Sales Enablement
How to build a sales academy that produces top performers
Gaultier Beauchesne
CSO & Co-founder @Eagr
🎧 From the Eagr to sell podcast episode with Lyes Boukeroui. Watch on YouTube.
Key takeaways
A sales academy rests on three pillars: a polished onboarding, a measurable competency grid, and a weekly training ritual.
The stakes are financial. Structured sales training returns about 353% ROI and a 50% better shot at hitting quota by month nine.
Onboarding runs in months, up to month three, with a first live call inside week one.
A competency grid tied to OKRs makes promotions factual and transparent.
First, check that your problem isn't a fake lead-volume problem. Fix the pipe before you fill it.
The sales academy is the perennial topic of sales teams.
Almost every company has a project on it. Very few get to a setup where a rep thinks "I'm genuinely lucky to be trained like this."
A shame, because the stakes are direct money.
According to the sector analyses compiled by Careertrainer, a rep who goes through structured onboarding is 50% more likely to hit quota within nine months. Well-run sales training shows an average 353% return on investment.
This guide breaks down how to build a sales academy, pillar by pillar.
It draws on Lyes Boukeroui, who built Uptoo's sales academy across 120 reps and now advises scaleups like Aircall, Toucan, and Legal Place on RevOps.
What a sales academy actually is
A sales academy is a system that packages sales excellence into rules, process, and a career path. The point: every rep reaches their full potential.
It goes past the slide library and the one-off workshop. It covers the rep's whole life in the company, from day one to career progression, and it serves reps and managers alike.
It rests on three pillars.
Onboarding · Goal : Make a rep operational and faithful to the method · Cadence : Week 1 + milestones at M1, M2, M3
Competency grid · Goal : Score the level objectively, drive promotions · Cadence : Quarterly, biannual, or annual
Ongoing training · Goal : Keep and raise the whole team's level · Cadence : Weekly sessions
Pillar 1: onboarding planned in months
Good sales onboarding runs over several months, not a few days.
Week one is intensive and collective (offers, ICP, sales method, product, market), with daily role-play and a first real call by the Friday. Milestones at M1, M2, and M3 then extend the ramp, while ops track it.
The stakes are financial. A structured program cuts ramp time from 6-9 months to 3-5 months (Salesso). Every week saved is revenue pulled forward.
The full plan, from week one to month three: Sales onboarding plan.
Pillar 2: a competency grid that makes promotions undeniable
A competency grid defines, for each role (SDR, AE, AM) and each level, the measurable skills you expect.
Tied to OKRs and pay, it turns promotions into factual decisions: you move up because you tick observable boxes, not on charisma. It also breaks the annual-review straitjacket, since a strong profile can move up as early as six months.
The model and the step-by-step to build yours: Sales competency grid.
Pillar 3: a weekly training ritual
Ongoing training keeps and raises the level of the whole team, not just new hires.
The format that works is short, frequent, and hands-on: weekly role-play sessions, run by in-house experts, closed by a commitment the manager follows up. Without the ritual, the forgetting curve takes over fast.
The session format, the cadence, and the mistakes to avoid: Ongoing sales training.
The prerequisite everyone skips: fix the pipe before you fill it
Before you even talk academy, make sure the problem is a skill problem.
The near-universal reflex from leaders: ask for more leads. The diagnosis almost always reveals a quality problem.
The symptoms come back on a loop:
leads never called back;
an 80% drop between the first and second meeting for some reps;
huge close-rate gaps from one rep to the next.
Pumping volume into a leaky pipe just widens the holes. The right order: work the close and the discovery first, then add volume.
We dig into this here: More leads won't fix your problem, fix the pipe first.
The sales method, the foundation of the academy
A sales academy anchors a shared sales method (BEBEDC, MEDDIC, SPICED). It's the foundation onboarding installs and ongoing training maintains.
Until those fundamentals are anchored, a rep walks past what matters: the decision maker (a point so decisive it gets its own guide, never run a second meeting without the decision maker), the timing, the budget.
That's exactly what Eagr measures by analyzing your calls. How well the method is followed, call after call, to spot where each rep drops off and replicate your best reps' habits across the team. See how Eagr scores your calls.
We detail the method here: the sales framework.
Common mistakes that sabotage a sales academy
Five traps show up in almost every failed project:
Confusing the academy with a slide library. A Notion full of modules no one reopens trains no one. Repeated practice does.
Launching the academy before fixing the pipe. If the real problem is a sinking close rate, training everyone on prospecting fills a leaky bucket.
A subjective competency grid. Vague criteria ("good mindset") reopen the door to favoritism. Every item has to be observable and measurable.
Ongoing training with no follow-up. A session with no written commitment sent to the manager evaporates within weeks.
Picking topics on feeling. You replay "discovery" every month while the real gap sits elsewhere. Start from the team's real data.
Recap: the 3 pillars of a sales academy
Onboarding · What it holds : Intensive week 1 + M1/M2/M3 milestones · What it produces : An operational rep, faithful to the method
Competency grid · What it holds : Measurable items by role and level, tied to OKRs and pay · What it produces : Transparent, undeniable promotions
Ongoing training · What it holds : Weekly hands-on sessions, commitments tracked by the manager · What it produces : A team whose level keeps rising
FAQ
What is a sales academy? A complete system that packages sales excellence into rules, process, and a career path, from a rep's first day to career progression. It serves reps and managers, and rests on three pillars: onboarding, a competency grid, and ongoing training.
How long does it take to set up a sales academy? You build it pillar by pillar. Start with onboarding, then the competency grid, then ongoing training. The first effects on ramp and quota show within a few months.
What's the ROI of a sales academy? Sector analyses put the ROI of structured sales training around 353%, with a 50% better shot at hitting quota by month nine for a structured onboarding.
Which pillar should I start with? Onboarding, because it anchors the method from the start. But first confirm your problem is a skill problem and not a fake lead-volume problem.
How many people does it take to run a sales academy? Not a big team. You can start with one enablement lead who sets the shared frame and your two or three best reps per topic to run the sessions, with managers picking up the individual plan.
Sources
This article comes from an episode of the Eagr to sell podcast with Lyes Boukeroui. Watch the full episode on YouTube.
