Part 1: Why Coaching Needs Sales to Work

Ask a Sales Director whether coaching is important, and you’ll probably hear a yes. Ask whether coaching would remain a priority if the business missed its sales targets for several quarters, and the answer may be less certain.

That’s something worth thinking about. We often discuss how coaching helps salespeople improve their performance. But there’s another side to the relationship that receives less attention. Sales performance also influences how much an organisation can continue investing in coaching and people development.

I believe sales leaders, HR and L&D leaders need to understand both sides if they want coaching to remain valuable to the business.

Sales Can Continue Without Formal Coaching

Businesses were selling products and services long before coaching became a recognised management practice. Salespeople built relationships, negotiated deals and won customers through experience, guidance from their managers and their own efforts.

Even today, some sales teams achieve their targets without having a structured coaching approach. So it would be inaccurate to suggest that a business cannot sell without coaching. However, achieving sales targets doesn’t necessarily tell us whether the sales team is developing the skills needed for future challenges.

A business may be performing well because it has strong products, established customers, favourable market conditions or a few highly experienced salespeople. The question is what happens when those conditions change. For example, what if an experienced Key Account Manager leaves and the replacement struggles to manage the same customers? Or what if a competitor introduces a similar product at a lower price?

These situations reveal how much the organisation depends on individual experience and how well it prepares other salespeople to take on greater responsibilities.

What Coaching Can Contribute to Sales Performance

Sales coaching can help salespeople improve how they think, make decisions and handle their work. It may help an experienced salesperson become more effective in a difficult negotiation. It may help a newly promoted Key Account Manager learn to manage more complex customer relationships. It may also help a salesperson recognise an unhelpful habit that has developed over time.

But coaching shouldn’t be expected to solve every sales problem. If a company has an uncompetitive product, unreliable deliveries or insufficient stock, coaching alone cannot correct those issues. Sales leaders need to identify where better selling capability can make a difference and where the business must address other problems.

Start With a Business Challenge

Before investing in coaching, ask: “Which sales challenges would we like our people to handle better?”

For example, your organisation may want to improve:

• The ability to develop new customers in unfamiliar market segments.
• The quality of business discussions with key accounts.
• The way salespeople protect value during price negotiations.
• The ability of newly appointed sales managers to develop their teams.

These are more useful starting points than simply deciding that everyone needs coaching. They help you connect the investment with a real business need.

Coaching Also Depends on the Health of the Business

Now consider the relationship from the other direction. Coaching requires resources. Organisations need time for managers to develop their people, training to improve coaching skills and sometimes support from external coaches or facilitators. These investments compete with other business priorities.

When revenue declines or profitability comes under pressure, leaders may need to review how they spend their money. People development can be affected by those decisions. This doesn’t mean coaching is unimportant during difficult periods. In fact, developing people may become even more valuable when the business needs to adapt. But leaders still need to decide what they can afford and where the investment will make the greatest difference.

What the Research Tells Us

The 2023 International Coaching Federation Global Coaching Study estimated worldwide professional coaching revenue at US$4.564 billion in 2022, an increase of 60% compared with 2019.

Source: International Coaching Federation — 2023 Global Coaching Study

This shows that the professional coaching industry had grown substantially. However, it doesn’t tell us how much companies invest specifically in sales coaching, or how much additional sales revenue coaching produces.

There’s also evidence that organisations adjust their learning investments when business conditions change. A 2020 survey by Training Industry found that 58% of respondents said their training budgets had been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, 61% of that affected group reported spending more, rather than less.

Source: Training Industry — Training Spend During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The finding is a useful reminder that businesses respond differently to financial pressure. Some reduce development spending, while others invest more to help their people adapt. For sales leaders and HR/L&D teams, the lesson is to make sure development investments respond to genuine business needs.

Make a Stronger Business Case for Coaching

If you’re proposing a sales coaching initiative, don’t begin with the number of coaching sessions you want to conduct. Start with the performance issue you want to improve. Let’s say a company wants its Account Managers to grow business with existing customers. The Sales Director and L&D leader could agree on three things.

First, identify the business opportunity. Perhaps existing customers are purchasing only a small part of the company’s product range.

Second, identify the selling capability needed. Account Managers may need to improve how they identify customer needs, explore additional opportunities and present relevant solutions.

Third, agree on how progress will be reviewed. Look at changes in the quality of account plans, customer discussions and opportunities developed, alongside the relevant sales results.

This gives coaching a clearer purpose. It also helps leaders evaluate whether the support provided is useful.

What Should Sales Leaders and HR/L&D Discuss?

Before approving a coaching investment, I suggest having a short discussion around these questions:

You don’t need a complicated financial model for every coaching activity. But you should be able to explain why the business is investing in it and what improvement you’re hoping to achieve.

Conclusion: Sales and Coaching Need Each Other

Sales teams can achieve results without structured coaching. But that doesn’t mean they will develop the capability needed to perform consistently as customer expectations and market conditions change. Coaching can support that development.

At the same time, coaching requires time, attention and resources. Those resources are influenced by the health and priorities of the business. That’s why sales leaders and HR/L&D need to connect coaching with the commercial challenges their organisations face.

But recognising the value of coaching is only the beginning. Why do so many managers who understand coaching still struggle to practise it?

That’s what we’ll explore in Part 2: The Quiet Gap Between Knowing and Doing Coaching.