How can you effectively coach your team to boost sales?

By Axelle Drack

Published: 27 May 2025

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

As the guarantor of your employees' performance, you have a lot of pressure on your shoulders, because 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 that is increasingly popular with managers because of its convincing results. We invite you to discover all the benefits and the different stages 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 salesperson individually to exploit their full potential in order to progress, become more effective 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 some examples of sales coaching

attending a telephone meeting with the coachee and analysing what went well and what can be improved,
accompanying the coachee to client meetings in the field,
analysing prospecting emails sent,
analyse the sales processes in place and suggest improvements,
share proven sales techniques and pass on advice,
suggesting the implementation of tools, etc.

💡 What coaching is not, however :

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

Why use sales coaching for your team?

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

So your sales people have to work harder and smarter to convince their prospects that your solution is better than those of your competitors. So to stack the odds in your favour, coaching your sales force has become essential.

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 to become the best.

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

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

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 the fact that they are developing professionally and their skills. 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 optimisation,
✅ improved sales performance,
building loyalty among sales staff,
✅ improved competitiveness.

6 steps to coaching a sales person

1 - Define the 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,
conquering a new market,
chasing more key accounts,
making it easier for a new recruit to take up a post and integrate,
improve sales processes,
fine-tune sales techniques,
speed up the closing of deals,
build employee loyalty,
significantly increase the number of leads.

If there are many objectives, the idea will be to focus on the priority objectives that generate the most revenue.

🛠 To help you coach your team well, we advise you to sign up to the Kestio digital platform. There you'll find a wealth of high-quality content geared towards sales performance, so you can unleash your staff's full potential. You'll also be able to talk to your peers and certified sales experts, to find out about best practice and receive invaluable advice.

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

The aim of coaching is to adapt to each individual to bring out the best in them. 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 that you might have to coach:

The hunter, who loves competition and challenges, and doesn't care what method he uses as long as he manages to close his deals. This is a go-getter who is particularly comfortable dealing with objections from prospects.
Analysts know the product they are selling down to the last detail, and need to be aware of all the issues facing their prospects before proposing an appropriate offer and adapting their sales method.
Empathic salespeople are naturally good at listening to the people they are talking to and putting themselves in their shoes. They will pick up on weak signals and small details that no-one notices, but which can be invaluable in closing a sale.
Team players are the most team-oriented of all! Their collective success is more important to them than their own performance, and they love working together and sharing good sales practices.
The sociable type is a warm, smiling person who enjoys contact with customers. They will generally bend over backwards to ensure that the customer is satisfied.

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

3 - Identify strengths and areas for improvement

First, the strengths

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

Putting your finger on what's already working is the priority. Why should you do this? Quite simply so that you can reproduce what works. Sales people are not 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 can implement "quick win" actions on the right elements to generate results quickly.

Next, the points for improvement

By observing your sales people in the course of their work, or through practical examples, you will also be able to see which stages of the sales cycle they are less proficient at than others.

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

Using a model sales coaching grid

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

You can download our free template:

with over 20 criteria to analyse,
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 is no single way to coach. And that's just as well!

When you feel that a sales person needs a real helping hand with their sales techniques, posture or objection handling, individual coaching is the way to go. It's tailor-made! You 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 micro-managing.

But sometimes you need to get everyone moving. Create a group energy, share the methods that work, get out of the rut. That's where group (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 bit of both. Sales coaching is a multi-faceted process. And a good manager knows how to juggle formats to help his sales staff grow.

5 - Ask the right questions

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

They are there to :

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

But how do you ask the right questions? The most commonly used method is to construct your 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 on the subject
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 cost 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 pinpoint their own "pain points", so that together we can find effective solutions to remove the point that is hampering their performance.

6 - Use data to coach and measure progress

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

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

You will therefore need to monitor a number of indicators. To choose the right metrics, keep the coaching objective in mind to ensure 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 is not a one-shot deal!

When you embark on this type of approach, coaching needs to be regular and long-term if it is to be effective. It has to 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 will apply to the changes that are about to take place. Long-term efforts will be needed 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 stagnating 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 to be flashing red to start sales coaching. With the right support, you can anticipate the hard times, 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... this is 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 be tiring yourself out for nothing.

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

What should you look for in sales coaching software?

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

Real-time feedback based on analysis of calls and sales behaviour,
Personalised recommendations based on the type of salesperson (hunter, analyst, empath...),
Monitoring of indicators (KPIs) and team scorecards to visualise progress,
Creation of training sessions, role plays, sales challenges or certifications,
CRM integration and synchronisation with your sales strategy,
Onboarding, career support and skills development functionalities,

In concrete terms, you need software that becomes an assistant for the manager and a practical guide for the sales force.

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 analyses 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 the exchanges, dissects them and gives you the best practices to duplicate. A highly effective way of helping the whole team to progress, 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 sales rep's progress without getting lost in 15 different tools.

As you'll have realised, when it comes to coaching and developing a solid sales force, these tools aren't just gadgets. They become the gara