As sales teams prepare for the final quarter of the year, many organisations are investing heavily in sales training and enablement to close performance gaps. However, new findings* suggests that most programs are failing to deliver lasting impact. Not because of poor training, but because they’re built on unstable pipeline foundations.

Sales performance is closely tied to the quality of data, opportunity qualification, and coverage ratios. According to James Barton, Chief Solutions Officer at Mentor Group, there needs to be a framework for pipeline excellence that supports more effective coaching, forecasting, and deal progression.

Enablement without pipeline strategy is a false economy

There is a recurring challenge across sales teams: organisations invest in onboarding, coaching, and simulation tools, but struggle to see measurable improvements in conversion or forecast accuracy. The issue often lies not in the sales training itself, but in the pipeline environment it is deployed into.

We’ve seen teams complete high-quality training programs, only to return to pipelines that are bloated, misaligned, or missing key information. These teams are fighting against what Mentor Group call the Mirage Pipeline – optimism dressed up as coverage, or more simply, quantity without quality.

Effective sales enablement must be pipeline first. That means training sellers in the context of real opportunities, benchmarked stages, and clean, accurate data.

Three critical conditions for enablement success

Sales enablement is most effective when it’s deployed within a structured, well-managed pipeline. As our whitepaper, Clean. Healthy. Sufficient., explores, there are three foundational conditions that must be in place for sales training and coaching to translate into measurable outcomes.

Clean: Pipeline data must be accurate, current, and consistently maintained. This includes opportunity-level details such as deal value, stage progression, and close dates. Without clean data, coaching conversations are based on guesswork, and forecasting becomes unreliable. Organisations that prioritise data hygiene, through regular audits and CRM optimisation, report up to 28% higher revenue growth. Clean data also enables more targeted enablement, allowing managers to tailor support based on real-time pipeline signals.

Healthy: Qualification is not a one-time event; it’s a continuous discipline. Healthy pipelines are built on rigorous qualification frameworks that assess both opportunity fit and stakeholder engagement. The key is consistency. Properly qualified opportunities are three times more likely to close, and they allow sellers to focus their time on deals with genuine potential. When enablement is aligned with qualification criteria, training becomes more relevant, and coaching can be tied directly to deal progression.

Sufficient: Pipeline coverage must be both adequate and balanced. A sufficient pipeline typically holds three times the revenue target, but volume alone is not enough. Opportunities must be distributed across stages to reflect a healthy flow as any over-reliance on a few large deals or bottlenecks in early stages can distort forecasts and undermine enablement efforts. When coverage is sufficient and weighted appropriately, training can be timed to support specific stages, and coaching can focus on accelerating movement through the funnel.

Why this matters now

With economic uncertainty persisting and sales cycles lengthening, many organisations are under pressure to do more with less. Budgets are being scrutinised, and teams are being asked to justify every investment – not just in terms of activity, but in terms of measurable impact.

Aligning sales enablement with pipeline health is no longer a strategic preference, it’s a business imperative. Without clean data, qualified opportunities, and sufficient coverage, enablement efforts risk becoming disconnected from the realities of the sales process.

The temptation is to cut enablement or double down on activity. But the real opportunity lies in aligning enablement with pipeline strategy, and that begins with getting the fundamentals right.

Research from Mentor Group*