A lot of teams train discovery, presentations, and closing techniques. But the rep can’t even get someone on the phone. Sales development is sequential. Each stage unlocks the next. If a rep can’t consistently execute outbound calls, they’ll never reach discovery. And if discovery isn’t strong, the presentation doesn’t matter. I saw this with a team we worked with recently. Leadership kept pushing presentation training because deals weren’t closing. But when we looked closer, the real problem was earlier: reps weren’t confidently running their first outbound conversations. So we paused everything. We role-played outbound calls until they were second nature. Once that improved, discovery calls naturally followed—and the pipeline grew. Here’s something simple you can do today: Before training the “next” sales skill, ask: Have my reps actually mastered the previous stage? If not, fix that first. Sales performance usually breaks earlier in the process than you think. If you lea...