Most organisations take sales capability seriously.
They invest in training.
They run workshops.
They bring in external expertise.
Attendance is good.
Feedback is positive.
Energy is high, at least for a while.
Then work resumes.
Capability Is Often Treated as an Event
In many sales organisations, development follows a familiar rhythm.
A need is identified.
A training program is designed.
A course or workshop is delivered.
Boxes are ticked.
Skills are introduced.
Momentum feels real.
Then everyone goes back to work.
Capability becomes something that happened,
not something that continues to happen.
Why This Feels Logical
This approach makes sense on paper.
Training is visible.
It is measurable.
It fits budgeting cycles and planning calendars.
It also feels efficient.
One intervention.
Many people trained.
Quick uplift expected.
In busy organisations, this feels like progress.
What Happens After the Training Ends
Once the event is over, reality takes over again.
Targets return to the foreground.
Pressure resumes.
Old habits quietly reappear.
Not because the training was poor.
Not because people forgot everything.
But because new behaviours are asked to survive
inside the same system that shaped the old ones.
Without reinforcement, practice, and space,
capability fades into good intention.
The Cost Most Organisations Miss
Treating capability as an event creates a subtle gap.
People know what good looks like,
but struggle to apply it consistently.
Managers want to support development,
but default to execution when pressure rises.
Learning feels separate from work,
not embedded within it.
The result is familiar.
Repeated training.
Similar issues resurfacing.
A sense that “we’ve done this before”.
Why This Matters More Now
When markets were forgiving, this gap was manageable.
Experience carried teams through.
Strong individuals compensated for weak systems.
But as competition tightens,
those buffers disappear.
What differentiates teams now is not knowledge,
but the ability to apply it consistently under pressure.
That does not come from one-off events.
Capability Is a Rhythm, Not an Intervention
Sales capability grows through repetition.
Through practice in real situations.
Through reinforcement over time.
Through alignment between expectations and behaviour.
When development is treated as an ongoing rhythm,
it supports performance instead of competing with it.
When it is treated as an event,
it is always the first thing to be sacrificed.
Conclusion
Sales capability does not fail because organisations don’t invest in training.
It fails because training is often asked to do too much, on its own.
When development lives only in workshops and training programs,
it struggles to survive in the flow of real work.
If this sounds familiar, there is nothing to fix yet.
It is simply a clearer view of why capability stalls,
even when effort and intention are genuine.