Most sales training conversations in 2026 centre around three things: AI in sales, consultative selling and sales coaching.
On the surface, it feels like progress. But step back, and a different pattern appears. These aren’t three separate trends. They’re three responses to the same underlying issue:
Teams are trying to improve results without fixing how they think, prepare, and behave.
AI in Sales is Moving Faster… but in What Direction?
AI is everywhere. Sales teams are using it to prepare for meetings faster, generate insights and reduce admin.
And the intent is right.
But most organisations are asking: “How do we use AI in sales?”
Instead of: “How do we make better decisions before we ever use AI?”
Because AI doesn’t fix poor thinking. It scales it.
If your team isn’t clear on:
- what good looks like
- how to interpret information
- how to define value
AI simply makes inconsistent performance happen faster.
The Right Shift, Applied Superficially
There’s been a clear move away from traditional, transactional selling. The language has shifted towards “value-based selling”, “consultative conversations” and “insight-led engagement”
And rightly so.
Buyers today are more informed, more sceptical, and harder to influence. So sales teams are being asked to: ask better questions, uncover deeper needs and create meaningful value.
But here’s the issue:
Most training focuses on what to do,
not how to think.
So in a workshop, the behaviour looks right. In a real conversation, under pressure, it disappears.
That’s why approaches like Precision Selling focus on building a repeatable way of thinking and preparing, not just surface-level techniques.
The Realisation Phase
The rise in sales coaching isn’t accidental. It’s a reaction. Organisations are seeing skills fade after training, inconsistency across teams and limited long-term impact, so they turn to coaching. And coaching matters.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Coaching doesn’t fix a weak system. It exposes it.
If there’s no shared framework coaching becomes subjective, managers coach differently and behaviours don’t stick.
The Gap No One Is Talking About
These three trends are connected:
- AI = efficiency
- Consultative selling = effectiveness
- Coaching = consistency
But most organisations treat them separately. So, instead of compounding impact, they create disconnected initiatives, mixed messages and inconsistent behaviours.
This is the gap.
Not a lack of training.
Not a lack of tools.
A lack of a joined-up way of working.
What High-Performing Teams Do Differently
The best teams don’t chase trends, they build a system.
A system that defines how we think, how we prepare and how we engage customers. Only then do they use AI to enhance it and use coaching to reinforce it.
At Expression for Growth, this is exactly what sits behind the Precision suite; connecting skills, behaviours, and long-term habit formation into one consistent approach.
Because performance doesn’t come from isolated improvements. It comes from consistency at scale.
The question isn’t “What should we invest in next?”.
It’s “What behaviours do we want to see every day… and what system makes that inevitable?”.
Because training fades. But capability, done properly, endures.
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