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.

Margin pressure is no longer cyclical. It is structural. In enterprise sales performance environments, small behavioural gaps scale quickly. Commercial excellence is becoming a board-level discussion — not a training initiative.

A generation ago, leadership was largely judged on delivery. Did you hit the numbers? Did the project land?

Today, that's still on the table — but alongside it sits retention, trust, team health and emotional intelligence. The delivery bar hasn't moved. Everything else has been added on top of it.

AI adoption has accelerated fast across enterprise organisations. Commercial teams are drafting proposals, running analysis and generating output at a pace that simply wasn't possible a few years ago.

But speed is not the same thing as strategy.

What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Drives Better Experiences

When it comes to understanding how people truly feel about an experience, few measures are as simple or as widely recognised as Net Promoter Score (NPS). You’ve probably seen it on a dashboard, but NPS is far more than a number. Used well, it’s a powerful signal of trust, loyalty and whether the experience genuinely made a difference.

 Most people never reach their true potential. Research suggests that only around 5% of individuals consistently perform at their very best. The rest? They plateau, get comfortable, or never quite take the leap from good to great. 

 Everyone is talking about learning new skills for the future of work. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the biggest challenge isn’t learning more, it’s unlearning what no longer serves us. 

You can have the best training programme in the world, but if managers aren’t reinforcing it, you’re wasting your money. 

AI isn’t coming for your job. But it is coming for your way of working. The truth is, AI won’t replace L&D, but L&D teams who fail to embrace AI risk being left behind. 

Every year, organisations pour millions into learning and development. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: without embedding, most of that investment quietly disappears.