How can you effectively coach your team to boost sales?

By Axelle Drack

Published: May 27, 2025

Is sales coaching the manager's magic wand for achieving even the most ambitious goals?

As the guarantor of your employees' performance, you have a lot of pressure on your shoulders, as competition is often fierce and you have to fight to keep your customers and win new ones.

So, yes, sales coaching is a fantastic tool for boosting performance, and one that's becoming increasingly popular with managers because of its convincing results. We invite you to discover all the benefits of sales coaching, and the different steps involved in coaching a salesperson like a pro!

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What is sales coaching?

Sales coaching is a process of supporting sales forces to help them perform better. The idea is to help each individual salesperson to exploit their full potential to progress, become more efficient and rapidly achieve their objectives.

The coach provides an outside perspective, enabling them to take a step back , which is not always easy to do oneself.

Here are a few examples of sales coaching actions

attending a telephone meeting with the coachee and analyzing what went well and what can be improved,
accompanying the coachee to customer meetings in the field,
analyze prospecting emails sent,
analyze existing sales processes and suggest improvements,
share proven sales techniques and tips,
suggest the implementation of tools, etc.

💡 What coaching is not, however:

dictate how objectives are to be achieved,
controlling employees,
giving everyone the same instructions.

Why use sales coaching for your team?

Unless you're the only company in your market (which never lasts very long), competition is fierce, and new players are arriving every day. It's all part of the game!

This means your sales force has to double its efforts and intelligence to convince prospects that your solution is better than those of your competitors. So, to put all the odds on your side, coaching your sales force has become indispensable.

It's a bit like having a sports coach! No top-level athlete enters a competition without meticulous preparation and regular training. You have to work at being the best.

Unlike an athlete, you can count on the welcome help of software such as Seismic. This sales enablement tool offers a full range of coaching features to enhance the skills of sales teams:

training,
targeted coaching,
continuous feedback,
comprehensive documentation,
and precise preparation for sales meetings.

What's more, sales coaching promotes employee loyalty. Why is this? Despite all the clichés about salespeople and money, it's not (just) a good salary that will keep them with a company, but above all professional fulfillment and skills development. When a company invests in coaching for a team, they feel valued, and seeing themselves progress is highly motivating.

The benefits of sales coaching:

✅ skills development,
✅ process optimization,
✅ improved sales performance,
✅ sales force loyalty,
✅ improved competitiveness.

How to coach a salesperson in 6 steps?

1 - Define coaching objectives

Sales coaching is generally used for performance purposes, but not exclusively.

There may be other underlying objectives, and it's up to you to identify these expectations:

establish a climate of collaboration and team spirit,
conquer a new market,
chase more key accounts,
facilitate the induction and integration of a new recruit,
improve sales processes,
fine-tune sales techniques,
speed up deal closing,
build employee loyalty,
significantly increase the number of leads.

If the objectives are multiple, the idea will be to focus on the highest-priority, most revenue-generating objectives.

🛠 To help you coach your team well, we recommend you sign up for the Kestio digital platform. Here you'll find a wealth of high-quality, sales-performance-oriented content to help you unleash your staff's full potential. You'll also be able to exchange ideas with your peers and certified sales experts, to learn about best practices and receive valuable advice.

2 - Identify the type of sales person you're going to coach

Coaching is designed to bring out the best in each individual. And in your sales team, you're likely to find many different profiles working together, which in itself is a real strength.

Here are a few typical profiles you might be called upon to coach:

The hunter who loves competition and challenges, and doesn't care what method is used as long as he manages to close his deals. He's a go-getter who's particularly comfortable dealing with objections from prospects.
Analysts know the product they're selling down to the last detail, and need to know all the issues facing their prospects before proposing a suitable offer, and adapting their sales methods.
Empaths are naturally gifted at listening to their interlocutors and putting themselves in their boots. They'll pick up on weak signals and small details that no one notices, but which can be invaluable in closing a sale.
The federator is the most team-oriented profile! Their collective success is more important to them than their own performance, and they love to collaborate and share best sales practices.
The sociable is a warm, smiling person who enjoys contact with customers. They'll usually bend over backwards to ensure that the customer is satisfied.

The aim of this approach is not to pigeonhole salespeople, far from it (in fact, some can be a mix of two profiles). Rather, the aim is to help you identify more quickly who you're dealing with, so that you can better adapt your method and approach to the individual, making coaching more effective.

3 - Identify strengths and areas for improvement

Strengths first

Don't rush straight into what can be improved (although it's tempting). Everything in its own time.

Focus on what's already working. Why should you do this? Simply to reproduce what works. Sales people aren't always aware of their strengths. The idea is to leave nothing to chance!

The strengths in question may be :

mastery of sales argumentation and diagnosis,
communication skills,
motivation,
being comfortable tackling difficult subjects,
mastering the art of dealing with objections, etc.

Once the strengths have been identified, the aim is to quickly identify the 20% that generate 80% of performance. By doing this, we'll be able to implement "quick win" actions on the right elements to rapidly generate results.

Next, points for improvement

By observing salespeople in the course of their work, or through case studies, you'll also be able to identify the stages of the sales cycle that they are less proficient at than others.

Another way of identifying pain points is to analyze the team's sales tunnel in their CRM.

Use a sales coaching grid template

To help you during your observation phases, you may find it useful to use an analysis grid to properly analyze all the criteria that are important to your company.

Our free template is available for download:

with over 20 criteria to analyze,
with the option of modifying or adding criteria,
to quickly identify strengths and areas for improvement.

4 - Choosing the right methodology for the situation (individual, group)

There's no one right way to coach. And that's just as well!

When you feel that a sales person needs a real helping hand with his or her sales techniques, posture or objection handling, individual coaching is the way to go. It's tailor-made! We observe, discuss and adjust. You work in depth on your calls, your pitch, your sales cycles... And with the right tools, you can track your progress in real time - without micromanaging.

But sometimes, you need to get everyone moving. Create a group energy, share successful methods, get out of the rut. That's where collective (or collaborative) coaching comes in. Workshops, role-playing, cross-feedback, co-development sessions... everyone makes progress and the team becomes a closer.

👉 The trick? A little of both. Sales coaching is a multi-faceted process. And a good manager knows how to juggle formats to help his or her sales staff grow.

5 - Ask the right questions

Asking the right questions is an integral part of coaching. Questions are a much more effective way of encouraging action than trying to convince.

They are there to :

clarify/confirm a diagnosis,
generate awareness,
open dialogue,
encourage reflection.

But how do you ask the right questions? The most commonly used method is to construct a question by first setting the context, then shedding light on the path that leads to the heart of the question:

start with an observation,
express your thoughts about it,
and finish with the question itself.

Here's an example: "During your call with Mrs Dupont, I noticed that you evaded her question about the price of services. I get the impression that you're not very comfortable with the subject of money. How did you feel about this question? What made you feel uncomfortable?

By opening up the dialogue in this way, we help the sales person to put their finger on their own "pain points", so that together we can find effective solutions to remove the point that's hampering their performance.

6 - Use data to coach and measure progress

Performance indicators are very good signals of where you need to provide a healthy dose of coaching.

They enable you to spot when one person is blowing away their objectives, or on the contrary, when another seems to be struggling to achieve theirs. This can help you decide which coaching to prioritize. What's more, tracking data is essential to verify the positive effects of coaching on performance.

You'll therefore need to track a number of indicators. To choose the right metrics, keep in mind the coaching objective for perfect alignment. You can track them with a sales dashboard or use your CRM to get a direct view of the sales pipeline, and observe where the blocking points are.

7 - Integrate coaching into the team's culture

Sales coaching isn't a one-shot deal!

To be effective, coaching needs to be regular and long-term. It must become an integral part of the team's habits, as part of a continuous improvement process.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and the same applies to the changes that are about to take place. It will take long-term effort to see the positive effects of coaching!

How can you tell if your team needs a coach?

Sometimes all it takes is a sign. Motivation at half-mast, a stagnant closing rate, poorly managed objections, one customer meeting after another... Sometimes, your salespeople themselves don't know where they're stuck... but you do.

You don't need the alarm blinking red to launch sales coaching. The right support can help you to anticipate setbacks, avoid dropping out or simply awaken the potential of a salesperson who's just waiting to shine.

So, if you have the impression that your sales people could do better, faster, more serenely... it's probably the right time to offer them a helping hand (or rather a good coaching plan). After all, everyone needs a coach at some point.

Equip your team with sales coaching software

Coaching a sales team the old-fashioned way is a brave thing to do! You can do it, but you'll tire yourself out for nothing.

Sales coaching software has changed all that. They help you see what you can't see, hear what you don't have time to listen to and, above all, coach your teams more consistently, more accurately and with greater impact.

What to look for in sales coaching software

For a tool to be truly useful to your sales team, here's what it should provide:

Real-time feedback based on analysis of calls and sales behaviors,
Personalized recommendations according to salesperson type (hunter, analyst, empath...),
KPI tracking and team scorecards to visualize progress,
Creation of training sessions, role plays, sales challenges or certifications,
CRM integration and synchronization with your sales strategy,
Onboarding, coaching and skills development functionalities,

In concrete terms, you need software that becomes an assistant for managers and a practical guide for salespeople.

Examples of tools

With all these criteria in mind, you're probably wondering which sales coaching software to choose for your company? Here are three solutions that have proved their worth with many sales teams:

🎯 Highspot: for ultra-targeted coaching thanks to AI. It analyzes sales conversations, pinpoints weaknesses and helps you correct the situation immediately. Special mention to its Meeting Intelligence function.

📊 Gong: a real gem of sales analysis. It captures all exchanges, dissects them and gives you the best practices to duplicate. It's a highly effective way of helping the whole team move forward, without having to be on every call.

📅 ClickUp: the all-in-one platform that structures your coaching, training sessions, feedback and objectives. Perfect for tracking each salesperson's progress without getting lost in 15 different tools.

As you can see, to coach and develop a solid sales force, these tools aren't just gadgets. They become the gara