B2B SaaS company, Siteimprove brought me in to help strengthen sales performance across its international sales organisation.
What began as a small sales training project developed into a much broader partnership spanning sales training, coaching, onboarding, sales enablement, leadership development and internal capability building.
Over the course of the engagement, I worked alongside salespeople and sales leaders across Siteimprove’s international organisation, helping build a more structured and scalable approach to developing sales performance.
Company: Siteimprove
Industry: B2B SaaS
Size: 500+ employees
Focus: Sales Training & Sales Performance
Engagement: 2 years
The Challenge
Siteimprove wanted to continue improving the performance and development of its international sales organisation.
The commercial objectives included improving conversion rates, increasing average deal values and reducing sales cycles.
But the challenge went beyond those numbers.
The business also wanted to rebuild its sales onboarding programme, create a more structured approach to ongoing sales development and improve the ability of sales managers to coach performance within their own teams.
With salespeople working across multiple countries and a software platform that continued to evolve, training also needed to become easier to scale, measure and maintain.
This wasn’t simply a case of delivering another sales workshop.
Siteimprove needed a stronger system for developing salespeople over time.
The Approach
Building the Training Around the Business
I started by understanding how Siteimprove actually sold.
That included listening to recorded sales calls, speaking with salespeople and sales leaders, and interviewing stakeholders outside the sales organisation, including people from senior leadership, marketing and product development.
The purpose was simple.
I wanted to understand the business, the sales environment and the challenges people were facing before deciding what the training should look like.
The initial programme focused on areas including value selling, negotiation and building greater confidence and belief within the sales organisation.
From there, the programme continued to develop as I worked more closely with the teams.
Global Sales Training and Coaching
I delivered sales training and ongoing sales performance coaching across Siteimprove’s international organisation, working with salespeople and sales leaders across Europe, the UK and North America.
Training covered areas including questioning and qualification, cold calling, meeting booking, value selling, presentation skills, negotiation and understanding buyer motives.
The work wasn’t limited to occasional workshops.
I spent time embedded with local sales teams, combining group training with one-to-one coaching and close collaboration with their sales leaders.
At one stage, I was coaching 12 salespeople on an ongoing basis every two to three weeks.
I also travelled regularly to work directly with individual teams and helped plan and deliver two major international sales kick-offs.
The coaching by David helped me improve as Business Developer for the Spanish market.
David has a down to earth approach to sales coaching and succeeds in keeping his material tangible and applicable, which materialized almost immidiately in my daily work.
Rebeca Dolz – Business Development Manager
Building Sales Onboarding and the Siteimprove Academy
One of the biggest parts of the engagement became building a more structured approach to onboarding and continuous sales development.
I helped create a five-week sales onboarding programme combining company onboarding, product knowledge and sales skills development.
The programme included around 40 hours of content and combined live training with practical exercises, assignments and assessments.
I also helped build the Siteimprove Academy.
The academy created a central platform for sales and product training that could be used across Siteimprove’s international organisation.
Rather than relying entirely on classroom sessions or individual managers, training could be delivered, reinforced, assessed and measured through one common system.
That gave new and existing salespeople a much more consistent development path regardless of where they were based.
Keeping Sales Teams Current as the Product Evolved
Siteimprove was continuously developing its software and releasing new functionality.
That created another important challenge.
Salespeople needed to understand what had changed, why it mattered to customers and how new products and functionality should be positioned in sales conversations.
I worked with internal teams to help turn product knowledge into structured training that could be delivered through the academy.
Product and release training included courses, tests and assignments.
Completion could be tracked, deadlines could be set and managers could identify people who had not completed required training.
This meant training wasn’t simply delivered and forgotten.
People could be assessed.
Progress could be monitored.
And the business could verify that its sales teams were keeping up with an evolving product portfolio.
For a fast-moving SaaS company, that became an important part of making sales development continuous rather than something that happened a few times each year.
The expertise and guidance David provided throughout our sales training sessions have been amazing… The results were faster than expected!
Roger J Fuhrman, VP Sales (North America)
Developing Managers and Building Internal Capability
A major part of the work was making sure development didn’t depend permanently on an external trainer.
I worked closely with sales managers on individual performance challenges and helped them become more effective at coaching their own people.
The wider programme also included train-the-trainer development for sales managers, senior account managers and future sales leaders.
I supported people who were responsible for delivering training themselves, helping them become more confident facilitators and presenters.
Towards the end of the engagement, I also trained and coached the person who would ultimately take over responsibility for internal sales training.
The objective wasn’t to make Siteimprove dependent on me. It was to help build the people, skills and systems needed for development to continue internally.
My involvement also extended into areas such as sales process improvement, CRM, product enablement and collaboration with operations and other internal teams.
The Results
What began as a relatively small sales training engagement grew into a much broader two-year partnership.
I was originally brought in to support a sales kick-off with a small number of workshops.
From there, the scope expanded significantly as I became more involved across the sales organisation.
Over the course of the engagement, I helped Siteimprove build a much more structured approach to developing its salespeople and sales leaders.
I rebuilt the sales onboarding programme and created a structured five-week onboarding journey containing around 40 hours of learning, combining sales training, product knowledge, practical exercises and assessment.
I helped build the Siteimprove Academy into a central platform for ongoing sales and product development, giving teams across the organisation access to structured learning that could be tracked, assessed and improved over time.
I trained and coached salespeople and sales leaders across the international organisation.
I worked with managers to strengthen their ability to coach performance, delivered train-the-trainer development for future leaders and helped develop the person who would eventually take over responsibility for internal sales training.
I also helped create a more structured approach to ongoing product and release training, allowing Siteimprove to keep sellers current as the platform evolved while using tests, assignments and completion tracking to measure participation and understanding.
Within the First Year
- 136 people were actively using the training platform
- More than 30 courses were live
- 2,269 assignments had been submitted and graded
- A structured five-week sales onboarding programme had been established
- Ongoing sales coaching was taking place across international teams
- Sales and product training could be delivered, assessed and monitored through one central academy
The engagement ultimately became far bigger than the original brief.
What started with a handful of sales workshops developed into an embedded role across sales training, coaching, onboarding, leadership development, sales enablement and internal capability building.
And perhaps the most important result was that the work did not need to end when I left.
Siteimprove had stronger internal training capability, more structured onboarding, managers who were better equipped to coach their people, and an internal trainer who had been developed to continue the work.
That, for me, was the real outcome.
Individual Sales Performance
The broader programme also created results at an individual level.
One salesperson I coached went from being on a performance improvement plan to becoming one of the senior salespeople within the organisation.
Others reported meaningful improvements in how they sold and performed.
“I had the privilege to came across David as my sales trainer. In 18 months he did what nobody else including myself had accomplished. I learned who I was and what makes me tick and what I really disliked.
After that, the communication with anybody else was easy. I understood why someone reacted in a certain way and why somebody else’s reaction was completely different.
The best part is that I understand why I react in the way I do. The fun part now is that I know how to react and deal with different characters etc and feeling so happy after a meeting and full off energy.
The big plus, my sales went up considerably and consistently and that is still the case.”
Frans Doldersum – Senior Account Executive
Building Something That Continued Without Me
The part of this engagement I value most isn’t any individual workshop or training session.
It’s what the work developed into.
Sales training became ongoing rather than occasional.
New salespeople had a structured onboarding programme.
Training could be delivered and measured through an academy.
Product releases could be translated into structured learning.
Salespeople received ongoing coaching.
Managers developed their own coaching capability.
And internal people were trained to continue the work after my involvement ended.
For me, that is what successful B2B sales training should ultimately achieve.
Not just a good day in a training room.
A stronger sales organisation.
Looking to Develop Your B2B Sales Team?
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From individual workshops and sales coaching to broader programmes covering onboarding, sales leadership development and continuous learning.
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Page last updated: 16 September 2026