From “Competency-Based” to Performance-Based: Bridging Sales Enablement and Instructional Design

Shout out to the Sales Enablement Collective for continuing to share thought-provoking content, and thank you to Andrew Flores for a great conversation on competency-based onboarding. These discussions are incredibly valuable for advancing our understanding of how to enable new hires to succeed.

That said, one thing I often notice in the sales enablement community is how much stronger our models could become if we borrowed from the field of instructional design and learning science more intentionally. Instructional designers have been studying how adults learn, perform, and apply knowledge for decades — and the frameworks already exist to add rigor to what many of us are trying to achieve.

For example, in this podcast, Andrew describes competency-based onboarding as ensuring new hires are “competent” in their role tasks — prospecting, discovering customer needs, and mapping products to solutions. In practice, that often means getting someone to the “apply” level of Bloom’s taxonomy: they can perform the skill in context. But competence also requires adaptability, analysis, and decision-making — skills that align with the higher levels of Bloom’s (analyze, evaluate, create).

Where I think we can sharpen the model is by combining:

-Mager’s performance-based objectives (clear “do/conditions/standards”),

-Bloom’s taxonomy (levels of cognitive complexity), and

-Competency rubrics (Novice → Competent → Proficient → Expert).

Together, these create a measurable, transparent matrix of expectations for each role. For example, instead of simply stating that a rep should “be competent at prospecting,” we can define:

-Novice: Reads from a script, identifies leads with heavy guidance.

-Competent: Applies a qualification framework independently.

-Proficient: Tailors outreach to context, spots red flags quickly.

-Expert: Creates new prospecting strategies, mentors peers.

This approach doesn’t just sound rigorous — it actually is rigorous. It clarifies what growth looks like, supports managers in coaching, and gives reps a roadmap for mastery.

My takeaway: sales enablement can benefit by moving beyond labels like “competency-based” and grounding our work in proven instructional design models. It’s not about reinventing the wheel; it’s about applying decades of learning science to accelerate sales performance.

Thanks again to SEC and Andrew for sparking this discussion — I’d love to see more cross-pollination between sales enablement and instructional design. That’s where the future of impactful onboarding lies.

How do you define competence in your onboarding programs?