Here's what happens in most forecast calls: pipeline looks healthy, activity metrics look good, but deals keep stalling in the early and mid stages. Your new AEs appear productive, they're booking meetings, logging activity, and completing their LMS courses, but when you shadow their calls, the discovery is surface-level. They pitch features instead of uncovering problems. They don't know how to navigate multi-stakeholder buying committees. And when you ask them to walk through deal qualification, they're guessing.
You don't have a ramp problem. You have a readiness problem.
Most organisations declare reps "ramped" based on calendar milestones: 90 days in role, LMS modules completed, systems access granted, activity levels hit. What they don't measure is what reps can actually execute in front of a buyer.
Here's what we've observed across dozens of sales teams: 72% of AEs declared "ramped" by time served cannot run effective discovery without manager intervention. They move deals into the pipeline because they're told to create volume, not because they've genuinely qualified the opportunity. The result? Inflated pipelines full of deals that will never close, late-stage slippage that destroys the forecast, and managers spending 12-15 hours per week rescuing deals instead of coaching.
The average B2B company loses £180,000 per new AE in missed pipeline during months 1-6 due to capability gaps. For a sales organisation hiring 10 new AEs per year, that's £1.8M in lost opportunity, plus the hidden costs of manager burnout, forecast volatility, and rep turnover when people realise they've been set up to fail. In fact, 47% of AEs left their last role due to poor onboarding and a lack of sales training.
The buying environment has fundamentally changed, but most ramp processes haven't adapted to it. Buyers today are more informed (they've done research before engaging), involve more stakeholders (average buying group is now 5-15 people), expect sellers to teach rather than pitch, and delay decisions to reduce risk. The status quo is safer than a wrong decision.
What used to work five years ago, throwing reps into activity and seeing who figures it out, now results in deals that stall because reps can't articulate differentiated value, opportunities lost because discovery didn't uncover real business impact, discounts given to compensate for weak positioning, and burnout on both sides.
The gap between "appears ramped" and "is actually ready" has never been more expensive.
The organisations that outperform don't just ramp reps faster, they build capability first, then grant autonomy based on proof. This means:
Reps earn responsibility by proving skill. You don't own pipeline until you can qualify properly. You don't forecast until you can accurately assess deal health. You don't run late-stage negotiations until you've demonstrated value articulation mastery.
Pipeline ownership is gated by certification. This isn't about control, it's about protection. Protecting your pipeline quality, protecting your forecast integrity, and protecting your reps from being set up to fail in front of buyers.
Deals are progressed by qualification, not guessing. Every stage advancement requires proof that the exit criteria have been met. If a rep can't articulate why a deal belongs in stage 3, it doesn't belong there.
The objection every VP raises: "We can't afford to keep reps on the bench longer."
But you're not keeping them on the bench; you're ensuring that when they enter the field, they're genuinely prepared to contribute a high-quality pipeline, not just activity. A rep who reaches first deal in 1-3 months with proper preparation contributes more revenue in months 4-12 than a rep who reaches first deal in 6 months through trial and error.
A genuinely ready Account Executive demonstrates these capabilities before being granted full pipeline ownership:
They can articulate value by buyer role, explaining what you solve, why it matters, and how you're different, customised for Champions, Economic Buyer, technical buyer, and end user. Not a memorised pitch, but adaptive storytelling.
They run structured discovery that uncovers real business problems, quantifies impact, identifies stakeholders, and establishes clear next steps, without manager shadowing.
They apply your qualification framework (MEDDPICC, or your chosen methodology) consistently and honestly, killing deals early that don't meet standards rather than advancing them to look productive.
They navigate multi-stakeholder buying groups by identifying buying committee members, understanding individual concerns, and orchestrating conversations that build consensus.
They build CFO-ready business cases that tie your solution to financial outcomes, articulating ROI, payback period, and opportunity cost of inaction.
They progress deals without manager rescue, based on genuine buyer commitment, not hope, and know when to escalate for strategic support versus when they have control.
Notice what's not on this list:
Those are activity metrics. They measure effort, not competence.
Steal this framework: The Revenue RAMP approach reduces time-to-first-deal by 40-60% whilst improving quota attainment by 35% in year one.
Download The Sales Readiness Playbook to see the exact four-stage framework, implementation checklist, and certification criteria that organisations use to build sales-ready teams in 90 days.
You can't scale skill development through manager effort alone. The organisations that successfully implement capability-based ramp deploy infrastructure that makes observation, feedback, practice, and reinforcement sustainable:
Skill certification gates that define what "ready" means with observable criteria and require demonstration before autonomy is granted.
Practice environments where reps rehearse pitches, discovery, and objection handling with AI feedback before attempting with real buyers.
Manager review workflows that create structured checkpoints for pitch approval, deal qualification audits, and skill progression tracking.
Content libraries organised by sales stage, providing battle cards, templates, and recorded examples that are actually findable and usable.
AI coaching assistants that provide real-time feedback on call recordings, identify specific skill gaps, and suggest targeted practice scenarios.
These systems reduce manager bottlenecks whilst increasing skill visibility. Instead of hoping reps improve through osmosis, you have structured proof points that show exactly where gaps exist and coaching occurs proactively, not reactively.
If you suspect you have a readiness problem disguised as a ramp problem, answer these questions honestly:
If most of your answers fall in the uncomfortable category, you're not alone, this is the default state because time-based ramp is easier to measure than capability-based readiness. But easier to measure doesn't mean effective.
The good news is there's a proven framework for fixing it. The organisations that make this shift don't just ramp reps better, they ramp them faster to meaningful contribution, with higher quota attainment, better retention, and managers who actually have the capacity to coach.
See exactly how to implement this in your organisation: The Sales Readiness Playbook includes the complete Revenue RAMP Framework, your 90-day transformation roadmap, real implementation examples from teams achieving 75% win rate improvements, and ready-to-use certification criteria and coaching templates. Download it here.
