer opportunities to apply them. Use role play, peer discussions, and scenario planning. Reinforce learning through spaced repetition and guided practice. We seem to recognize how important this is for training salespeople now, but managers do not often receive the same support. They need it, too.

Onboarding and Development Support

Help managers onboard new reps effectively. Teach them how to accelerate time to productivity, communicate expectations, and reinforce skills over time.

Leadership Skill Development

Beyond sales management tasks, focus on interpersonal skills. Emotional intelligence, communication, conflict resolution, and change management are essential for long-term success.

Ongoing Reinforcement

Don’t make training a one-time event. Use a cohort model or recurring workshops to continue developing managers. Provide just-in-time learning, peer forums, and coaching for the coaches.

The 3Ps: Prepare Prior to Promotion

While this may seem like a stretch for organizations who haven’t historically provided any management development, it is the single best piece of advice I can offer.

I once helped a company develop an 18-month program for their high-potential salespeople. Now it’s true that this was a Fortune 50 corporation, but in just a few years they had an entire bench of potential managers to promote.

For smaller organizations I’ve seen everything from 3-month to 9-month programs. Some considered graduation to be readiness, others used relief assignments where candidates covered for managers during vacations and received feedback about how they performed during their assignment, and some others incorporated a more formal certification. But they all saw a significant improvement in the results from newly promoted managers. The 3P method of Prepare Prior to Promotion is a smart business strategy.

Tailoring for Distribution: What to Emphasize

While much of this applies across industries, distributor sales managers have unique needs. Sales often happen in distribution through relationships and service. Reps often operate independently. And customer expectations are high. That means managers must:

• Be proactive in reinforcing behaviors that build customer trust.
• Know how to coach reps with different levels of experience or tenure.
• Maintain clarity on margins, pricing discipline, and solution selling.
• Understand the value of pipeline coverage, account management, territory planning, and buying and sales process alignment.
• Collaborate with your purchasing, operations, and customer service functions effectively to support both their teams and ultimately, their customers.

Structured training for distributor sales managers should reflect these realities. It must be practical, behavior-focused, and tailored to frontline execution.

Closing Thoughts: It’s Time to Rethink Sales Manager Readiness

Sales managers drive your revenue engine. They don’t just monitor numbers. They shape execution. They build teams. They translate strategy into behavior.

Promoting a top-performing rep into management without preparing them is a gamble. For many distributors, it’s a common practice – but it doesn’t have to be.

If you want consistent results, scalable execution, and a strong leadership bench, prepare your managers. Build a foundation before expecting performance.

Ask yourself:

• Have we clearly defined what our managers should do and why?
• Have we given them tools and frameworks to lead effectively?
• Are they equipped to coach, inspect, develop, and hire?
• Do they operate with intention, or are they simply reacting?

If the answer is unclear, you may already be feeling the impact. But the good news is that it’s solvable.

Sales leaders aren’t born. They’re developed. And for distributors, developing them isn’t a luxury. It’s a strategic necessity.

If you’re a CEO or senior sales leader, ask yourself: Are your managers truly ready to lead? If not, the time to invest in their development is now. Because when your managers grow, your team grows, and so does your bottom line.

The post Promoted but Not Prepared: The Case for Sales Manager Training appeared first on Distribution Strategy Group.