A sales coaching cadence that changes behavior

A pipeline review asks what will close and when. Coaching asks how a conversation went and what the rep will try next. Both are useful, and they fail when combined: in a review, the rep answers the question about the forecast, because that is the question being asked, and the behavior never comes up.

The practical test is what happens after the meeting. If nobody does anything differently, the conversation was reporting. If one behavior is attempted on the next call and discussed afterwards, it was coaching.

• Weekly, twenty to thirty minutes, per rep. One deal that is going well, one that is stuck, and one behavior. Deal selection by the rep, not only by the manager's dashboard.
• Fortnightly or monthly, one skill, with practice. Discovery questions, handling a pricing objection, or writing a follow-up. Practice means saying it out loud, not discussing it.
• Monthly, the team together. A short review of what has been tried, what worked in a specific conversation, and what the team will standardise. This is where the process improves rather than only the individual.

Whatever the rhythm, it has to survive a busy month. A cadence abandoned in the last two weeks of a quarter teaches the team that it is optional.

1. Look at what happens in the deal, not at the outcome. A lost deal is a result; a missing next step is a behavior.
2. Pick one behavior per rep. Two is usually one too many, and five is a performance improvement plan in disguise.
3. Make it observable. "Better discovery" cannot be checked; "three questions about the cost of the current process before proposing" can.
4. Agree the check date in the same conversation, so the follow-up is expected rather than sprung.

Where a rep's deals share a stage problem, the gap is often process rather than skill. The notes on building a repeatable sales process cover the stage definitions that coaching then reinforces.

Coaching is a manager's work, and it does not delegate well to a colleague who has no authority over the rep's priorities. What the manager needs is modest: access to a handful of deals, the ability to hear or read one real customer conversation, and enough calendar space for the rhythm to survive.

The most common constraint is span. Where a manager carries more direct reports than the weekly rhythm can absorb, coaching becomes triage for whoever is furthest behind. That is a structural problem, and reducing the span or splitting the role is a more honest response than shortening the conversations further.

The example below is hypothetical and describes a pattern rather than a client engagement.

• It takes calendar time from selling. The trade is deliberate: less activity, better activity. Where a team is below the activity needed to survive, coaching is unlikely to be the first fix.
• Progress is slow and uneven. A behavior change usually shows up over weeks, and not in every deal. Judging the cadence by one month's numbers will end it early.
• It depends on the manager's skill. A manager who has never been coached tends to reproduce reporting. Some support for the manager is usually part of making this work.
• It does not fix a broken offer. If buyers do not want what is being sold, better discovery surfaces the problem sooner rather than solving it.

Coaching sits inside the Sales & Commercial capability, alongside process design and the sales leadership role itself. Where the pipeline problem is structural rather than behavioral, the pipeline diagnostic is the better starting point.