Sales Training is Dead: How One CEO Disrupted Her $10M Business to Build an AI-Native Revenue Engine | Laura Keith S6:E3

Written by Mike J Midgley | Oct 20, 2025 8:38:19 AM

Welcome to the Force & Friction Podcast, where we break down what really moves the needle in GTM, RevOps, AI, partnerships, and SaaS growth. Today, we're exploring the death of traditional sales training and the rise of AI-native sales performance with Laura Keith.

What makes Laura's story compelling isn't just the courage to disrupt a successful business, but the customer insight that sparked the transformation. When a trusted customer told her to "stop selling me training when I don't know whether I've got a sales training problem," it triggered a fundamental shift from asking "how do you train reps to perform better?" to "how do we help reps to close more deals?"

We explore why traditional sales training is dead, how AI is transforming sales performance, the critical importance of customer feedback loops, and Laura's predictions for the future of sales technology and human capability

Laura Leith

Laura is the CEO of both Hive Learning and Hive Perform, and she made one of the boldest business decisions I've ever heard, disrupting her own 10 million ARR peak to pioneer an AI-native sales platform that bridges revenue intelligence and sales enablement.

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Here are the core areas we discuss in today's episode:

1: The Customer Feedback Catalyst: When Truth Disrupts Success

Laura opens by sharing the pivotal moment when customer feedback forced her to question everything about her successful training business.

"I had a real pivotal moment where I spoke to a good friend, an ex-boss of mine, and I was selling to him our latest AI coaching and AI Sales Academy production. And he just turned around to me, and in that moment, he went, stop selling me training when I don't know whether I've got a sales training problem. Diagnose the problem. Is it training? Is it a rep? Is it messaging? Is it a skill set?"

This moment of brutal honesty became the foundation for rebuilding their entire approach. Instead of assuming training was the solution, they started with diagnosis, understanding what's actually preventing reps from closing deals before prescribing any intervention.

2: The Death of Traditional Sales Training: Why the Old Model is Broken

Laura makes a bold declaration about the future of sales training, distinguishing between training salespeople and the traditional training model.

"I do I genuinely believe sales training, as we have done, is dead. Like, I genuinely believe that, and as vehemently as that. However, I don't think training salespeople is dead. It's just the model that we've used... what's dead is the, kind of, do that as, like, a hit and hope, and then leave reps in the field to perform, and expect them to understand whether they've applied it effectively."

Her insight reveals the fundamental flaw in traditional training: the disconnect between learning moments and performance moments. With AI and call intelligence, reps can get real-time feedback and support exactly when they need it, making batch-and-blast training obsolete.

3. AI-Native Performance: Meeting Reps Where They Are

Laura explains how AI enables a completely different approach to sales performance improvement, one that's personalized, contextual, and delivered at the point of need.

"What AI unlocks for us is the ability to meet the rep exactly where they are in the deal flow, identify what it is that we can do to support them... Let the rep know, like, this is what good looks like, here's how you're doing against good, these are the things you can do to improve... what we should be able to do with a large sales team is identify what that means for Rep 1, Rep 2, Rep 3, Rep 4, not hit all reps up with the same training."

This shift from one-size-fits-all to individualized performance support represents a fundamental change in how organizations think about sales development and enablement.

Learn more about Hive Perform here:

4. Product-Led Customer Discovery: Building What Customers Actually Want

Laura shares how they transformed their product development process by embedding customer feedback directly into their operations, following Marty Cagan's product operating model.

"Product have to be upfront in sales, they join meetings at least at minimum, 3 or 4 a week. You know, they're constantly listening to the feedback loops of what's happening, across the pipeline, what the customer's saying, what they're building for... And just doing really good customer discovery. 100% has been one of our business operation changes."

This approach ensures that product development stays connected to real customer needs rather than internal assumptions about what customers want.

5. The Future of Sales: Human Touch in an AI World

Laura provides her predictions for how sales will evolve, emphasizing both the automation of routine tasks and the increased importance of human capabilities.

"I think there's a world where the CRM is dead. Unless they change significantly what they're currently doing... I think I'm really excited about the rise of go-to-market engineers... the more tech explodes, the more AI plays a role, the more your unique differentiator is going to be how good your human touch is... I reckon a good 50% of what sales reps do today will be automated in 6 months' time."

Her vision balances automation with human capability, suggesting that as routine tasks get automated, the human elements of sales become even more valuable and differentiated.

Learn more about Hive Learning here:

Final Thoughts:

Laura leaves us with practical wisdom about building sustainable success while maintaining personal boundaries.

"It's not easy. It's not, you can't have it all. Create clear boundaries, know what's important to you, and protect that time. And build networks and communities and advisors, I think, are the key."

Her final insight reminds us that professional success must be balanced with personal sustainability, and that building strong networks and communities is essential for long-term career growth.

The death of traditional sales training doesn't mean the end of sales development, it means the beginning of a more intelligent, personalized, and effective approach. As Laura demonstrates, when you combine AI-native technology with deep customer understanding and human-centered design, you can create performance platforms that actually help reps close more deals rather than just completing more training modules.

The future belongs to organizations that can diagnose before they prescribe, personalize at scale, and use technology to enhance rather than replace human capability.

Laura credits in the show Marty Cagan as one she learned from and you cna learn more about Silicon Valley product Group (SVPG) and the books Marty has written here:

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Mike Midgley runs a portfolio career, a dynamic hands on digital entrepreneur, founder of the Scrubbing Squad, NXD, strategist, public speaker, Winning by Design certified Revenue Architect and Host at The Force & Friction Podcast.

Mike has achieved multiple exits over a 30+ year career, raised Venture Capital and franchised his businesses 68 times.

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