BUILDINGCAPABILITIES
By Michelle Richardson
In life sciences, commercial success isn’t just about hitting revenue targets — it’s about equipping sales Iprofessionals to navigate complex clinical data, strict regulatory requirements and highly informed stakeholders.
Today’s environment demands more than product knowledge or process adherence. It requires sales teams who can engage healthcare providers, payers and decision-makers in meaningful, compliant and value- driven conversations.
That’s a central insight from the “2026 Sales Leader Report: 5 Strategies for Consultative Selling in the Age of AI,” based on feedback from hundreds of sales leaders. For learning and development (L&D) leaders in life sciences, the findings highlight a critical shift: Training must go beyond knowledge transfer to shape how sellers think, engage and perform in real-world, regulated interactions.
Below are six takeaways from the report—and what they mean for life sciences sales training.
While 71% of sales teams are already using artificial intelligence (AI) — particularly for training, coaching and reinforcement — it’s not a substitute for core capabilities. In regulated industries, this is especially true.
In life sciences, gaps in clinical understanding, compliant communication or questioning techniques become even more visible when AI tools are layered on top. If sellers lack the ability to think critically about the customer’s market, company dynamics and stakeholders — or if they struggle to ask great questions, build rapport and read buyer signals — then AI will only make these deficiencies more apparent.
Implication for L&D: Prioritize foundational capabilities such as clinical and scientific acumen, critical thinking, consultative questioning, active listening and stakeholder engagement. AI can support simulation, coaching and reinforcement — but it cannot compensate for weak selling behaviors.
Although 93% of organizations expect to meet or exceed revenue goals, many rely heavily on a small group of high-performing representatives.
In life sciences, this often translates to a handful of sellers who can effectively navigate complex clinical conversations, while others struggle to engage beyond surface-level messaging.
Hitting organizational revenue targets may not be a reliable indicator of a resilient, healthy sales team. In fact, revenue attainment may mask underlying performance and capability issues across the sales team.
In organizations that depend on the performance of a few top salespeople, sales leaders must focus on understanding and replicating successful behavior of the “A” players.
Implication for L&D: Move beyond one-size-fits-all training and an over-reliance on top performers. Instead identify behaviors that differentiate high performers (such as storytelling and objection handling in regulated contexts) and scale those behaviors across the field.
The goal is not just peak performance — but consistent performance across the entire sales organization.
Sales leaders are prioritizing account growth, customer retention and margin improvement over expanding teams. In life sciences, this aligns with the shift toward key account management, long- term provider relationships and value-based conversations.
Even though most sales teams saw significant turnover last year, only 13% of those surveyed for the report indicated that reducing sales turnover was a top challenge. This means most organizations are keeping top performers and are either actively or passively cycling out those they don’t want to retain.
Success isn’t just about having talented people; it’s about having talented people in the territories, accounts or situations that best fit their strengths and development potential.
Implication for L&D: Use sales assessments to reveal core personality drivers, selling styles and success factors of new hires and current sales professionals. Find out which team members are naturally wired for each type of opportunity: Who thrives on the hunt for new business, who excels at building deep client relationships and who performs best in a service-oriented capacity.
Most organizations have defined sales processes and strong customer relationship management platform adoption. However, these processes are often internally focused — tracking activity rather than enabling meaningful customer engagement.
In life sciences, this disconnect can lead to an overemphasis on messaging delivery, underdevelopment of clinical dialogue and missed opportunities to understand provider decision drivers.
Simply having and following a sales process doesn’t guarantee performance. Organizations should make sure their process and methodology drive the appropriate sales focus and behavior.
Implication for L&D: Shift training from process compliance to customer-centric execution, including understanding clinical and economic drivers, navigating complex buying decisions, demonstrating differentiated value in a compliant manner. Training should reinforce how to apply the process in real healthcare interactions — not just how to follow it.
Pre-call planning is now one of the top skill deficiencies, alongside qualifying and differentiation. It’s an important sales skill that many sellers tend to skip over.
This is a missed opportunity. Effective pre-call planning is essential for a more intentional sales approach and can help address the other top challenges of qualifying opportunities and differentiating against competitive offerings.
In life sciences, where every interaction must be purposeful and compliant, lack of preparation can significantly reduce impact.
Implication for L&D: Focus on building intentional engagement habits, such as defining clear objectives for each healthcare provider interaction, preparing clinically relevant questions and anticipating objections and compliance considerations.
Structured planning frameworks, role-play scenarios and AI-supported coaching can make this skill highly teachable and scalable.
For life sciences L&D leaders, the message is clear: Sales training must evolve from delivering knowledge to building repeatable, compliant and customer-focused capability across the organization. With the right focus, L&D can play a central role in enabling commercial teams to succeed in an increasingly complex and regulated healthcare environment.
Michelle Richardson is the vice president of sales performance research at The Brooks Group. Connect through mrichardson@thebrooksgroup.com or linkedin.com/in/michelle-richardson-72b01a4/.
