The Sales Coaching Disconnect No One Wants to Admit

Sales leaders say they're coaching more than last year, but reps are saying the opposite. 41% or just less than half of reps say they are rarely. Most cases, never coached. Two thirds of sales leaders have never received any type of support, and this is like the big disconnect.

Reps getting weekly coaching have greater likelihood of achieving target coaching to help your team grow isn't going to save this quarter. That correlation between frequency of coaching and quota attainment, you know, for any organisation working out, the revenue impact of 76% versus 47% is huge. AI, coaching is not the magic pill today that perhaps organisations would love it to be. So the headline we pulled out of our report after our findings was that tenured reps don't want coaching, and that not being true.

I think this is one of the things that you know we see when we speak to sales leaders, that that is perhaps most frustrating for us, is when they talk about experienced people on their team, and that perception that they don't want coaching and that, you know, one of the reasons, obviously, we ask these questions, and we'll share some of that data in in a second, there is definitely a perception that, you know, that people are from A leader's perspective, the more experienced people in their team perhaps, either don't need as much or as frequently, and that you know that they are experienced, they have the benefit of that of that experience.

Again, you've hit the headline there. We'll share the data behind this in a second. It's just not true. In fact, the absolute inverse is, is true is that you know tenured reps, people that have been in a role for a long period of time, are actually craving and wanting more, and we'll share that data behind that so rich, would you say that it's almost a bit of a myth that's been busted then with this report that you know tenured reps Don't, don't want to be coached?

Yes, this report shows that, but it also, I think, maybe gives some other insights about how tenured reps are and their desire for more coaching. And when you what this data will, you will see is that the more tenured they get, there's maybe a drop in how much they're wanting. You know, I'll speak of it from a personal level. I speak with probably on average, most weeks, eight different sales leaders.

And most of the time they will, they will say to me things like, oh, yeah, I think, um, newbies, my most green reps Could, could really do with some more help you drill into the their team, though, and it's, it's actually not showing that their most tenured reps are hitting quote or exceeding performance. There's this kind of like, there's this sort of perception in their head that just because you've been doing the role for a number of years, that you can't get better yet. The actual reality of sales today is it's a complex, ever changing landscape.

People who aren't levelling up are going to get left behind as buying behaviours change. As the influence of AI in the world, there's definitely some nuances there that I think we can drill into. But the reality is, is that what our report is showing us is that tenured reps want more than they're getting. How about our second headline then?

So this one reads, the majority of sales leaders say they're coaching more than last year, but reps are saying the opposite. Is this a tale as old as time? Rich? Do you want to kick us off with this one?

There's a misconception at the sales leadership level of what coaching actually is. And let's, let's maybe drop the word coaching for a second and think of like being valuable to their sales people, right? If you just think of it in that, in that terms, maybe kind of stop thinking about the pure definition of coaching. But just think of like, how am I being valuable in levelling up my team?

And I think the reality is that most sales people are saying, No, that's not what I'm getting. What I might be getting is, you know, drills drilling into my pipeline, and maybe one to ones. But the sales people, what they're seeing is they're not seeing that as valuable and helping them get better at what they do, ultimately, is a big misconception, and I see this again in the conversations I have. I think there's a lot of sales leaders that play Super rep with freelance coaching.

In other words, they're jumping on a sales call with their rep, and they end up taking over the call, and they come off it, and they probably feel like they've coached the rep. They've kind of shown them how to do the job right. Sales leaders have disconnected from what their sales reps want and need, and that's the most important thing. Forget about the definition of coaching for a second.

Think about what their sales people need and want and crave to get better at their job. And that's where the disconnect is, in that relationship between a leader and a rep, their goals and needs are not perfectly aligned. Obviously, everyone wants to be more successful, wants to win more deals, wants more revenue, but the sales leaders agenda is revenue focused like, is Is this person going to be successful? Is the team going to be successful?

Are we going to hit this quarter's goals? Whilst reps obviously care about that as well, they also care about their growth. They care. About, like learning, they care about developing, they care about their career, they care about their personal growth.

And so therefore, when you speak to a rep about coaching, then it is with that mindset of your Am I being helped to personally grow, as well as being held to be successful? And I think the sales leader who you know, let's be fair. Busy sales leaders, I'm sure lots on this call whose time is lit, you know, whose time is limited and very stretched, and the time that they get with their team does become focused almost naturally, like growth. Very recently, I've had a conversation with a sales leader who told me that at any time in the month, their team are managing between 50 to 100 deals, and he has the expectation from the business to forecast on a weekly basis.

And he said, my time is spent basically clarifying deals, status forecasts, and I get it. And again, I think that the challenge there, and that this, the sympathy I have with sales leaders, is that they're getting pulled in all these different directions, asking for things that the business ones. And all the while they're doing that, it's taken them away from actually the thing which is going to deliver the more consistent, predictable results out in the future. So there's a there's an executive lack of buy in in this too.

All the while, sales teams are just on the hamster wheel. And all the while the data shows that the quote retainment across the industry is through the floor because we're constantly trying to fight the fires of the current quarter, not thinking about developing the behaviours and the skills for the future quarters. Another one that we've got here is despite the rapid rise of AI coaching technology, reps prefer human coaching of any media. This is obviously a question that we've added this year and not asked previously, because the whole word coaching is becoming a broader church in terms of, you know, of whether it's human coaching, AI coaching, a combination of the two.

And we were keen to get some feedback and thoughts on the on people's perception of of AI. When you ask organisations and leaders they are looking at, they've either made investments in AI coaching tools, or are looking to make investments in AI coaching tools. And when we dive into the data, I think again, that kind of disconnect, you know, is, is it becomes really, really clear. And I think it comes back to like, you know, when we asked on this when we asked on this webinar, when we asked in the survey, are you coaching more than last year?

That people gravitate towards Yes, and undoubtedly people want to be coaching more. I think we universally have conversations. Leaders and managers want to be coaching more. They want their teams to get more coaching that's kind of like universally accepted and AI is perhaps a solution.

We've got a lot of thoughts on ourselves, on the role that AI will undoubtedly play in that, in that piece, but I think you know what we're profiling today is that AI coaching is not the magic pill today that perhaps organisations would love it to be. We're seeing more technologies come into the community equation, for sure, some I would say great technology for the purpose, great technology for how they're they utilise, but don't necessarily deliver on the objective. And you know, me and Kevin, I think and speak quite, quite authoritatively on this.

As you know, we co founded a sales tech company a decade ago that was in our head, was designed to help to solve this coaching problem. But we were very open that, if we look back, if we're honest with ourselves, it didn't really solve the problem. You know, you've got all this technology that, yes, can analyse sales calls in a mat in a matter of seconds. It can provide deep insights and your deals, things that loosely get described as coaching technology, which is questionable, right?

How many of these things actually help the sales person grow and get better? If you look at the quote, retirement statistics, it's questionable if, like, you can almost make a case that's making the opposite, the opposite impact. And, you know, we've seen, and again, this is no kind of big slight to these technologies that the rise of kind of role play technologies, you know, you you role play with a with an AI bot, and maybe it's trained on your, you know, the types of conversations that your reps are having.

But I think that the limitations of that is is real, and I can and is great for maybe practising talk tracks, handling objections. But what do we see in the reason why sales people are struggling? It's not the skills, it's actually what we see is the thing that holds sales people back most of the time. It's not a skill thing.

It's a sales mindset and behaviour issue. Most sales people are pretty smart and intelligent. They kind of know what to do, like they know, you know, they may know what questions to ask a prospect on a sales call. But why do they not why do some people not do it?

Why do a lot of people not do it? Because they lack the they lack the behaviours and the mindset to do it effectively. Can AI solve that problem for me? No, that's where the human connection is still, is still so powerful.

Sometimes we need feedback, right? We just need a quick bit of feedback, and we just need. To kind of spit ball some ideas, but often, especially in sales, we do need that human coaching connection. This is where it starts to validate everything that we know and believe to be true and and see play out on a not necessarily just from a my sales coach perspective, when we speak to teams and we understand what coaching means to them internally, what that coaching culture looks like.

The alignment to performance is is clear. You know, the again, the data really speaks to this in terms of reps performance being defined by by coaching frequency, by coaching quality, and also sales leaders, the sales leaders that are coaching their teams most frequently, that are recognise the need for coaching more and know that their teams still need even more than they're giving, are the leaders with the best performing teams as well that alignment to coaching, frequency, quality and a leader's perception of the importance of coaching all aligned with performance.

And again, we'll share some data on that. I think it's about time we we jumped into it and got a bit nerdy on some of these kind of data points, and delved into a little bit here so we can prove a little bit of kind of what we've been talking about. So let's start with this one, sales leaders say they're coaching more. We know that reps say it's not working and rich.

Do you want to talk us through the the kind of headline here and kind of what that looks like from 12 months ago? Yeah, let's just focus specifically on time dedicated to coaching, right? So we asked this, we asked this question to sales leaders, compared to 12 months ago? Are you coaching more than you were this time last year?

And as you can see, two thirds of the leaders said coaching more than last year. Just less than half of reps say they are rarely, in most cases, never coached. So there's a massive contrast there, right? Leaders aren't just saying that they're coaching, they're saying they're doing it more than they were last year.

Yet, there's so many sales people who still that's not, that's not the reality. And this is, like, the big disconnect, right? This is like, Why do sales leaders believe they're coaching more, but why does so many sales reps say they're never a rarely coached and comes back to the sales or, do sales leaders not think they're coaching, but their reps aren't seeing it as that? Do they feel like their, you know, pipeline reviews, is coaching, and their sales people don't see it as coaching the sales leaders, in some cases, kind of, they'd like to think they're coaching more, but the reality is actually very different, and maybe they have a warped view of how much they're coaching.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what this like. This is the this is the kind of the reality, right? It doesn't really matter what the sales leader. Things, as harsh as that may sound, it's really about, well, how does the sales team feel?

Because they're the people who's going to deliver the number for the sales leader, right? So sales isn't indeed, have a thick thing about maybe a question to start with, like, every sales leader can do in their next one to one is ask their sales people, like, how can I be more valuable to you? What am I not doing that I could be more valuable to you. What does great coaching look like for you as a salesperson?

Maybe they could start there. How many sales leaders actually ask their sales team that question? My hunch is very, very few. They probably just go into telling mode, telling them what to do with the deal, telling them how to respond to the email, telling them to make more calls, whatever it may be.

Why don't they start to ask their sales person what do they actually want and need? This shows that this massive disconnect is still there more than ever before. When we ask reps about the quality of coaching that they, that they, that they received, this has jumped almost 50% Well, in fact, more than 50% 29 from 29% to 45% 50% increase in sales reps rating the coaching they get as being below average. Now, what are the reasons for that?

Because that's a fundamental shift, right? You know, we're, and we're talking about, you know, a big survey, you know, in both both years with, with essentially the same question, is that AI is the fact that when people are asked about coaching that they get, they're now including the AI coaching tool that maybe is, you know, is part of that, that mix? Is it perhaps managers and leaders feeling that they don't need to coach as much because of, you know, some of those tools, and there is less access to expert to human coaching?

Is it because everyone's been struggling far more and and therefore time spent, actually in helping people grow has become more compressed, and it's been more about pipeline reviews and helping to close deals. I don't know. I suspect all of those contribute. I don't know which is, which would stand out the most, but that's a fundamental shift.

And I think, you know, we just can't ignore that almost half of reps say the coaching they get is below average. So, you know, it's great that we want to be coaching more. We've got desire to be coaching more, but more of below average coaching that's not desirable, that's not going to have impact like so we've got to take both of these two things in in parallel. How do we make sure that these numbers don't get.

Worse and worse and worse rich. What are your thoughts on that question? But I think going back to the point I made before, is like sales leaders, like regardless of whether you think your coaching is great, good, bad or indifferent. Start, have that conversation with your sales person.

How? How can I be more valuable to you? But here's the thing, why don't sales leaders look at how can I become a better coach? Every sales leader should be thinking that way.

How many sales leaders are being coached? How to be a better coach? If you become a better coach, if you become more skilled as a coach, and surely that's going to be received better as your as a sales, as your sales, sales person. Kev, what about you?

What do you think? So? I think the two things that I'd add to the things that Rich has said as well is when you come away from a one to one with your team, can you honestly answer the question? I have helped that person grow?

So you know, by by being able to answer that question and and know that you have had an impact on that person's growth is, you know, it provides that evidence that this isn't just about helping close deals. It's skills, it's mindsets, it's behaviours, it's all of those things that help an individual grow to become a better to become a better seller. And then how can you talk about your series about a coaching culture if you haven't got coach, you're literally saying from the top, I think coaching is really important, but by the way, yeah, maybe not for me.

What kind of message does that sense of the team about the importance of coaching and how much you really believe in those words and in that coaching coaching culture? Let's have a look at coaching frequency. So well, we know from our report that reps gain weekly coaching have greater likelihood of achieving target rich talk me through kind of coaching frequency. What did what did the data reveal?

Here, the data reveals that, like, if you're not coaching your reps at least on a weekly basis, like you're limiting their potential hit quota, right? More than three quarters of reps who are getting at least weekly coaching are hitting quota. And that and that, that number drops significantly down when they're getting coaching on a very regular basis. We define that as you know, quarterly or or less, maybe you're a sales leader, and you're looking at these stats and thinking like in today's day and age, when we've seen all of the data around, quote, entertainment across the board, how would it make you feel if you could get over three quarters of your team that hitting quota?

Because I bet you there's a lot of sales leaders out there where that is way beyond the but that's not the reality. The more you coach, the more people get better, the more people grow. It's like anything in life, right? If you help people more regularly, they develop the behaviour, the mindsets, the muscle memory that requires them to be great executers When it comes to sales.

And when that drops off, that muscle memory gets lost, and people fall into bad habits, and people go off, off course. And it's not a one and done thing either, right? It's like the best, like coaching is just an ongoing evolution. It's not this one off event, right?

Should certainly not be seen that way. But, yeah, I think, I think this is a massively compelling stats, is that and coaching is done more frequently, and for us, frequently is at least weekly, you have a much higher chance of hitting quota, simple as that. And Kev, of course, quota attainment, you know, making sure the pipeline is achieved. It's still, I would say, number one out there for sales leaders.

And taught me talk me through kind of weekly coaching and how that can assist. Look at the data here and the difference. We're not talking about this making a small difference. We're talking about I mentioned before the assessing impact being the second biggest reason that leaders say that they're not coaching their team, or not coaching their team as much as they should.

This data is really compelling, and again, we touched on this earlier, like this audience might even be a sly microcosm of the whole coaching community. You know, ebster's data shows that just a quarter of people were hitting a quota today. So it might be fair to say that people that that completed the coaching survey were a subset of that audience were better performing sales people, but still, that correlation between frequency of coaching and quota attainment for any organisation, working out the revenue impact of 76% versus 47% is Huge, and no one needs more reason to invest, internally or externally, in doing more coaching than to see that slide.

One of my favourite questions that you've ever asked me throughout all of us knowing is, does this move the share price right when you make decisions in your business? Is this thing that we're talking about? Is this thing that we're thinking about doing, dedicating time to? Does this move the share price?

Tell me anybody out there that this is not compelling when it comes to moving the share price of a business, and that that's a question that I'm aiming at, maybe like senior leadership, who it's key for them to be bought into this, to make to make coaching happen, right? Like that, to have a great coaching strategy. This moves the share price in ways that pump. Another money in your marketing budget doesn't totally but I think, like two things that do hold it back is the sales leaders live in a world of this quarter, right?

So that focus, and, yeah, and, and it is totally fair to say coaching isn't gonna say isn't gonna save this quarter. Coaching to help your team grow isn't going to save this quarter. And so therefore, in a world where you're you know you you are up at night worrying about those that that quarter attainment, knowing that the life cycle, the the tenure of a manager and leader is is is short without performance, it becomes a reason not to prioritise that investment despite that compelling fact.

Let's take a look, then at some more of these data points. And I want to look at this one around tenured reps, because we talked about that earlier on. Tenured reps being hungry for coaching, but they don't get it. Talk us through rich Do you want to kick us off with this one?

The stat around six to 10 years tenured reps. Lot of sales leaders and companies would say that here, if you've been in your role for 10 years, you're a tenured rep, right? I think that's fair to say that a lot of sales, certainly sales leaders I speak with you know you're no longer classed as a newbie or green or junior. You're often in that kind of experience bracket that you get when you pass a maybe like a five year period.

Look at look at the stats there. They are actually the band of sales person who wants the most amount of more coaching than they're currently getting. This completely debunks the myth that you should just let your most tenured sales people, just let them get on with it. You know, they don't think they really need or want coaching.

Don't want to get in their way. We want to focus on the new hires, on the people who are really, really new. This completely debunks that myth. Now, what is interesting, the nuance is the the people who've been doing the role, once you go over that 10 year barrier, which is a broad, it's a broad number, right?

It could be people who've been in the role for 20 years, 30 years, and interestingly, the percentage of those does drop off quite significantly. Why is that? Well, I think we can all we can debate the reasons why. I think there's this case in point to say that maybe people who in that bracket again, I can say this because I hear it from prospects I speak with.

You know, they kind of feel like they've they've got it all worked out. I remember a comment that we had from a sales person recently was, I've been doing this for 20 years. I'm not sure I need this help, that mindset, right? That just because I've been doing the job for a long time maybe doesn't means that means I can't get better, when actually, if you look at their performance and the results, tells a very different story.

Maybe they've just lost hope. Maybe by that point, it's been so long since they've received anything meaningful, as far as their far as their growth, that they're just kind of like a bit ambivalent to it, which is quite it, which is quite sad, right? And they're just kind of like floating, floating through the later stages of their career career, and that is depressing, right? But, yeah, I'd be curious to hear what the audience thinks about these stats, but, but ultimately, this shows that a lot of the time and effort when coaching is given as dedicated and people who are really new, but actually there's a batch of people who have been who you would class as tenured, that want more coaching than they're getting more than anybody else in the sales org.

I think firstly, just to emphasise when we ask this question, this isn't about experience in sales. This is about tenure in that role. So this is people that have continued to do the same role, who are saying 80% of them that have been in that role for six to 10 years that they want more coaching more than as Rich said any other audience. The second thing I'd just like kind of point to is, for anyone that's been in a role more than three years, there is the balance of probability.

Is that you either is that you you rarely get coached like that. You're over 50% of all of that audience. Once you've been in a role for three years, you're going to rarely, never, maybe quarterly, get coach. Let's, let's call it what it is, if you're getting coached quarterly, you're getting coached rarely, over half of the people in those positions get rarely get coached.

Pretty depressing. Well, let's take a look at managers, because I know that's our next stat that's kind of coming up. So we'll have a look at managers now, and they're not being set up for success. Rich.

What do you think of this data point? Yeah, I mean, this has been a theme throughout the webinar, right? Is that maybe the reason why sales people feel like they're not getting what they need, they're not rating what they're getting, is because this is, this is, this is saying that two thirds of sales leaders have never received any type of support like this is, this is anything from like a one off training session to ongoing coaching. They've received nothing to become more effective at this, this role of a coach.

Then Carly asked the question, how many sales leaders have actually ever been, have actually get to get any help? Well, think of how long some sales leaders have been doing that job, for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. Amazing, staggering, mind blowing, like it's, it's, it's crazy that this is this, is this is the reality. Is it any wonder?

Is it any wonder that sales people feel saying, I don't rate what I'm getting from a manager, when, quite frankly, a lot of managers probably. They are just kind of making it up, or just think they know what they're doing. Unbelievable. Seems to be, right.

Kev, from, from our results here, 66% of leaders have had no support when it comes to being coached themselves. Were you shocked by that? Well, honestly, I'm not shocked by it. And you know, and I imagine if you then ask that, 34% as rich, alluded to what, what was that support for many, it would just be, you know, I once went on a, yeah, I once went on a training session or, or I was helped by a manager years ago.

It won't necessarily be an appropriate level of support. How can we expect leaders who are busy, who are juggling so many things, who are in a world where quota attainment is hard is harder than ever. How can we expect them to be an effective coach when we don't help and support them doing that, and they probably never received great coaching themselves? How do we expect them just to become a great coach?

It just resonates so much, doesn't it like it's it's kind of like a feels like a no brainer, but there is still pushback from from leaders. We know that to be true, so let's have a look our next, our next data point around kind of, what's the most desired form of coaching. And I want to start with you, Kev, because I know that you you really champion this. Do you want to talk us through what the results taught us here?

Yeah, this is about my sales coach. But you know that we will live and breathe this kind of how is I going to transform sales coaching? But you know, for us, when we talk about that, it is about how we can amplify human coaching in terms of its its frequency, its impact, its timeliness, and you'll see no doubt more from us in the coming weeks and months on this. But yeah, this was an important question to ask because, you know, as I say, there are many tools, a broader Church of tools, that are being referred to as as AI sales coaching tools.

But when you ask people you know, to rank in terms of your what their desirability, six out of 10 said they were openly sceptical about AI only coaching, and only 13% believed that AI coaching on its own would be will be extremely useful. Again, I think, you know, there will be lots of organisations that will want this to be the magic pill and the answer to knowing their teams don't get the coaching that they deserve, and knowing that quota attainment and targets are being achieved, knowing that their teams need to become better, and they'll want AI coaching on its own to be that great, be great if you could go and buy a software solution that will fix this problem.

But I think you know this overwhelmingly says that view is not shared by reps. They don't see that as the solution to the to the problem. And, yeah, I'm sure, understandably so. And Rich, shall we have a look at the investment levels in AI so it's clear.

We asked the again, and this is the first time we did this. In the survey, we asked sales. We asked the West participants, to what extent are they already investing in AI coaching technology. To what extent are they likely to invest in more and in some cases, and in how many people are unlikely to invest when they when they look forward to next year?

And what's clear is that there's, you know, there's, there's, there's a rise in companies, companies who are already investing in this, so called AI coaching tech. There's plenty who are saying, I'm likely to invest more. So there's a rise of this in the market. But what's interesting is that the sales people who have where their companies have already invested in this tech, technology, 60% said it is at least somewhat useful.

Okay, so that's everybody's saying that they love it to like it's somewhat useful. Yeah. 40% say it's not useful at all, which is quite a big number, right? Like when it comes to the investment that these companies are making in this technology and these tools.

So I think it shows that there's this is this is coming into the space. This is the direction of travel that we are moving in. But the key there is like, okay, but it has to be seen as valuable. It has to deliver the outcomes that we're looking for.

Any thoughts on that? Kev, well, just, I think, really, just echoing Rich's points, but yeah, 85% that either have or are likely to invest, you know this, this is, yeah, that's a huge part of the huge part of the market. I think you know what, what we're just going to see over, over the coming months and years, is a realisation of what part they will play in in fixing this, this problem. And as I say, I think my concern would be organisations that believe that that is the solution than the magic pill.

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