A recent coaching assignment with a sales organisation reminded me of something that is easy to overlook.
Sales managers need coaching too.
The organisation was understandably focused on performance:
Pipeline.
Activity.
Conversion.
Results.
But as we started reviewing what was happening in real sales conversations, another question became important:
Who is coaching the people responsible for improving those conversations?
Many sales managers are promoted because they were successful sellers.
They know how to sell.
They know how to manage a pipeline.
They know how to push a deal forward.
But coaching a seller is a different skill.
During the coaching work, we moved away from simply discussing the numbers and started looking at the conversations behind them.
We listened to real calls.
We looked at specific behaviours.
We discussed what managers were noticing — and what they were missing.
And we worked on how to turn those observations into useful coaching conversations.
That changed the question from:
“Why didn’t you close this?”
to:
“What happened in the conversation — and what can we learn from it?”
That is where I believe coaching adds real value.
Not by replacing accountability.
Targets still matter.
Pipeline still matters.
Results still matter.
But accountability without understanding what is happening in the behaviour behind the numbers can create pressure without improvement.
The role of the sales manager is not only to manage the number.
It is also to understand and coach the behaviour that creates it.
Question for sales leaders:
What do you look at first?
When a seller misses target:
A. The numbers
B. The conversation behind them
C. Both — depending on the situation
#SalesManagerCoaching #SalesCoaching #SalesPerformance #SalesEnablement
