Stop Training Your Sales Reps to Fail; Spark Lasting Growth

Hire - Train - Fail - Quit

How many times will you repeat this costly cycle?

You finally landed one.

After months of searching, interviews, and offers, your "rockstar" sales hire is in the seat. Their resume sparkles. Their references rave. You're thinking -

"This is the one who is going to move the needle."

So you do what most sales leaders do: you pair them with your seasoned veteran. “Shadow her for a few weeks,” you say. “She knows how it’s done.”

The first week, your new hire is sitting in on calls, tagging along on meetings, watching deals move forward.

It looks like onboarding. It feels safe...But It is not.

The Slow Burn You Don’t See Coming

Your rockstar new hire isn’t actually learning how to sell. They are learning how to watch someone else sell.

• The veteran hasn’t cold-called in years.
  
• Their pipeline runs on relationships built over a decade.
  
• They can’t explain why their discovery questions work, they just know.

‍Meanwhile, your new hire doesn’t know how to prospect, build pipeline, or handle objections.

They’re mimicking tactics, not mastering sales.

After a few months? The shine wears off. Deals don’t close. Confidence dips. They start spinning their wheels.

You assume it’s a bad fit. They assume they made a mistake. And 18 months later, they’re gone.

The Hidden Cost of Turnover

It’s easy to shrug and say, “Not everyone works out.” But here’s what that churn really costs you:

• 6 months to hire
  
• 12–18 months to ramp
  
• $75K–$145K in recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity

And here’s the kicker: the average rep only lasts 18–20 months.

You’re spending nearly two years and six figures — only to lose them right when they should be hitting full productivity.

Turnover is a triple thief; it steals your profits, robs your time, and hijacks your opportunities.

Shadowing Isn’t Onboarding

The truth is, most new hires don’t quit because they’re bad hires. They quit because we never actually teach them how to sell.

We let them “shadow” and hope they soak it up.

But shadowing doesn’t teach:

• How to prospect from zero
  
• How to build pipeline in a cold territory
  
• How to run discovery that uncovers real pain
  
• How to handle objections with skill and confidence

Those are sales skills.

‍ Without them, even your best hires don't stand a chance.

What New Reps Really Need

They need structure and training that gives them:

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✅ A clear Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
✅ Messaging that maps to buyer pain
✅ Templates for outreach and objection handling
✅ A discovery framework that sparks better conversations

It starts with a sales playbook.

From Shadowing to Strategy

If you want your next hire to stick, don’t throw them into a veteran’s shadow.

• Give them a playbook
• Teach them real sales skills
• Build an onboarding process that ramps talent into traction

Because the only thing worse than losing a rep…is realizing you trained them to fail.

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Kelly G Lopez, Founder and Sales Strategist of KLo Edge, draws on 20+ years of enterprise sales leadership to help founder-led companies compete with industry giants. Her mission is to give scrappy, ambitious businesses the tools, confidence, and clarity to win big in complex markets.  

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