The short answer: Sales training doesn't stick when the system underneath it still rewards the old behavior. Your comp plan, your pipeline reviews, and what your managers actually inspect will out-argue any playbook. Teach the skill all you want, you get the behavior you're built for. Fix what the system pays for, and the new behavior holds.
You invested in the training, you got your sellers there, you even reinforced the messaging and skills with follow up. So why aren't you getting the results you want? Most training fails to hit it's intended goals for one simple, but painful reason: the system underneath the work rewards the wrong behaviors.
At Formula L4, we see this constantly in logistics and distribution teams. A leader spots inconsistency in their teams behaviors, buys a training that "fixes" it, and watches the team revert to the old practices inside a quarter because the comp plan, pipeline review process, and performance expectations (for example) still incent the old way. Training is the visible move, the obvious solution that feels like you're making traction. The system is the change-maker. You get the behavior you're built for, and no playbook will out-argue what you reward, or unintentionally punish.
A few years back I worked with a company who came to me for all the right reasons. They diagnosed their need perfectly. Their sellers were great at relationships and rapport, but inconsistent at the behaviors that really moved the big-ticket deals. Some were connecting value and winning bigger, most were competing on price. So they did the reasonable thing - the one that sounds right in every leadership meeting, "let's get everyone on the same page. Let's train them out of the rate game and into selling value".
It was the right start. Then when I talked to them I gave them a choice: 1. The training program that solves that skill gap, or 2. the system improvement that solves that result gap + the training program. They picked number one, and guess what happened? Yep, it didn't stick.
Not because the content was wrong or the reps were unwilling. It's because they were still being incented down a conflicting road - chasing the RFP instead of chasing the business impact and value conversation. Can you be invited to an RFP and turn it into a value conversation? Absolutely. Will you be more likely to chase price if RFPs are the goal, not the speed bump? Absolutely. We can build skills all we want, but if you're rewarding the opposite behavior you already know which one you'll get.
Here's the best and worst secret for every leader: the performance gap in your system is likely under your control. While that doesn't sound like it, it's actually good news. A market you can't control, a competitor you can't out-spend, a prospect who went dark for reasons you'll never know... these are things easy to stress about and hard to act on. But the systems and processes that run your business? You built those. And anything that was built (even if it wasn't by you) can be re-built.
And the harder truth underneath that - if there is an excuse standing between you and your goals, on some level you haven't decided you want it badly enough yet. The best strategists don't wait for the crappy market to turn, they find a way to win within it, leveraging something they can control.
By now, most of us have learned that you can't control people, only influence them. That's the work of selling and leading both, so thankfully it's familiar territory. But you CAN control systems. Not just by the inputs - pumping more effort into a system that's not running the way you want leads to Lucy-at-the-chocolate-factory level chaos. It's by designing your system so the behavior you want is the easiest, most logical choice to make. Because when people are given options, they weigh what's easier, quicker, and likeliest to get them the best result. In my experience:
In the best of times: the choice you want your team to make had better win on at least two of those, or you'll be doing a whole lot of influencing.
So what does it look like when you get it right? I worked with another company on a similar shift, off the rate-wars and into value, aimed at their current customer portfolio. This time we wrapped the system around the behavior instead of just focusing on the skill. Everything about the program and the participants worlds aligned to this particular way to grow. And it worked. Every account grew 30% in 9 months. Every account.
It wasn't luck, it wasn't about the skill level of the team, the second story was actually even in a worse market. It was a system that was all driving the right behaviors.
So before you book your next training, or build the next strategy update, do the unglamorous work first. Write down the one behavior you actually want from your sellers - the one thing you want more or less of. Then go find in your system things that currently punish that behavior: the processes it lengthens, the managers habits that reinforce the opposite, what the CRM makes easy, what actually gets rewarded. What makes it easier, quicker, more effective to make a different choice? That's your starting point. If you've already invested in the skill development, you haven't wasted it yet. Just design the system to stop fighting it. Because if you continue to drive skills into a system that supports the opposite behavior, you've bought theatre. Expensive performances that entertain but don't transform. Lots of smiles and happy faces, not a lot of impact.
Most businesses are designed to produce the exact results they get. That sounds like a real bummer until you flip it on it's head. Anything that was designed can be redesigned, and designed to produce the results you want.
If you suspect the system under your team is fighting the behaviors you want, the Growth Inflection Signals identified specific constraints that stall most logistics and distribution organizations at their current size. Or if you're ready to talk through your situation, schedule a free Growth Momentum Review.