In distribution, and especially in the industrial business-to-business (B2B), automation, and electrical sectors, growth is often pursued through operational efficiency, acquisition, product expansion, and pricing strategy. But there’s a critical lever that remains underutilized: your frontline sales talent (both sellers and their sales managers).

In a market where differentiation is increasingly difficult, with tariffs, pricing pressures, and economic pressures, your people may be your most powerful and sustainable competitive advantage.

This article makes the case for a strategic shift: treating sales talent not as a cost center, but as a growth engine. We’ll explore how distributors can fund talent investment through smarter pricing, margin management, and operational efficiencies, and how buyer-centric sales methodology and frontline coaching can deliver measurable return on investment (ROI) and competitive differentiation. We’ll also examine the human differentiators that separate top-performing sales teams from the rest.

The Problem: Talent Treated as a Cost Not a Catalyst

In many companies, frontline sales talent is viewed as an expense to be controlled. Training budgets are lean. Formal sales methodology and process management are rare. Coaching is inconsistent. Sales managers are promoted but not prepared. And new sellers, especially, are often left to figure things out on their own.

This mindset is not only outdated – it’s dangerous. In today’s environment, where buyers (especially the younger generations) are more informed, independent, and skeptical than ever, the ability to build trust, communicate value, and guide decisions is paramount. That requires skilled, well-developed sales professionals.

According to McKinsey, frontline labor accounts for over 70% of a distributor’s direct expenses, and top-performing distributors invest even more. To be clear, this figure reflects payroll and benefits, not proactive investment in capability-building. Paying for people is not the same as investing in and developing them. Companies that treat talent as a strategic asset – not just a line item – see twice the shareholder return and three times the labor productivity compared to peers.

The Funding Challenge: Where Will the Money Come From?

If investing in talent is so critical, why don’t more distributors do it? Often, the answer is simple: budget constraints and unfamiliarity with how to maximize those investments to achieve an ROI.

If you haven’t seen training and talent investments deliver improved sales results and an ROI, it’s hard to imagine it’s possible. But it is. – Mike Kunkle

But here’s the good news:

• There’s a path to funding talent investment that doesn’t require new capital.
• And another path to improve results and get an ROI.

It starts with strategic pricing and operational efficiencies to improve margins.

Strategic Pricing as a Funding Source

Distributors have long struggled with margin erosion. But pricing is one of the most controllable performance levers in the business. By investing in pricing analytics, segmentation, and governance, distributors can:

• Identify and correct underpriced SKUs.
• Align pricing with customer value and willingness to pay.
• Reduce unnecessary discounts and overrides.
• Improve gross margin by 100–400 basis points.

Even modest improvements in pricing can generate significant incremental profit—profit that can be reinvested in talent development.

Automating the Mundane to Free Up Cash and Focus

While this article avoids deep dives into artificial intelligence (AI), it’s worth noting that automation and intelligent systems can significantly reduce the time sellers spend on low-value tasks. Tools that integrate with existing platforms – such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence (BI)dashboards, and guided selling systems with prescriptive recommendations – can provide sellers with data-driven insights and prescriptive recommendations that guide daily actions.

These systems analyze account health, purchase frequency, product mix, and share of wallet to identify gaps and growth opportunities. Many of these tools can also:

• Alert sellers to overdue re-orders and at-risk accounts.
• Recommend upsell and cross-sell opportunities based on customer behavior and their comparison to like-customers who order more or more often.
• Highlight underpenetrated product categories.
• Benchmark accounts for performance against similar customers.

By embedding these insights directly into the seller’s workflow, distributors can shift reps from reactive order-taking to proactive account development. This not only improves seller productivity and revenue generation but also reduces administrative overhead and enables sellers to focus on high-impact activities.

The result is a more efficient sales force, better territory coverage, and freed-up resources that can be redirected toward training, coaching, and enablement. Because it’s one thing for systems to make prescriptive recommendations, but it’s quite another to have the skills and capabilities to execute those recommendations effectively.

The ROI of Talent Investment

Investing in frontline sales talent isn’t just a feel-good initiative, it’s a business decision with measurable returns.

Adopt a Buyer-Centric Sales Methodology

Distributors who adopt a buyer-centric, full-cycle sales methodology see improvements in:

• New business development.
• Average sales cycle duration.
• Opportunity conversion rates.
• Average deal size.
• Customer retention and expansion.

These gains come from better alignment with buyer expectations, deeper discovery, clearer value communication, and more confident conversations with buyers to gain commitments.

It’s important to note that in wholesale distribution, there are two distinct buyer’s journeys that every sales leader needs to understand and manage when they apply to their company.

• The Supplier Selection Journey: This is the more transactional path. A customer who needs supplies to use or resell evaluates suppliers to select one. This first part is more of a consultative sale. Then, the customer places an order, stocks it, uses or resells the products, and eventually reorders. It’s a repeatable process loop, and recently it is sometimes (but not always) a self-service model and increasingly digital.
• The Consultative Solution Journey: This is the more complex path. A customer is facing a challenge or hoping to capitalize on an opportunity. They need more than a product – they need a solution. It needs to be the exact right solution and may be a bespoke one. This journey involves deeper discovery, solution design (co-creation with the customer), maybe a protype or pilot, eventual implementation, and post-sale support.

This article focuses primarily on the consultative solution journey, where the need for skilled, buyer-aligned sellers is most acute. But note that those same skills apply to the initial supplier selection and ongoing account management of the supplier process.

See this previous article here for more on this topic: The Two Buyer’s Journeys in Distribution: A Practical Guide for Sales Leaders

Implementing Training Effectively

Training alone doesn’t drive results. To achieve meaningful performance improvement, distributors must implement training as part of a system. That means to:

• Align training content with a formal, buyer-centric sales methodology.
• Deliver training in digestible modules that build cumulatively.
• Reinforce learning through practice, role play, and manager-led coaching.
• Embed models and frameworks into customer relationship management (CRM) and daily workflows.
• Measure adoption and mastery – not just completion.

This is the foundation of the Sales Training System in the image above: a structured, repeatable approach to developing seller capabilities, aligned with content that’s consistent with how buyers buy and how top performers sell. Without this system, training becomes an event. With it, training becomes a catalyst for transformation.

For more detail on the system, read this article, right here on DSG: How to Get Business Value from Sales Training

Sales Coaching and Frontline Sales Management

Research from CSO Insights shows that organizations with high levels of coaching effectiveness see:

• Win rates increase by 28%.
• Quota attainment improves by 32%.
• Revenue plan attainment rises by 15%.

These are not insignificant results, are they? What would those improvements mean for you and your company?

Why aren’t these lifts from coaching more common? Well, great coaching doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a structured system, a regular cadence, and managers who are fully equipped to coach – not just inspect pipelines, transactional order flow, or territory and account growth. And coaching shouldn’t just be opportunistic, based on something managers just happen to observe when they’re with their rep.

Managers must be able to diagnose skill gaps that tie to performance, get to the root cause of the gaps, determine the best solution for that root cause issue, lead the sessions with their sellers effectively, and apply models for training, coaching, counseling, and feedback that are proven-effective at guiding behavior change and improved performance.

For more on this type of coaching, see: Your Sales Managers Think They’re Coaching, But They’re Probably Not

Human Differentiators: The Sustainable Advantage

In a world of parity products and digital disruption, human differentiators matter more than ever. As outlined in this newsletter on Human Differentiators, top-performing sellers consistently:

• Demonstrate buyer acumen and business insight.
• Communicate with clarity and empathy to help buyers feel understood.
• Build trust through consistency, credibility, service, and interpersonal skills.
• Guide buyers through complex decisions.

These are learnable skills. But they require intentional development, coaching, and reinforcement.

Strategic Recommendations

To unlock the talent imperative and get the most from your sales force, distributors must take a deliberate, data-backed approach:

1. Reframe Talent as a Growth Lever

Stop treating sales talent development as a cost center. Start viewing it as a strategic investment that drives revenue, margin, and customer loyalty. Just be aware that ROI doesn’t “just happen” without purposeful implementation, reinforcement, and ongoing coaching to mastery.

2. Fund Talent Investments Through Pricing & Operational Efficiency

Use margin improvement through better negotiation, and the above-mentioned strategic pricing and operational efficiencies to generate the cash needed to invest in people. Then, also automate low-value tasks for your sellers to free up time to spend more time on customer-facing activities.

3. Adopt a Buyer-Centric Sales Methodology

Implement a full-cycle, buyer-centric sales methodology that’s based on top-performer practices to align with modern buyer expectations and improve execution quality. This requires giving up the free-for-all sales mentality that exists today in many distributors.

This always reminds me of a line in The Knight’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer:

“Each man for himself.” – Chaucer

In fairness to Chaucer, in context, the meaning of the phrase was closer to, “If you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will.” It was not meant to be selfish. But when we’re talking about organizational behavior, customer experience, and sales effectiveness, it’s simply not an effective mindset nor strategy.

To get an ROI, you will need to foster both adoption and mastery of a consistent, buyer-centric, aligned approach to selling.

4. Equip Sales Managers to Coach

Train frontline managers to coach effectively. Teach them a coaching system and provide them with models, tools, and a cadence to guide developmental conversations – not just deal, account, or territory reviews.

As mentioned above in more detail, managers need to be able to identify and assess skills gaps and then train, coach, counsel and/or provide feedback to close the gaps and raise performance.

If you stop and think about it: what else should your managers be doing?

5. Measure What Matters

Find a way to track execution quality, not just activity. This means tracking both leading and lagging indicators. Use diagnostics to assess skill mastery, buyer alignment, and value communication.

I teach the ROAM model to help with this. ROAM is a root-cause analysis method meaning Results versus Objectives, and Activity, plus Methodology.

When results are less than the objectives, managers and reps explore the rep’s activity (what they’re doing, with whom, how much, and if applicable, when and where), and then the methodology, or the quality of the activities (how and how well they are performing them). When results are less than the objectives (a meaningful gap worth closing), the answer for performance improvement will always lie in the analysis of the activities and the methodology.

Most organizations only measure and report on results or lagging indicators. While you can analyze past results to get an idea of where to focus on the present, you should also be able to identify where opportunities in motion or accounts are veering off-track, while you can still influence the outcome.

6. Create a Culture of Sales Mastery

What gets measured gets done and what gets asked about gets attention and focus. To create a culture of sales mastery, it starts with the previous steps and continues with a focus on adoption and mastery through coaching. That requires top-down commitment and a coaching culture with a sustained focus on continuous improvement. And all of this leads to a culture of sales mastery.

Another critical enabling step is to embed foundational practices into your ERP, CRM, workflows, and leadership rhythms. You need to stay the course on all the above, until it becomes “The way we do things around here.”

Do you want the tangible results and ROI that we talked about in this article? If so, the above content and steps are your path to success.

Closing Thoughts

In the race to grow and outpace competitors, many distributors focus on technology systems (especially AI now), products, and pricing. Those are important, in fact very important. But the real differentiator – the one that buyers remember – is your people. Your sellers. Your managers. Your frontline teams. How they delivered for them and acted in their (the customer’s) best interests – and, how your sellers made them feel and the results they (or your company) delivered.

Without developing your sellers’ capabilities, you will see improvement from other initiatives, but you won’t maximize the full potential.

Investing in talent isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s the smart thing to do. It drives performance, protects margin, and builds loyalty with your staff and customers. And with strategic pricing and other operational efficiencies, it’s more affordable than you think.

If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of your sales organization, don’t neglect your people. Equip them. Align them with your buyers. Get a formal sales methodology in place and adopted. Coach them. Because in the end, it’s not just what you sell – it’s how you sell it. And that’s where the real growth begins.