It might not surprise you that great sales people aren’t born that way. They were enabled to become the skilled professionals that they are, perfecting their craft through the benefits of coaching, experimentation and experience.

They have a unique ability to create value at every stage of the customer’s journey. They provide useful perspectives on how to achieve desired results, and help customers make their own best decisions. It’s just one of the skills that makes them great.

MHI’s 2015 Sales Best Practices Study shows that top performers are also able to adapt much better to changing buyer expectations in complex or dynamic environments. They are both knowledgeable and skilled at applying client-specific context throughout the sales cycle to boost win rates.

This is achieved in large part because their companies foster a culture where sales training and coaching is valued, ensuring that every rep knows that taking the time to learn and grow is completely encouraged and supported.

The results are worth it.

Our research shows that sales teams who invest their time this way tend to outperform their peers in annual revenue growth by a factor of 3X on average. Last year these market leaders – many of them Qstream clients – gave the tens of thousands of sales reps who work for them nearly three million opportunities to improve. Every 11 seconds a salesperson somewhere took a minute or two out of their busy day to simply respond to a contextual Qstream challenge. This small act matters in a big way.

Today more than one-third of enterprise sales reps – even those with extensive market and product training – arrive at sales calls unprepared or unable to apply the critical context needed to successfully sell into their markets. The findings are based on an analysis of 240, 000 first responses to scenario-based sales challenges delivered by Qstream’s platform to sales reps across a range of industries.

After a few days, sales reps were presented with the contextual challenges a second time. Performance improved substantially, with only 18% of the same reps answering incorrectly on their next try.

For Allied Barton, a large security services company, ongoing investments in sales enablement resulted in 30% higher quota attainment, a 12% reduction in turnover, and a 3% increase in gross margin. Now that’s ROI.

The sales function today is in need of massive change to help reps sell contextually, at higher levels. CRM and content portals can help, but those tools are intended to align with the demands of sales processes, not sales people.

Information and marketing content do help, but alone the only thing enabled are rote sales presentations, in which salespeople answer questions that customers aren't necessarily asking. Enable success by investing in coaching and skills, not information.

That’s how great salespeople are born.