Sales coaching: one focus at a time, and you check it gets done.
Sales coaching fails in two ways: the manager has no time to listen to calls, or they listen and give ten pieces of feedback nobody remembers. What works comes down to three rules: measure, pick one thing, check it gets done.
Sales training and sales coaching are not the same thing
Sales training hands over a method in two days. Coaching makes that method stick over the next hundred calls. The first is an event, the second is a habit. Most budgets go to the first, and most results come from the second.
Measure the same thing on every call
You don’t coach an impression. You need a grid, the same for every call, with written anchors: what a 3/10 and an 8/10 look like in discovery, in objections, in closing. Without a grid, feedback depends on the manager’s mood and the last call they heard.
- 8 weighted criteria: opening, discovery, listening, qualification, objections, pitch, closing, posture.
- Measurable behaviors: talk time, questions, monologues, interruptions.
- A trend rather than a point: progress over ten calls says more than one isolated score.
One thing at a time
Ten pieces of feedback after a call is zero pieces remembered. A good coach picks the criterion that costs the most deals and sets a focus you can apply during a call: “state the price in one sentence, then let the prospect react.” One sentence, worked until it sticks, then the next.
Read, don’t replay
A manager with six reps has thirty hours of calls a week to listen to. They won’t listen to any of it. What works: a read that says who to look at this week and why, and the exact moment to replay, thirty seconds, not an hour.
Let them hear the best
The most effective coaching isn’t top-down. It’s the new hire hearing how the best rep on the team handles the price objection, thirty seconds, on a real call. A team has a go-to person for every dimension; the manager’s job is to name them and make their moments easy to hear.
The 1:1, prepared
An improvised 1:1 talks about the last call and the pipeline. A prepared 1:1 talks about one specific criterion, with the calls that illustrate it, three open questions, and a commitment for the next three calls. Fifteen minutes, weekly or every two weeks, is enough if the prep is done.
- What they do well, with a call as the example.
- What’s worrying, with a call as the example.
- Three open questions to ask them.
- One commitment, checkable at the next 1:1.
Questions
An hour a week per rep is enough if it’s prepared: fifteen minutes of 1:1 and the rest reading the calls, not listening to them.
