Time spent in training is time spent not selling.

That’s a common sentiment among reps, and there’s a reason they feel that way. If they’re not see value in training, participating can feel like a direct cost to selling time. That mindset can undermine training, but it’s not the only barrier.

Training only changes behavior when you have capability, opportunity and motivation. Miss any one of these three, and the training won’t stick, no matter how well-designed the content is.

The Capability Problem

Do the reps have the knowledge and skills to do what’s being asked of them?

Training often focuses here: transferring knowledge or building skills. Sales training can miss capability when it takes a one-size-fits-all approach. Consider a robust commercial onboarding program with an industry deep dive. That content may be essential for a new hire with no industry experience but repetitive for a veteran hired specifically for that expertise. The program may be comprehensive without addressing the varying needs of the sales force.

The Opportunity Problem

Do they have opportunities to apply their knowledge and practice their skills?

There’s a half-day workshop on consultative selling. Reps learn a new framework, run a practice round or two and return to work. Without reinforcement, practice sessions with managers or follow-up resources, their next opportunity to practice may be with a prospect. When training is disconnected from reinforcement in the flow of work, it is less likely to drive sustained behavior change.

The Motivation Problem

Do they have a reason to engage with the training?

Some sales enablement functions are seen as “hall monitors,” enforcing top-down mandates for the number of training sessions reps must attend or complete each quarter. When evaluation stops at attendance or completion rates, reps notice. They have little reason to engage if the program is not connected to outcomes they care about, such as win rates, deal velocity, ramp time or pipeline conversion.

Fixing only one of these problems is unlikely to improve outcomes. A personalized onboarding path may address a capability gap, but without opportunities to practice, a new hire may not apply what they learned. Even with practice opportunities, motivation may lag if the manager never reinforces or coaches the expected behavior.

If you’re looking to consistently change behavior through training, you’ll need to address each of these problems. The best way to do that is by building a better approach to sales enablement.

Anticipating What Reps Need Next

It might seem like semantics, but the distinction between sales training and sales enablement matters. Training develops knowledge or skills and is typically time-bound. Sales enablement is an ongoing process that equips reps with training, coaching, feedback, content and other support they need to apply what they have learned and perform effectively.

Done well, sales enablement acts as a dynamic organizational capability. It can diagnose whether reps have the capability, opportunity and motivation to perform a target behavior, then address the gap.

Think of sales enablement as a muscle that must be built over time. The function needs to sense what’s changing in the market and anticipate the support reps will need to adapt.

That need is already visible in workforce forecasts. The World Economic Forum reports that employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. Sales enablement teams need a deliberate way to identify emerging skill gaps and respond before they affect performance. As Ken Lawshe, chief revenue officer at Synthesia, puts it: “Every leadership team right now is staring down the same problem: the skills your people need are changing faster than you can train for them.”

The good news is that you don’t need a crystal ball to solve this problem (though it would be nice). You need an intentional plan to predict and close the loop on skill gaps in your sales force.

Closing the Loop, One Program at a Time

If building that kind of capability feels overwhelming, know it doesn’t need to be. Start with one program, ideally a high-touch, high-volume experience such as onboarding.

1.    Map the experience.

What are new hires doing in their first week? What about for the rest of the quarter? Document the full experience, including what’s facilitated company-wide. You’ll want to understand how anything sales-related ladders into broader development, and where there are potential opportunities to better align the two experiences.

2.    Diagnose the current state.

What’s working well? What isn’t? How do you know that? Part of the challenge is understanding how you’re currently measuring the impact of onboarding. That requires collecting data sources, like onboarding surveys, or talking to HR business partners who support the sales team. When those sources are not available, ask recent hires what support they needed but did not receive.

3.    Rebuild the program.

The goal is to close the gap between knowing and doing while keeping reps motivated along the way. That may not require a major content redesign. Instead, add opportunities for reinforcement and practice, such as spacing facilitated experiences over time, pairing them with targeted coaching sessions or giving managers structured ways to engage with new hires.

4.    Measure the changes.

Before launching the redesigned program, determine how impact will be measured and which behavioral signals can be captured reliably. Start with data already being collected, such as new hires’ pipeline activity, and supplement it with employee and manager surveys to assess whether the program is sustaining engagement.

Making Enablement More Sustainable

As you’re evaluating each program, consider how AI can help you make enablement more sustainable for your team, reps and managers. Here are a few examples of what that could look like for an onboarding program:

• Use a large language model (LLM) to analyze approved data sources, such as new hire surveys, learning management system (LMS) analytics, live training data and call transcripts, to identify patterns and trends.
• Automate workflows such as training enrollment, practice reminders or resources delivered in the flow of work. For example, a customer relationship management (CRM) system could trigger a short training refresher before a rep’s first call with a new prospect.
• Adapt existing content into personalized learning pathways using an AI tutor in an LMS or enablement platform, informed by appropriate context from a human resources information system (HRIS) or single sign-on (SSO) integration, such as role, seniority or prior experience.
• Provide practice opportunities with AI coaching so reps can role-play critical conversations and receive feedback before practicing with prospects.

AI isn’t the silver bullet to better enablement, but it gives you back the time to make sure the training you deliver actually drives behavior change. If you can demonstrate to reps, with data, that the training you provide helps them close deals, then they’ll show up and engage.

Build sales enablement that proves that, and trust follows.