How to Coach Sales Reps

Coaching is about behaviour, not deals

Deal coaching and behaviour coaching feel similar and do different jobs. Talking through a specific opportunity might win that deal. Working on how a seller handles a vague answer in discovery improves every deal they touch after it. Most teams do a lot of the first and very little of the second, which is why performance keeps depending on who's running the deal.

Pick one thing

The instinct after listening to a call is to share everything you noticed. Six observations produce no change; one produces some. Choose the behaviour that would make the biggest difference to this seller right now — usually the one that shows up repeatedly, not the most dramatic single moment — and leave the rest alone until that one has moved.

Use real calls, not remembered ones

"I think what happened was..." is a conversation about memory. Recordings, notes or a call you sat in on make it a conversation about evidence. It also changes the tone: you're both looking at the same thing rather than the manager delivering a verdict about something they weren't present for.

Let the seller go first

Ask what they thought before saying what you thought. Most sellers identify the problem themselves, which makes the rest of the conversation collaborative rather than corrective. When they don't spot it, you learn something more useful than the mistake itself: they can't yet see it, so telling them the fix won't be enough.

Get specific about what happens next

"Dig deeper in discovery" is advice. "On your next three discovery calls, when someone gives you a general answer about a problem, ask one more question before moving on" is something a person can actually do on Tuesday. If a coaching conversation doesn't end with something that concrete, it was a discussion.

• One behaviour, chosen deliberately
• Evidence from a real call, not a recollection
• The seller's read first, then yours
• A specific thing to do in the next few calls
• A point in the diary where you'll look at it again

Practise, don't just discuss

The gap between agreeing what to do and being able to do it under pressure is bigger than most managers expect. Two minutes of rehearsal in the one-to-one — you play the buyer, badly if necessary — is worth more than ten minutes of discussion about how the call should have gone. It's uncomfortable the first few times, and then it isn't.

Come back to it

The reason most coaching doesn't stick is that it's never mentioned again. Behaviour changes when someone notices, twice. Revisit the same behaviour next week, look at another call, and say what's better as well as what isn't — otherwise sellers learn that coaching topics are weather rather than expectations.

Use the meetings you already have

Coaching rarely fails because managers don't care about it; it fails because it's treated as an extra programme on top of a full week. One-to-ones and pipeline reviews already exist. Giving fifteen minutes of an existing meeting to one behaviour, with a real call in front of you, is a change a busy manager can actually sustain.