This Wall Street-Trusted Firm is Training Corporate Employees Like Elite Athletes
Why Passive Training Fails (And How One Firm Is Applying Athletic Conditioning to Corporate Sales)
By B2B Insight Editorial Team
Let’s start with a number that should make every CRO pause: U.S. companies pour billions of dollars annually into employee training—much of it passive. Lectures, slide decks, and compliance modules that check a box but fail to change behavior. The result? A negligible return on that investment.
That’s the problem Knopman Marks is tackling head-on. The Wall Street-trusted firm has launched a new venture called Highwire, built on a counterintuitive premise: treat corporate employees like elite athletes, not students.
This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a data-backed methodology that swaps passive learning for high-repetition, practice-based conditioning. At B2B Insight, we’ve analyzed the framework, spoken to the practitioners, and broken down why this approach could reshape how mid-market companies build revenue teams.
Here’s the full breakdown—no fluff.
The $100 Billion Training Gap
According to industry benchmarks, U.S. organizations spend roughly $100 billion annually on employee training and development. Yet, retention of that material after 90 days hovers around 20–30% for passive formats. For B2B sales teams, the cost is even steeper: time away from pipeline, lost quota velocity, and the hidden cost of reps reverting to old habits.
The traditional corporate training model relies on absorption. Watch a video. Take a quiz. Maybe role-play once. That works for compliance—it fails for skill acquisition.
Knopman Marks observed this disconnect directly in their core business: preparing financial professionals for high-stakes licensing exams. Their methodology for years has been weighted heavily toward practice—approximately 70% of the learning experience is applied, not theoretical. That ratio is now the foundation of Highwire.
The core insight: You don’t learn to close by watching someone else close. You learn by practicing the close 100 times, with real-time feedback, under pressure.
Highwire: From Wall Street Prep to Corporate Performance
Knopman Marks has been a trusted name in financial exam preparation for over a decade. Their client base includes bulge-bracket banks, asset managers, and advisory firms—organizations where getting the Series 7, CFA, or CFP wrong costs millions.
Highwire is the commercial extension of that proven methodology, now tailored for corporate employees outside the financial sector. The target audience? Mid-market companies and enterprise teams that need their sales, customer success, and leadership functions to perform at peak levels—without the “death by PowerPoint” experience.
The 70/30 Practice Ratio
| Component | Percentage | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Practice-based conditioning | 70% | Simulations, high-rep drills, real-time feedback loops, scenario-based challenges |
| Knowledge delivery | 30% | Frameworks, case studies, and micro-lessons (on-demand or live) |
This ratio mirrors how elite athletes train. A basketball player doesn’t spend 70% of practice watching game tape—they shoot free throws, run drills, and scrimmage. Similarly, Highwire’s platform forces reps to execute repeatedly in controlled, repeatable environments.
Key Elements of the Highwire Methodology
- High-repetition drills: Think of it as “pitch reps.” A rep might practice a discovery call 20 times with slight variations, each time receiving feedback on objection handling, tonality, and adherence to the MEDDIC framework (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion).
- Real-time feedback loops: Coaches (and AI-powered bots) provide immediate corrections. No waiting for a quarterly review.
- Scenario-based stress testing: Simulated high-stakes situations—e.g., negotiating a enterprise deal with a skeptical procurement team—that build neural pathways for success under pressure.
- Adaptive difficulty: Just as a weightlifter increases load, the platform adjusts complexity based on the learner’s demonstrated competence.
The Science Behind the Shift: Why Practice Outperforms Passive Learning
This isn’t just semantics. It’s grounded in cognitive science and sports psychology.
The Forgetting Curve Mitigation
Psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve shows that without reinforcement, humans forget roughly 50% of new information within an hour, and 70% within 24 hours. Passive training fights this curve with repetition—but only if the repetition is active, not passive re-reading.
Highwire’s approach actively combats the forgetting curve by embedding retrieval practice (recalling information from memory) and spaced repetition (distributed practice over time). This combination has been shown to improve long-term retention by 300–400% compared to massed learning (i.e., cramming).
The Flow State & Deliberate Practice
Elite athletes operate in a state of flow—fully immersed, with clear goals and immediate feedback. Psychologist Anders Ericsson’s research on deliberate practice highlights that peak performance requires repetitive, focused, and feedback-rich training. Corporate training rarely provides this.
Highwire’s drills are designed to induce flow. The platform starts with simple tasks (e.g., “Identify the economic buyer in this scenario”), progressively increasing complexity until the learner is operating at the edge of their ability—the sweet spot for skill development.
The MEDDIC Alignment
For B2B sales teams, the shift to practice-based conditioning directly supports MEDDIC qualification. Here’s how:
- Metrics: Reps drill on quantifying pain (e.g., “What is the cost of inaction?”) until it becomes automatic.
- Economic Buyer: Repeated role-play with different personas teaches reps to recognize the real decision-maker, not just the champion.
- Decision Criteria: High-rep scenario training helps reps map decision criteria without relying on a checklist.
- Decision Process: Simulating multi-stakeholder deals trains reps to navigate complex approval chains.
- Identify Pain: Active elicitation drills—not passive case studies—build the muscle for uncovering hidden pain.
- Champion: Reps practice building champion coalitions under time pressure.
Case Study: How One Enterprise Client Scaled New Hire Ramp Time
While Knopman Marks has not publicly released specific client names for Highwire (the venture is newly launched), the parent firm’s track record offers a parallel. In financial services, new hires typically require 6–12 months to reach full productivity. Knopman Marks’ clients using the practice-heavy methodology have reportedly reduced that ramp by 30–40%—a direct lift to pipeline velocity and cost-per-hire efficiency.
For mid-market B2B companies, where every day of unproductive headcount carries real cost, that improvement translates into significant revenue acceleration.
The Cost of Slow Ramp
| Metric | Industry Average | With 30% Faster Ramp |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first closed deal | 9 months | 6 months |
| Ramp cost per rep | $150,000 | $105,000 |
| Pipeline velocity (deals/month) | 2 | 3+ |
Note: Figures are illustrative based on typical industry benchmarks for enterprise SaaS. Actual results vary.
The Challenger Sales Application
Highwire’s methodology also aligns with the Challenger Sales model, which asserts that top-performing reps can teach, tailor, and take control of the conversation. Teaching a prospect something new—and reframing their problem—requires reps to practice those reframing skills.
In a passive training environment, a rep might watch a video on “commercial teaching.” In Highwire’s practice-based environment, the rep delivers the teaching pitch repeatedly, receives feedback on their framing, and adjusts for a procurement officer versus a CTO. This deliberate practice builds the skill of tailoring, not just awareness of the concept.
What This Means for Mid-Market B2B Leaders
If you’re a VP of Sales, CRO, or Head of Enablement at a company with 50–500 employees, the takeaway is clear: your training investment is likely underperforming because it’s passive. You can either:
- Audit your training ratio. How much time do your reps spend practicing vs. consuming? If the answer is under 30% practice, you’re operating at a disadvantage.
- Adopt a platform like Highwire. While the venture is new, the methodology is battle-tested at scale.
- Implement internal practice loops. Even without a paid platform, you can run daily high-rep drills: 15-minute objection-handling sessions, peer feedback rounds, or recorded pitch reviews with structured rubrics.
Red Flags to Watch For
- Your enablement team measures completion rates, not competency.
- Reps can recite the MEDDIC acronym but struggle to apply it in a live call.
- Your training budget is a cost center, not a revenue driver.
- New hires still feel “unready” after 90 days.
If any of these apply, your training model is passive—and you’re leaving money on the table.
The Future of Corporate Training Is Athletic
Highwire’s launch signals a broader shift in B2B learning and development. The old model—attend, absorb, forget—is dying. The new model is practice, feedback, repeat. Just as elite athletes spend 70% of their time in reps and drills, B2B revenue teams will increasingly adopt the same mindset.
The firms that make this shift now will own next year’s competitive advantage. The ones that don’t will continue to burn billions on training that doesn’t stick.
About B2B Insight
B2B Insight (b2bnews.net) is the data-driven intelligence platform for sales and marketing leaders at mid-market companies. We analyze trends, frameworks, and emerging tools—like Highwire—so you can cut through the noise and build revenue engines that scale.
Sources: Knopman Marks official release; industry benchmarks from ATD and Training Magazine; Ebbinghaus forgetting curve data; Ericsson’s deliberate practice research.
This article is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the editorial team. No financial or investment advice is implied.
