The Role of Coaching in Sales: Exploring Different Approaches and the AI Opportunity

LinkedIn is buzzing with articles positioning coaching as the ultimate cure-all for the sales environment’s myriad challenges. More often than not, these pieces are authored by individuals offering sales coaching services, targeting none other than the sales executives themselves.

Is it really 'coaching'?

While I'm a firm believer in coaching as a crucial part of the ongoing development for sales executives, I must point out that much of what’s being touted as coaching is, in reality, training by another name.

They offer “Experts in selling”, “Filling Skills gaps”, “Guarantee to improve conversion rates”. To me, this all sounds like 1-2-1 training, often linked to specific methodologies. This doesn't mean it's bad, but is it really coaching? 

Let's define true coaching

Coaching is a process that empowers the trainee to discover, for themselves, the best way to address their developmental issues. It facilitates the individual’s journey to self-discovery. 

A well-structured coaching conversation often follows a model such as TGROW (Topic, Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward). 

The sales manager's dilemma

Many sales managers find themselves unable to facilitate these conversations towards self-discovery, as they are constrained by their role. They are under pressure to meet targets and enforce consistency, with significant investments in sales methodologies and tools.

This creates a coaching conundrum. There isn't enough time to wait for individuals to discover the right way forward. Instead, managers will opt for telling them what to do. While this approach may yield immediate results, it doesn't foster long-term development. It is akin to handing out fish instead of teaching how to fish.

Two types of coaching needs

Sales organizations have two distinct coaching requirements:

1. Development coaching - focuses on an individual's long-term growth and career progression, contributing to employee satisfaction and retention.

2. Performance coaching - aims to help individuals meet targets by reinforcing existing processes and tools to achieve consistent results.

Development coaching requires the coach to allow the individual to own their own growth path. Unfortunately, this isn't a core competency for many sales managers who achieved success through a single-minded focus on their own performance, great for a sales person not so great for a coach. Clearly here there is an opportunity for internal organizational development coaches or external experts. 

For performance coaching, we should see a direct link between coaching and quota attainment. After all, weren't we promised if we invested heavily in this sales methodology, practice it consistently, then we'll get the desired results? Unfortunately many sales managers lack the necessary coaching skills to deliver true performance coaching. Instead, they become the super hero who comes to the rescue. “Watch and learn as I rescue this deal”.

If sales managers are failing to deliver performance coaching, why not let an external performance coach step in? They can direct and guide individuals to follow the methodology and deliver results. This may not be scalable, but at least they provide an ROI. 

Another opportunity

The advent of AI and AI chatbots presents an intriguing alternative. 

AI-driven coaching combines directive advice with guided exploration, based on established methodologies. This approach not only enhances self-discovery, but also provides measurable data on those actively seeking improvement versus those relying on familiar methods. It is infinitely scalable and if the preferred methodology changes, it can be easily updated. 

I'm not claiming at this stage that AI will help to enable developmental coaching. This still requires a large amount of emotional intelligence to create the right environment for the conversation. Performance Coaching, on the other hand, is binary in nature with right and wrong answers, so it's ideal for AI to deliver scalability and consistency at speed. 

In conclusion, we have to recognize that our sales managers can't deliver all of the coaching required. Whilst external coaches have their place, especially for developmental coaching, performance coaching requires more than 1-2-1 training rebranded as coaching. Scalability cannot be achieved when relying on individual experts, but with AI to help us, it can be.