Education: the Silver Bullet?

29th September 2025 |   Anderson Hirst and Guy Lloyd

Could high-quality “foundational” sales education for those about to enter the profession be the key?

About a year ago, Anderson met with a start-up founder who had scaled her agency organisation to ten people. She contacted him looking for sales and sales management support. When asked how she approached selling to a new client, she described the process: “Typically, I will meet with a potential client, showcase what we could do for them, and then get agreement to send them a proposal following the meeting. Then I’d follow up a couple of weeks later and hope they would be interested to proceed.”

To someone not from a sales background, this may seem totally reasonable. To those of you who are a bit more experienced, and have had some formal sales training, then you would recognise quite a few B2B sales missteps in the approach she followed.

Similar stories like this abound with start-up founders who are not from a “sales background”. Just like in the example, we have seen similar missteps time and again:

  • Trying to fit the entire sales process into one meeting, instead of separating out discovery and proposal creation.
  • A lack of rigorous, high-quality discovery concerning client needs.
  • Not trying to understand the needs of other decisionmakers at the customer.
  • Not securing commitment for the next meeting in the calendar.
  • Failing to make sure to present proposals personally, rather than sending them.