When a product launches, the sales team is often expected to run at full throttle. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most go-to-market teams are selling before they’re learning. And that’s expensive.
At The2Guys, we help companies grow +50% YoY by dialing into what actually drives efficient, scalable growth. And one of the most overlooked frameworks in the SaaS and B2B world is The Sales Learning Curve, introduced by Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway in Harvard Business Review (2006). Despite being almost 20 years old, it’s more relevant than ever—especially for private equity-backed companies or VC-funded scale-ups under pressure to deliver results fast.
Sales efficiency starts with product readiness
The Sales Learning Curve (SLC) asserts that just like engineering has a Product Development Lifecycle, sales has a Sales Learning Lifecycle. You can’t shortcut either. If your product is early-stage or entering a new market, your sales team is still learning:
- What messages resonate?
- Who is the real buyer?
- What problem are you solving that is urgent now?
In this phase, throwing more salespeople at the problem leads to wasted ramp-up, low productivity, and burn.
Three phases of the curve
- Initiation phase: Founders, product leads, and a few strategic reps experiment with messaging, ICP, pricing, and pitch structure. The focus is learning, not scaling.
- Transition phase: Once a repeatable formula emerges, sales enablement, training, and process optimization take center stage.
- Execution phase: Now you scale. Hiring ramps up, playbooks are executed with precision, and pipeline becomes predictable.
Trying to skip steps is like scaling a mountain without oxygen. Teams collapse under the weight of premature expectations.
Aligning sales strategy with product maturity
This is where sales efficiency gets real. Most companies overspend during the Initiation phase—hiring an army of reps with no proven path to success. Efficiency isn’t about working harder. It’s about sequencing smarter.
A PE firm acquiring a SaaS company, for example, needs to ask:
“Are we in a place to optimize or do we still need to validate?”
If you’re still validating, you need learning loops—tightly tracked experiments, feedback sessions, and high adaptability in sales strategy.
If you’re optimizing, focus on standardizing onboarding, coaching, and funnel conversion.
What you can do today
- Audit where your product is on the Sales Learning Curve. Be brutally honest.
- Right-size your team to fit your phase. Fewer, more agile reps often outperform larger teams early on.
- Track learning, not just revenue. Document objections, lost deal reasons, and customer feedback like gold.
Final thought
The sales team isn’t just a go-to-market engine—it’s your fastest source of market intelligence. But only if you let them learn before asking them to scale.
At The2Guys, we help B2B tech firms and their investors unlock sales efficiency based on where they actually are, not where they wish they were. Efficiency is not just doing things right—it’s doing the right things in the right order.