Why Your Best Reps Aren't Your Best Trainers (And What to Do About It)
It seems logical. Your top performer knows how to sell. So you ask them to teach others. You have them lead training sessions, mentor new hires, or demonstrate best practices to the team.
But something goes wrong. The sessions are good, not great. The new hires don't improve as much as expected. And your top performer is spending time away from selling.
The problem isn't your top performer. It's the assumption that expertise automatically translates to teaching ability.
The expert blind spot
Top performers often can't explain what makes them successful. Their skills have become automatic. They no longer consciously think about how they open a conversation, read an HCP's body language, or navigate an objection. They just do it.
When asked to teach, they describe what they do in general terms: "I just listen to what they need" or "I focus on building rapport." This advice is true but not actionable. A struggling rep can't implement "focus on building rapport" without knowing specifically what that means.
Researchers call this the curse of knowledge. Once you've mastered something, it's hard to remember what it was like not to know it. The steps that seemed difficult when you were learning become invisible once you've internalised them.
Your top performer isn't being unhelpful. They genuinely can't see the micro-behaviours that make them effective. Their expertise has become unconscious.
The opportunity cost
There's also a practical problem. Every hour your best rep spends training is an hour they're not selling.
In life sciences, where HCP access is limited and relationships are hard-won, this trade-off is significant. Your top performer's territory doesn't shrink because they're running a training session. The work still needs to be done.
Some organisations accept this trade-off as an investment in team development. But the investment only pays off if the training actually works. And often, it doesn't work as well as expected, precisely because of the expert blind spot.
You end up with a double cost: lost selling time from your best performer, and training that doesn't move the needle for everyone else.
What works instead
The goal isn't to exclude top performers from development entirely. Their experience and credibility matter. But their role should be structured to avoid the expert blind spot problem.
Capture behaviours, not advice. Instead of asking top performers to explain what they do, observe them. Record their conversations. Analyse the specific behaviours that differentiate their approach. Turn those observations into teachable frameworks that others can practise.
Use top performers as examples, not instructors. Show recordings of top performer conversations in training. Let learners see the behaviours in action. Then have skilled facilitators break down what happened and why it worked. The top performer provides the raw material; someone else provides the teaching.
Create practice opportunities. Top performers can play a valuable role in practice sessions, but as practice partners, not coaches. They can simulate realistic HCP responses. They can demonstrate how they'd handle a specific scenario. The coaching and feedback come from someone trained to provide it.
Leverage AI for repetition. Much of what makes top performers effective comes from repetition. They've had thousands of conversations. They've encountered every objection. AI roleplay tools can compress this experience, giving reps more practice opportunities than any human trainer could provide. The top performer's patterns can be built into the AI's feedback criteria.
Separate inspiration from instruction. Top performers can motivate. They can share their journey, their mindset, their approach to the work. This kind of inspiration matters, especially for new hires. But it's different from skill instruction. Don't conflate the two.
Building a development system
Effective sales development doesn't depend on any single person. It's a system that combines multiple elements.
Observable models of what good looks like. Practice opportunities with realistic scenarios. Feedback from people trained to provide it. Repetition to build muscle memory. Coaching to address individual gaps.
Top performers play a role in this system, but they're not the whole system. Relying on them to carry the training burden is unfair to them and ineffective for everyone else.
The opportunity
Your best reps have figured something out. The question is how to transfer what they know to the rest of the team.
The answer isn't to make them trainers. It's to build a system that captures their behaviours, creates opportunities for others to practise those behaviours, and provides feedback that helps reps improve.
Your top performers should be selling. Your development system should be developing. Both work better when they're not trying to do each other's jobs.
TrainBox helps life science teams practise real conversations so they're ready when it matters.