L&D as a strategic driver of sales performance
In today’s competitive commercial landscape, organisations cannot rely solely on product quality, brand power or market reach to secure sustainable growth.
Sales performance increasingly depends on how well organisations equip their people to navigate new buyer expectations, evolving sales channels, and complex go-to-market models.
As such, Learning and Development (L&D) plays a pivotal role not just in improving skills, but in shaping sales systems that genuinely drive business outcomes.
During our recent Global L&D Talk: L&D as a Booster of Sales Performance, three speakers shared powerful, practical insights on how learning can elevate sales effectiveness across global teams.
Building a commercial learning ecosystem
Jérôme Gautier, Program Director at L’Oréal University, offered a compelling view of how the company created a global university for online and offline commerce. It all started with the ambition to become ‘one of the top three best in class in commercial excellence across channels.’
His story demonstrates that developing commercial capability at scale requires far more than traditional training. It also demands an integrated, cascading learning organisation.
A central pillar of L’Oréal’s approach is a unified skills library, comprising content on 514 cross-functional skills and 39 commercial programmes. This provides a clear, coherent architecture for building capabilities across L’Oréal’s four major divisions.
The aim is not only to upskill salespeople, but also to make commerce a ‘talent factory for future general managers’ by strengthening customer-centric skills at all levels.
For Field Sales, training is often delivered conveniently, on the job, by field sales managers, in small chunks of around one hour or even 15 minutes, sometimes as part of a meeting.
The ‘Train the Trainer’ cascading model is the engine to build a “learning organization” and support transformation. L’Oréal trains commercial trainers at global level, who then train field sales managers in the countries (and also field salespeople). Managers are equipped not only in sales management but also in coaching and facilitation, enabling continuous on-the-job learning.
L’Oréal embeds business KPIs into every programme. After training on joint business planning, for example, teams track the number of new joint business plans created. Or, following a training on customer acquisition, they measure the number of new acquired customers.
The focus is firmly on measurable outcomes, not just classroom satisfaction. This business-centred approach – supported by strong sponsorship from HR and commercial leaders – ensures learning is deeply integrated into strategic priorities.
Practice, storytelling, and team learning
Angie Stuart, Director of Learning & Enablement at Sequoia, challenged the traditional perception of training by asking: What do you think sellers think when they hear the word ‘training’?
Responses in the session pointed to the same themes: long slide decks, compliance requirements, hours of e-learning, and the dreaded ‘death by PowerPoint’. So, Angie’s message was clear: to influence sales performance, L&D must design learning experiences that feel relevant, energising and immediately useful.
Angie shared three principles that have guided her work building sales enablement solutions for successful sellers:
a) Practice makes perfect
Sales capabilities only take root when people practise repeatedlyin realistic scenarios. Angie described the design of a sales onboarding program where participants engage in case-study-based simulations throughout their learning journey. They conducted discovery calls, delivered pitches, handled objections and closed deals, mirroring the full customer lifecycle.
This approach has had a tangible impact with participants consistently closing their first deal faster, demonstrably reducing ramp time.
b) Paint the picture
Storytelling, particularly industry and persona-based narratives, enables sellers to visualise a better future for their customers. Demonstrating Enterprise-level value requires helping sellers communicate how they can help an organization meet their business goals in compelling, contextual ways.
Angie described how sellers can weave storytelling throughout the sales cycle, adapting the story with real details gleaned from discovery and relationship building—increasing value while staying connected to a prospect’s true needs.
c) Empower the team
Modern selling is collaborative. Therefore, empowerment must focus on team learning, not individual knowledge acquisition.
The most successful programmes are ones where cross-functional teams learn together, practise together, and are certified only once they demonstrate new behaviours in the CRM. This ensures learning directly shapes field execution.
Together, these principles demonstrate how L&D can design meaningful, behaviour-changing experiences that align tightly with revenue targets.
Designing high-impact sales academies
Stéphane Beau, Project Director at Cegos Group, provided a strategic view on how organisations can build sales academies that respond to business needs.
He emphasised that L&D must start with a deep understanding of commercial challenges. These range from maintaining customer relationships to implementing new sales models, enhancing value selling, and developing up-selling and cross-selling capability.
A clear theme was the importance of individualised learning pathways. Sales roles differ significantly in maturity, expectations and context, so academies must cater for newcomers, intermediate practitioners and advanced professionals alike. This requires pre- and post-assessments, modular learning journeys, and flexible formats adapted to time constraints, languages and cultural realities.
Stéphane also stressed the need for co-design in collaboration with people in the business. Using ‘Design Thinking’ – inspired by Learning Experience (LX) sprints – Cegos works with clients to map personas, uncover skills gaps, and create learning journeys that reflect real sales situations.
“L&D must put our feet into their shoes, ensuring solutions resonate with everyday commercial realities,” he says.
Cegos uses a five-stage roadmap to ensure successful implementation:
- 1) Strategic alignment and sponsorship: securing C-level commitment and funding
- 2) Needs analysis: identifying capability gaps and existing tools
- 3) Curriculum and journey design: developing purposeful learning paths
- 4) Pilot and deployment: scaling programmes globally
- 5) Evaluation and continuous development: measuring impact across skills, business, project and social indicators
This structured, data-informed approach ensures that sales academies are not just training initiatives. They also shape performance, customer experience, and long-term organisational strength.
Sales training at the heart of the business
Across all three perspectives, a clear message emerged: building effective sales teams requires strategic alignment, real-world relevance and measurable impact.
Whether through cascading ecosystems, practice-driven learning, storytelling or robust sales academy design, L&D serves as a powerful accelerator of commercial performance when it is embedded deeply in the business.
If your organisation wants to enhance sales capabilities through effective L&D initiatives, contact Cegos today.
