There's a conversation I have at the end of almost every programme I run.
A participant pulls me aside, or sends a message a few days later, and says some version of the same thing: "I get it, Nick. I can see why this works. But when I go back and try to do it, my boss asks for more slides."
They're not wrong. And they're not making excuses. They've just bumped into something that training alone can't fix.
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.
Discover how Expression for Growth is shaping the next 25 years by building commercial and leadership capability that endures, turning learning into lasting performance through coaching, consistency, and culture.
This year, Expression for Growth celebrates 25 years of helping people enjoy performing at their best, a milestone that feels both humbling and energising.
