Across many industries, experienced sales professionals are stepping away from frontline roles and moving into leadership, consultancy, or retirement. These individuals built their careers through phone-based selling, relationship building, and long-term client management skills developed over years, not months.
The problem is that the next generation is not coming through quickly enough. As a result, many organisations are facing a growing commercial skills gap that threatens future revenue, customer relationships, and long-term growth.
Why the Traditional Model No Longer Works
Historically, sales teams relied on senior professionals to train and mentor junior hires. Knowledge was passed down organically through shadowing, shared calls, and daily coaching.
That model is breaking down.
Many businesses no longer have:
- The time to properly train new salespeople
- The structure to support development
- The patience to wait for long-term results
Experience alone is no longer enough. Senior salespeople are often under pressure to deliver immediately, leaving little room to coach others. As a result, two damaging patterns are emerging.
First, companies stop hiring junior salespeople altogether because training feels too time-consuming and risky. Second, businesses do hire juniors but fail to support them properly, leading to underperformance, disengagement, and high turnover.
Both approaches weaken the sales pipeline and increase long-term dependency on a shrinking pool of experienced talent.
The Cost of Not Developing Sales Talent
When businesses fail to develop junior salespeople, they create short-term efficiency at the expense of long-term stability. Over time, this leads to:
- A lack of internal promotion options
- Increased hiring costs for senior roles
- Inconsistent sales performance
- Loss of institutional knowledge
Ultimately, companies end up competing for the same experienced salespeople, driving up salaries without solving the underlying problem.
How Successful Businesses Are Bridging the Gap
The organisations building strong, sustainable sales teams are taking a different approach. Instead of searching for “ready-made” salespeople, they are focused on building capability from the ground up.
- They hire for attitude, not experience. Resilience, curiosity, competitiveness, and communication skills are far harder to teach than sales techniques. The best businesses recruit people with the right mindset and train them in the mechanics of selling.
- They invest in structured learning. Rather than leaving development to chance, successful teams implement clear training pathways. This includes shadowing experienced salespeople, regular call coaching, role-play, and gradual exposure to targets instead of immediate pressure to perform.
- They accept that sales performance takes time. Salespeople are developed, not created overnight. High-performing organisations understand that expecting results within weeks is unrealistic and counterproductive. They measure progress through skill development and behaviours, not just revenue in the early stages.
The Solution: Treat Sales Development as a Strategic Investment
Sales is one of the only functions in a business that directly generates revenue. Yet it is often given the least patience when developing people.
To close the sales skills gap, businesses must:
- Rebuild junior sales pipelines now, not later
- Ring-fence time for coaching and mentoring
- Create defined development milestones over 6-24 months
- Reward managers for developing people, not just hitting targets
Sales development should be treated as a long-term commercial investment, not a short-term cost. Without this shift in mindset, organisations will struggle to replace senior sales professionals and maintain consistent growth in the years ahead.
Looking Ahead
The sales skills gap is not a talent problem, it is a development problem. The companies that succeed will be those willing to invest early, train deliberately, and think long term. Those that don’t may find themselves with strong products, healthy demand, and no one capable of selling them effectively.
If you are looking to strengthen your sales team, whether that’s hiring junior talent with the right attitude or recruiting experienced sales professionals who can deliver and lead I’d be happy to help.
Sammy Taylor-Bell
📧 sammy.taylorbell@jonlee.co.uk
📞 01952 987041
Now is the time to build sales teams for the future, not just hire for today.
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