Across B2B businesses right now, there seems to be a very interesting trend occurring. There is an increasing demand in the market for ‘old-school’ sales experience in a way that suggests that ‘real’ sales experience has quietly left the building.
Now, I’m sure this hasn’t happened overnight via a single management decision or strategy shift to automate; it may have happened gradually over the past few years with the promise of something better, perhaps easier, on the horizon. Some senior salespeople may have slowly exited the caper post-COVID or moved into non-selling leadership roles, or maybe sales just became a remote exercise that lost its mojo. Whatever has triggered this over the past couple of years, sales depth has definitely been traded in favour of automation and office-based, less expensive and experienced reps. Experience is being replaced with systemisation and structure, so it makes me wonder what impact this is having on company growth, particularly revenue growth.
“Your growth hasn’t stalled because markets are tougher or leads are scarcer. It’s stalled because the sales experience quietly left the building.”
In my opinion, the sales profession is becoming system-led rather than skills-led. There is plenty of great tech out there and intuitive CRMs, playbooks, scripts and AI prompts are now doing much of the heavy lifting. They bring time savings, consistency and visibility, but they are also creating a dangerous illusion of capability. What’s missing is commercial judgement – the ability to read a deal, sense risk early and adapt to situations in real time. We are replacing experience with something altogether different.
This problem is showing up now because the market is exposing it. Buyers are more informed, more cautious and far more complex internally than what many salespeople have ever had to navigate before. Value conversations and ROI matter more than features, price pressure is absolutely everywhere – and businesses are now waking up to it on the back of stagnated growth. This is exactly the environment where experience matters the most and where its absence is now impossible for many companies to ignore.
AI can assist and it matters, but it can’t read the emotional temperature of a deal. It can’t tell you when consensus hasn’t been established or when a key stakeholder is quietly blocking progress, or when a deal is drifting off the road. It can’t handle late-stage commercial curveballs or reframe the conversation when price becomes the only thing left on the table. It can definitely pump out heaps of activity, but are your conversion rates improving?.
Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, but sales teams seem to be becoming increasingly younger to me. That in itself isn’t the real issue. The issue is that old-school sales acumen and experience isn’t being blended enough with the youth, so there is a shortfall in the growth strategies of companies just based on capability alone. It also impacts time-poor leaders who are constantly jumping in to save staff because no one on the frontline has navigated some pretty ‘general’ sales problems before.
“How do we coach juniors when we no longer have masters?”
That’s why smart businesses are now reinvesting in senior sales capability. Not by abandoning their developing group or throwing systems in the bin, but by re-introducing experience into growth roles. They are hiring experienced individual contributors and bringing in player-coaches who sell and mentor simultaneously. They are using fractional or advisory sales leaders to inject immediate commercial judgement. They are putting experienced sellers back into frontline roles where they create leverage and can have an impact immediately or hit a number in a quarter or towards the back end of a financial year.
The return of sales experience isn’t a step backwards; it appears to be the right strategy depending on your short and long-term objectives. The businesses that will regain momentum and win will be the ones that blend modern systems with deep commercial skill. Those that don’t – will keep adding tools, activity and complexity without fixing the real problem (a lack of sales firepower!).