Are You Actually Coaching Your Sales Team?
Here's a tough question: how much time are you really spending on coaching in your organization? And I'm not talking about a quick check-in or a quarterly review. I'm talking about intentional, structured coaching that moves the needle for your sales reps and your bottom line.
Most sales leaders feel the pressure to hit numbers. The revenue's gotta come in. So what do they do? They focus on the output instead of investing in the humans doing the work. That's backwards. And that's exactly what we're diving into today with Chris Duprey, a leadership veteran with over two decades of experience helping teams perform at their highest level.
What Sales Coaching Actually Is
Let's get real clear on something first. Sales coaching isn't about telling someone they're doing it wrong. It's about developing your humans through intentional feedback, practice, and strategy.
Think about it like sports. You don't put a football player on the field and expect them to perform without coaching. You use game footage. You break down plays. You do drills. You role-play scenarios. Yet in sales, we somehow expect reps to figure it out on their own. That's the disconnect.
Sales coaching is the systematic process of identifying gaps in your team's performance, then using real examples (game footage), deliberate practice, and simulation (role-playing) to close those gaps. When you do this right, you'll see better conversation quality, higher close rates, and reps who actually want to stay on your team.
Using Game Footage in Sales Coaching
Here's where it gets practical. In sports, coaches review actual game footage to improve performance. We need to do the same thing in sales.
Your "game footage" is your sales calls, meetings, and interactions. Here's how to implement this:
- Record your sales calls (with permission, obviously). Tools like HubSpot's call recording integration make this simple.
- Pick specific calls to review. Don't try to review everything. Target calls where there was a win, a loss, or a pivotal moment in the conversation.
- Watch with your rep. Go through it together, not as a boss critiquing their performance, but as a coach analyzing what worked and what didn't.
- Ask questions instead of giving answers. "What do you think happened when the prospect went quiet?" This creates ownership and learning.
- Identify one or two specific things to improve for next time. Don't overwhelm them with feedback.
The Power of Role-Playing and Deliberate Practice
Game footage shows what happened. Role-playing is where your reps actually get better. This is practice in a safe environment where failure doesn't cost you a deal.
Here's your step-by-step approach:
- Set the scenario. Pick a common objection or challenging situation your team faces.
- You play the prospect. Make it realistic. Don't go easy on them.
- Your rep responds like it's a real call.
- Pause and debrief. What went well? What would they do differently next time?
- Run it again. This time they'll perform better because they just practiced it.
- Make it a regular rhythm. Weekly or bi-weekly role-plays build confidence and competence fast.
Building A Coaching Culture
Real talk: coaching takes time. But not investing in your humans takes more time because you're dealing with turnover, missed quota, and burnout.
Start small. Pick your best rep and your rep who's struggling most. Spend focused coaching time with both. Then expand from there. Make it part of your rhythm, not something you squeeze in when you feel like it.
Your sales team wants to get better. They want to win. They're just waiting for someone to actually coach them like champions do.
