Which Should You Choose?
If you’re looking to invest in sales training for your team, one of the first decisions you’ll face is whether to work with an established sales training company or hire an independent sales trainer.
On one side, you have established organisations offering recognised methodologies, extensive training materials and teams of trainers capable of delivering programmes internationally.
On the other, you have independent professionals who may offer greater flexibility, direct access to their expertise and a more personalised service.
Both have their advantages. However, I believe the experience of the person delivering the training and their ability to address your company’s particular challenges are far more important than the size or reputation of the organisation behind them.
Having spent more than 25 years working in B2B sales, including commercial leadership, training, coaching and consulting, I’ve experienced this from several different perspectives.
I’ve purchased and implemented training from established providers, developed internal sales academies and delivered bespoke training programmes as an independent consultant.
Those experiences have taught me that choosing a sales training provider involves considerably more than comparing methodologies, client lists and prices.
In this article, I’ll explain the practical differences between sales training companies and independent trainers, where each has advantages and what I believe you should investigate before making your decision.
Sales Training Companies vs Independent Trainers: What’s the Difference?
An established sales training company typically operates with a team of trainers, a portfolio of training programmes and an established methodology or approach to selling.
Some organisations specialise in teaching a particular sales methodology, while others offer a broader range of workshops, consulting services, coaching and sales development programmes.
Their size and resources can offer several advantages.
They may have trainers based in different countries, extensive libraries of training materials, dedicated support teams and the capacity to deliver large programmes simultaneously across multiple locations.
However, larger organisations also have to maintain consistency across their training programmes and the people delivering them.
Depending on how they operate, this can introduce restrictions on how much individual trainers can adapt the content.
Independent sales trainers typically operate as individual consultants, although some have their own registered companies and work with associates when additional resources are required.
Their services vary considerably. Some specialise in particular areas of selling, such as prospecting or negotiation, while others offer complete sales development programmes, consulting and coaching.
An experienced independent trainer may offer greater flexibility when designing and delivering a programme.
You may also benefit from working directly with the same person throughout the engagement, from the initial consultation and programme design through to delivery and reinforcement.
However, independent trainers have their own limitations.
Their availability may be restricted, and they may not have the resources to deliver multiple programmes simultaneously or provide training in several languages.
These are general differences rather than fixed rules.
Some large training companies offer extensively customised programmes, while some independent trainers concentrate on delivering standardised workshops.
The important question is how those differences affect your particular requirements.
The Trainer Matters More Than the Company Behind Them
One of the biggest mistakes I believe companies make when selecting a training provider is placing too much weight on the organisation’s reputation.
An impressive client list, established methodology and recognisable brand are useful indicators of credibility. However, they tell you relatively little about the individual who will actually be standing in front of your sales team.
I learnt this lesson firsthand while working as Head of Sales Training & Leadership Development at Trustpilot.
During that period, I was involved in introducing and embedding the Sandler sales methodology. Sandler is an established sales training organisation with an internationally recognised methodology.
There were several elements of the methodology that I considered genuinely valuable. However, the implementation presented two significant problems.
The first was that the trainer hadn’t developed a sufficient understanding of our business, buyers or sales processes.
Some of the techniques being introduced were more appropriate for a different sales environment.
This was particularly apparent in the prospecting and cold-calling components, which didn’t always fit the way our sales teams operated.
Consequently, salespeople struggled to see the relevance of certain parts of the programme.
This created resistance and subsequently made it more difficult to secure their commitment to other elements of the methodology that I believed would genuinely help them.
The second problem was the individual trainer. In my assessment, their delivery wasn’t particularly effective.
I’ve since spoken to other professionals who have had excellent experiences with Sandler and have been extremely complimentary about their trainers.
This is an important distinction.
My experience wasn’t evidence that the Sandler methodology was ineffective. It demonstrated how the quality of the trainer and the way a methodology is implemented can significantly influence the outcome.
You’re not simply buying a methodology or hiring a training company. You’re placing your sales team’s development in the hands of the person delivering the programme.
How to evaluate the actual trainer
I recommend approaching the selection of a sales trainer in much the same way you would approach recruiting an experienced employee.
Start by investigating their professional background.
What sales roles have they held? What were their responsibilities? Have they worked in similar industries, sold to comparable buyers or managed sales cycles of a similar length and complexity?
Someone whose experience consists primarily of managing existing customer accounts might be an excellent account management trainer.
However, that experience doesn’t automatically qualify them to teach enterprise prospecting.
Likewise, an accomplished salesperson isn’t necessarily an accomplished trainer. Being good at selling and being good at teaching other people how to sell are two very different skills.
Meeting the trainer is important, but I wouldn’t rely exclusively on that conversation. After all, an experienced salesperson should be reasonably good at selling their own services.
Look at their career history, training experience, client references and professional achievements. Published articles, books, videos and publicly available training materials can also provide useful insight into their knowledge and communication style.
If you’re evaluating an established training company, ask to meet the individual who will actually deliver your programme rather than relying exclusively on the person responsible for selling it.
How Bespoke Is Your Sales Training Programme?
Most sales training companies and independent trainers offer some degree of customisation.
However, I’ve discovered that the word bespoke can mean very different things depending on who you’re speaking to.
For some providers, bespoke training means adding your company logo to an existing presentation, replacing a few generic examples with industry-specific ones and making minor adjustments to an established programme.
For others, it means investigating your company’s sales challenges, identifying the skills that need developing and designing the programme around those requirements.
There’s a considerable difference between the two.
My approach to bespoke sales training starts with understanding the problem the company is trying to solve.
I want to understand the sales team, its experience, the products and services it sells, the buyers it targets and the processes it follows.
I also need to understand the company’s objectives, the time available and any practical limitations that might influence the programme.
Only then can I determine which training materials, exercises and delivery methods are appropriate.
Sometimes, an existing workshop can be adapted with relatively little effort.
In other circumstances, I might take elements from two or three different workshops, remove the irrelevant material and restructure everything into a new programme.
Because I own and develop my training materials, I have the freedom to make those decisions.
That doesn’t mean every independent trainer offers the same flexibility or that larger companies are incapable of delivering genuinely bespoke training.
Established training companies have legitimate reasons for maintaining consistency.
Their methodologies represent intellectual property, and allowing individual trainers to change them without appropriate controls could undermine their effectiveness.
However, this can create a conflict between protecting a standardised methodology and adapting the programme to a client’s particular requirements.
It’s something I would investigate carefully before appointing any provider.
Why customisation matters beyond the training materials
For me, customisation isn’t simply about making a programme more relevant. It’s also an important part of securing the sales team’s commitment.
When participants recognise their own products, buyers and everyday challenges in a workshop, they can see that the trainer understands their working environment.
That helps establish credibility and makes the material easier to relate to.
It also creates opportunities for practical exercises that reflect the situations salespeople encounter in their daily responsibilities.
For example, rather than asking participants to practise qualification using a generic sales scenario, I prefer to develop exercises around their actual buyers, products and sales challenges.
My workshops typically include short practical exercises lasting approximately 5–15 minutes. These allow participants to practise individual skills, receive feedback and consider how they can apply what they’ve learnt.
It’s considerably easier to introduce a new technique when salespeople can immediately understand where and how they might use it.
Of course, not every programme needs to be built from scratch. Established materials and methodologies provide a valuable foundation, and there’s little sense in reinventing something that already works.
What matters is having the freedom and expertise to make the necessary changes when the circumstances demand them.
One of the most important questions I would ask any potential provider is: What’s your definition of bespoke training?
Ask them to explain exactly what they’ll customise, how much preparation they’ll undertake and whether they can restructure their existing materials when necessary.
Their answer should tell you considerably more than the word bespoke appearing in their marketing materials.
Pricing, Scalability and the Practical Differences
Two of the most common arguments I encounter when comparing sales training companies and independent trainers concern price and the ability to deliver training at scale.
Both are legitimate commercial considerations, but I believe they’re frequently misunderstood.
Are independent sales trainers cheaper?
There’s a common assumption that independent trainers should be cheaper because they have fewer overheads.
In some circumstances, that may be true. Larger organisations have employees, offices, marketing departments and other operating costs to consider.
However, they may also benefit from established brands, substantial marketing resources, existing training materials and a steady flow of inbound opportunities.
Independent trainers face a different set of financial challenges.
As an independent trainer, I’m personally responsible for business development, client relationships, programme design, preparation, delivery and the other responsibilities involved in running my company.
My time is a limited resource.
If I spend ten hours preparing a bespoke programme for one client, that’s ten hours I cannot spend delivering training for another client, developing my business or working on other projects.
That preparation needs to be reflected in my pricing, alongside my experience, expertise and the value of the engagement.
An established independent trainer may therefore charge fees comparable to those of a larger training company. In some circumstances, they may even charge more.
When comparing proposals, I would look beyond the headline training fee and establish exactly what each provider includes.
A lower day rate doesn’t necessarily represent better value if one provider has included extensive preparation, customised exercises, supporting materials and reinforcement while another has priced only the workshop itself.
You need to compare what you’re actually buying, not simply what it costs.
Can independent trainers deliver large international programmes?
Larger sales training companies frequently highlight their ability to deploy multiple trainers across different countries and locations.
This can be a genuine advantage, particularly when an organisation needs to train a substantial number of employees simultaneously, deliver workshops in different languages or implement a standardised methodology across several geographical regions.
However, I’d question how frequently those capabilities are actually required.
I’ve personally delivered international sales development programmes for organisations with hundreds of employees. In these engagements, workshops were scheduled across different locations and periods rather than delivered simultaneously everywhere.
This allowed me to manage the programmes without requiring an entire team of trainers.
The important distinction is between the total size of the engagement and the number of workshops that must happen at the same time.
A programme involving 200 salespeople doesn’t necessarily require ten trainers if those employees can be trained in smaller groups over several weeks or months.
In fact, using one trainer can have certain advantages.
The person delivering the programme develops a detailed understanding of the company’s business, buyers and challenges. They can maintain consistency across workshops and adapt subsequent sessions based on feedback and observations from earlier ones.
When several trainers are involved, each needs to develop that same understanding and coordinate their delivery with the others.
That introduces additional preparation and management requirements, particularly when the programme is highly customised.
For a multinational organisation implementing a standardised methodology simultaneously across several continents, a larger provider may offer significant practical advantages.
For a company delivering a bespoke programme to 20, 50 or even 200 salespeople over a reasonable period, those additional resources may offer little practical benefit.
Before treating scalability as an important selection criterion, establish whether your delivery requirements genuinely demand it.
There’s also a wider consideration. Training an entire sales organisation in a short period isn’t necessarily an advantage if the company doesn’t have the resources to reinforce the learning afterwards.
Training Is Only One Part of Improving Sales Performance
Another important consideration when selecting a provider is whether you need someone to deliver training or someone who can help you address the underlying causes of your sales performance problems.
These aren’t necessarily the same thing.
A sales team struggling to close opportunities might benefit from negotiation training. However, if the underlying problem is poor qualification, teaching more negotiation techniques is unlikely to address the real issue.
Likewise, a team struggling to generate enough qualified pipeline might not need better prospecting techniques if its targeting strategy is fundamentally wrong.
This is why I believe three distinct capabilities are particularly valuable when evaluating sales training providers: consulting, training and coaching.
Consulting is about understanding the company, investigating its challenges and identifying what needs to change.
Training is about developing the knowledge and practical skills required to make those changes.
Coaching is about helping people apply those skills, overcome difficulties and develop better habits.
Not every trainer possesses all three capabilities, and not every engagement requires them.
A company that has already identified a specific development need might simply require someone to deliver a practical workshop.
However, when the problems are more complicated or the company is planning a substantial sales development programme, those additional capabilities become increasingly important.
My own experience includes frontline selling, senior commercial leadership, entrepreneurship, sales training, consulting and thousands of hours of coaching.
That background allows me to approach an engagement as a consultant, design and deliver the necessary training and subsequently support the reinforcement process.
A larger training company may offer the same capabilities through several different specialists.
The important thing is to establish whether the provider possesses the expertise your particular project requires and how those different responsibilities will be managed.
Who is responsible for reinforcement?
One of the biggest mistakes companies make when investing in sales training is concentrating almost exclusively on what happens during the workshops.
A successful workshop can introduce new knowledge, demonstrate different techniques and give participants an opportunity to practise.
However, knowing how to do something and consistently doing it are two different things.
Without continued practice and reinforcement, salespeople can gradually return to their previous habits, even when they initially found the training valuable.
I’ve explored this problem in more detail in my article on why sales training fails.
For that reason, I believe the reinforcement strategy should be agreed before the training programme begins.
In some engagements, I provide ongoing coaching and reinforcement myself. In others, the client’s sales managers take responsibility for reinforcing the training internally.
I’m comfortable with either arrangement, provided the people responsible have the time, resources and capabilities required.
However, an experienced sales manager isn’t automatically an experienced sales coach.
If a company plans to manage reinforcement internally, I want to understand how its managers currently coach their teams and whether they need any additional support.
That might involve delivering coaching sessions for managers, developing supporting materials or creating practical exercises they can use with their teams.
The same questions should be put to any sales training provider, regardless of its size.
You should also agree how the programme will be evaluated and what each party will be accountable for.
If I’m responsible for delivering both the training and ongoing reinforcement, I can take responsibility for a greater proportion of the development process.
However, if a client chooses to manage reinforcement internally, I cannot reasonably be held fully accountable for the results if its managers subsequently fail to support the learning.
Ultimately, I believe the objective of sales training should be to change how salespeople behave, not simply increase what they know.
The provider and the client both have responsibilities in making that happen.
How to Choose the Right Sales Training Provider
Having considered the differences between larger training companies and independent trainers, I would start the selection process by establishing precisely what your organisation needs.
Are you looking for a targeted workshop to improve a particular skill, or do you want to implement an entirely new sales methodology across your organisation?
Are you confident that you’ve identified the underlying performance problems, or do you need help diagnosing them?
How many people require training, where are they based and how quickly does the programme need to be delivered?
These questions will help establish the type of provider and capabilities you should be looking for.
For example, if you’re planning to introduce a complete sales methodology across a large multinational organisation, an established methodology provider with trainers in several countries may be a suitable option.
Alternatively, if you need a series of bespoke workshops addressing particular challenges within your sales team, an experienced independent trainer may be able to provide the expertise and flexibility required.
Once you’ve established your requirements, I recommend using the following questions to evaluate potential providers.
Questions to ask before hiring a sales training provider
- Who will actually deliver the training? Investigate their professional background, relevant sales experience and training credentials.
- How will you understand our business? Establish how the provider intends to investigate your buyers, products, sales processes and performance challenges before designing the programme.
- What’s your definition of bespoke training? Ask exactly what can be customised and whether the provider can combine, remove or restructure its existing materials.
- Do we need to adopt your entire methodology? Establish whether you can focus on specific skills or whether the provider requires you to purchase a broader programme.
- What preparation is included in your proposal? Understand how much time will be invested in research, programme design, developing exercises and preparing materials.
- How will you manage delivery across different locations? If several trainers are involved, establish how they’ll maintain consistency and develop a sufficient understanding of your business.
- Who will be responsible for reinforcement? Agree what happens after the workshops, who will manage it and whether your sales managers require additional support.
- How will we measure success? Establish which behavioural changes you’re trying to achieve, how they’ll be evaluated and which outcomes the provider will be accountable for.
I would also recommend speaking with previous clients and reviewing any relevant case studies or training materials the provider can share.
Pay attention to how the provider sells to you
There’s one final consideration that I believe is frequently overlooked.
A sales training provider’s own sales process can tell you a great deal about its approach to selling.
Pay attention to how the provider conducts your initial conversations.
Are they asking thoughtful questions and making a genuine effort to understand your company’s challenges? Are they appropriately qualifying the opportunity, or are they simply trying to sell you a programme?
Do they challenge your assumptions when appropriate, or do they agree with everything you say because they want to win the contract?
I once considered purchasing a franchise from a large sales training organisation and had several conversations with one of its senior partners.
I found the sales process surprisingly poor. Although purchasing a franchise is different from buying sales training, I expected an organisation that teaches professional selling to demonstrate those same principles in its own sales process. Unfortunately, that wasn’t my experience.
That experience raised serious questions about whether the organisation was a suitable choice for me.
Naturally, the person selling the programme might not be the person delivering it. However, I still believe the way a provider conducts its own sales process offers useful evidence of its commercial approach.
After all, if you’re going to invest in teaching your sales team how to sell, you should have confidence in the selling principles being demonstrated by the people you’re considering hiring.
Final Thoughts
Choosing between a sales training company and an independent trainer shouldn’t be a decision based primarily on the size of the provider, its reputation or its pricing.
I’ve worked with established methodologies that contained valuable principles but weren’t implemented effectively. I’ve also seen how the right combination of experience, customisation and reinforcement can make a substantial difference to a sales development programme.
Larger providers have legitimate advantages in certain circumstances, particularly when companies need extensive geographical coverage, multiple trainers or a standardised methodology delivered at scale.
Experienced independent trainers may offer greater flexibility, direct access to specialist expertise and the continuity of working with the same person throughout an engagement.
However, neither of those advantages is guaranteed simply because of the provider’s business model.
My advice is to start with the problems you’re trying to solve and work backwards from there.
Investigate the person who will deliver the training, establish how the programme will be designed and agree what needs to happen afterwards to turn the learning into lasting behavioural change.
Ultimately, you’re not investing in a training company, an independent trainer or a methodology. You’re investing in your salespeople and their ability to perform better.
That’s what your purchasing decision should be based on.
About the Author
I’m David Craig White, a British B2B sales trainer, coach and consultant with more than 20 years’ experience helping sales teams get results.
When I’m not writing B2B sales articles, I’m providing B2B sales training, coaching and sales consulting to B2B sales teams, sales leaders and business owners.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is an independent sales trainer better than a sales training company?
Neither is inherently better. The right choice depends on your organisation’s requirements, the experience of the individual trainer, the degree of customisation required and the practical delivery arrangements. Both established companies and independent professionals can deliver effective sales training.
Are independent sales trainers cheaper than larger training companies?
Independent sales trainers aren’t necessarily cheaper than larger training companies. Pricing depends on the trainer’s experience, the scope of the engagement, preparation requirements, programme design, delivery and ongoing support. An experienced independent trainer may charge fees comparable to those of an established provider.
Can an independent sales trainer train a large international sales team?
Yes, independent sales trainers can deliver large international programmes when workshops can be scheduled across different locations and periods. Organisations requiring simultaneous delivery in several countries or multiple languages may benefit from a provider with several trainers.
What should I look for when choosing a sales training provider?
Look for relevant sales experience, proven training capabilities, suitable client references, a clear approach to diagnosing your company’s challenges and the ability to customise the programme. You should also establish how the provider will support reinforcement and measure behavioural change.
Should we choose a sales training company with an established methodology?
Established sales methodologies can provide a useful foundation for developing consistent sales behaviours. However, it should be appropriate for your company’s buyers, products, sales processes and commercial objectives. You should establish how much the methodology can be adapted before committing to a programme.
What’s the difference between sales training and sales coaching?
Sales training develops knowledge and practical skills through structured learning, workshops and exercises. Sales coaching focuses on helping individuals apply those skills, improve their performance and develop better habits through feedback, practice and ongoing support. Both can contribute to lasting improvements in sales performance.
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