The 70/20/10 Rule Is Still Right. We’re Just Investing in the Wrong 10%.

For years, learning and development teams have relied on the 70/20/10 model.

The idea is simple. Most learning doesn’t happen in classrooms. It happens through experience and interaction.

Roughly 70% of learning comes from doing the work itself.
About 20% comes from feedback, coaching, and conversations with others.
Only 10% comes from formal training.

Most people in sales would agree with that logic immediately. No one becomes a strong seller just by watching slides or memorising frameworks. Real growth comes from handling real conversations, navigating difficult deals, and learning from mistakes along the way.

Yet when you look at where most sales training budgets go, the picture looks very different.

A huge amount of time and money is still spent on the 10 percent.

The Comfort of Formal Training

Formal training is easy to organise.

You schedule workshops. You bring everyone together. You introduce a methodology. You run roleplays and quizzes. At the end, there is a sense that progress has been made.

It feels structured. It feels productive.

But once the training ends and reps return to their pipelines, something changes. The messy reality of selling takes over again.

Buyers ask questions that weren’t covered in the slides. Deals stall in places that don’t exist in the framework. Objections appear in forms no one rehearsed.

The learning that actually matters begins when the training room closes.

And that is the 70 percent.

Deals Are Won in the Work Itself

Most of the real development in sales happens during live deals.

A rep runs discovery with a difficult buyer.
They try to understand why a champion has gone quiet.
They attempt to regain momentum in a deal that seemed promising last week.

These moments are where skills are tested and refined. They are where judgement develops.

But they are also moments that pass quickly.

Once the call ends, the rep moves to the next task. Managers rarely have time to review every conversation. Opportunities to reflect on what happened often disappear.

So the 70 percent remains under-supported.

Reps are learning through experience, but not always with the guidance that would accelerate improvement.

Coaching Lives in the 20 Percent

The second part of the model, the 20 percent, comes from coaching and feedback.

This is where managers help reps understand what happened in a deal. Why a conversation worked. Why it stalled. What could have been done differently.

In theory, this is where the biggest performance gains should happen.

In practice, managers are stretched thin.

They juggle forecasts, hiring, internal meetings, pipeline reviews, and reporting. Even when they care deeply about coaching, they simply do not have the time to analyse every call or every deal.

So feedback becomes occasional rather than continuous.

And that slows development.

AI Coaching Brings the 70 and 20 Closer Together

This is where AI coaching begins to change the picture.

Instead of relying solely on formal training sessions, teams can now support learning inside the work itself.

AI systems can analyse sales conversations, identify patterns across deals, and highlight moments where something important happened.

Maybe discovery questions stayed surface level.
Maybe pricing discussions triggered hesitation.
Maybe next steps were unclear.

These insights appear quickly, while the context of the conversation is still fresh.

Reps can review what happened, understand where they might improve, and apply that learning in the very next interaction.

At the same time, managers gain clearer visibility into where coaching will have the greatest impact. Instead of searching for problems across dozens of calls, they can focus on the areas where reps need support most.

In effect, AI helps connect the 70 percent and the 20 percent.

Learning happens in the work, and coaching happens closer to the moment when it matters.

Formal Training Still Has Its Place

None of this means the 10 percent should disappear.

Formal learning still plays an important role. It introduces frameworks, shared language, and foundational knowledge that teams need to operate consistently.

But its role is smaller than many organisations assume.

Training sets the stage.
Experience builds capability.
Coaching turns experience into insight.

The mistake many teams make is assuming that more training will solve performance gaps that actually require better coaching and better support in live deals.

Investing Where Learning Actually Happens

If the 70/20/10 model is correct, then the real opportunity for improvement lies outside the classroom.

It lies in the daily work of selling.

Supporting reps while they are handling real opportunities. Helping them see patterns in their conversations. Giving managers better visibility so their coaching becomes more targeted.

This is where AI coaching is proving valuable.

Not because it replaces training, and certainly not because it replaces managers.

But because it strengthens the parts of learning that have always mattered most.

The doing.
The feedback.
The moments where experience turns into skill.

Final Thoughts

The 70/20/10 rule was never wrong.

The problem is that many organisations built their development strategies around the smallest piece of it.

Sales performance improves when learning happens alongside the work itself, not only before it.

AI coaching is helping bring attention back to where learning actually lives.

Not in the training room.

But in the deals.