In today’s competitive sales environment, chief sales officers (CSOs) recognize the transformative impact sales coaching can have on driving revenue success, with over 50% citing it as a top priority for sales managers in 2025.
Sellers are also voicing a desire for more personalized coaching, but less than half feel that their manager’s coaching meets their unique needs and communication styles. This highlights a common challenge in B2B sales today: many organizations are struggling to develop and implement effective sales coaching strategies because frameworks are either absent or not customized to the sales functions’ needs.
A well implemented, structured coaching program can increase win rates by up to 28%. Yet many sales organizations rely on generic corporate coaching frameworks rolled out organization-wide by HR. These one-size-fits-all approaches often fail to address the unique challenges and dynamics specific to the sales function where timely and specific coaching is vital for sustaining both deal flow and momentum through pipelines.
Gartner research shows that many sales organizations fall short of best practices in effective sales coaching. However, the demand for timely top-line revenue delivery makes coaching outcomes critical for boosting revenue and productivity. To improve the quality and impact of sales coaching, sales enablement leaders should customize corporate coaching models to the dynamic nature of sales. This approach will then move sales managers beyond being cheerleaders and “dashboard inspectors” into genuine facilitators of seller growth.
Examine Current Coaching Model Limitations
Each corporate coaching model faces limitations that restrict their applicability in sales coaching. They may assume skills proficiency, oversimplify issues or overlook emotional aspects of the seller’s role:
Sales enablement leaders should first examine their current coaching model to identify its limitations within the sales function. By introducing tailored training strategies, they can effectively address these shortcomings and optimize the model’s impact. Approaches may include enhancing emotional intelligence training for managers and sellers, integrating regular skill assessments and audits, and ensuring a balanced focus on commercial acumen training and emotional insights.
Harmonize the Model to Sales Dynamics
In B2B sales, timing is crucial. Sales dynamics require deep customer engagement and quick adaptation to changing market conditions. Sales teams must navigate long cycles, complex decision-making and personalized interactions, all of which necessitate strategic agility and tactical execution. To support this need for greater agility, sales enablement leaders must harmonize coaching models with three key elements that are essential for effective sales execution and timely revenue delivery: market forces, buyer personas and sales frameworks.
- Market Forces: To make coaching adaptive, implement robust feedback mechanisms to continuously collect insights and then refine coaching plays accordingly.
- Buyer Persona: Develop persona-based playbooks with tactics for engaging different personas incorporating real-world scenarios and role plays.
- Sales Framework: Establish the collective framework of sales process, methodology and motions to guide teams through the sales cycle, ensuring careful timing and integration of coaching activities.
Harmonizing with these elements ensures practices are synchronized with sellers’ actions throughout the sales funnel and attuned to external conditions. Leaders should integrate sales strategies into coaching models, ensuring flexibility to tailor approaches to current dynamics and needs.
Demonstrate the Model’s Application in the Sales Funnel
Gartner’s research reveals that high-performing sales managers devote 18% more time to coaching on deal-specific problem-solving than their average counterparts. However, managers often risk becoming “supersellers,” taking control of deals from sellers and thus undermining their coaching responsibilities. To prevent overinvolvement in deals, managers should focus on empowering their teams through targeted coaching, particularly at the opportunity creation and pursuit stages earlier in the sale funnel. Here managers are guiding sellers to better identify suitable opportunities and scope them out more effectively.
Sales organizations should aim to provide more targeted coaching by implementing a customized coaching model to facilitate this approach. Striking this balance is essential in sales, where the intricacies of deal-specific coaching set it apart from other functions’ coaching needs.
To support subsequent adoption of the model by managers, sales enablement leaders can provide examples to illustrate typical coaching plays that are relevant to the model they are using, ensuring managers deliver high quality, impactful coaching.
Rachael Buchler and Bill Yetman are Senior Director Analysts in the Gartner Sales Practice, focused on various sales engagement and strategy topics. Join Gartner analysts to learn more about buyer insights and sales strategies at the 2025 CSO & Sales Leader Conference, May 20-21, in Las Vegas.
