TL;DR: Most sales managers were promoted because they could sell, not because they could coach. Objective Management Group's research shows only 7% of sales managers coach both consistently and effectively. Consistent coaching alone is linked to a 28% revenue increase from coachable salespeople, and coaching that is consistent and effective is linked to 43%. Fix #3 turns your managers into coaches by giving them three things: a clear picture of what each rep needs, a weekly coaching rhythm, and training in how to coach.
It's Thursday afternoon. Your sales manager, Mike, is on a ride-along with Jason, a rep in his second year. The prospect pushes back on price. Jason freezes. Mike jumps in, tells a story about a customer who saved money by switching, and gets the prospect to agree to a second meeting.
In the car, Mike says, "See how I handled that?" Jason nods. Mike feels good. He saved the deal.
Here's what actually happened. Jason learned that when things get hard, Mike takes over. Next week, on a call without Mike, Jason freezes again. Nobody spotted the real problem: Jason has never learned how to handle a price objection. Nobody named it, and nobody practiced it with him.
Mike didn't coach. He rescued.
This is the third article in our series on why sales training fails. Fix #1 made training a daily habit. Fix #2 got reps using new skills right away. But a rep trying something new for the first time needs someone to notice, correct, and encourage. That someone is the sales manager. And most sales managers have never been taught how to do it.
You Promoted a Great Rep. You Didn't Get a Coach.
Wayne Gretzky is the greatest hockey player who ever lived. He retired holding 61 NHL records. When he became head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes, his teams went 143-161-24 and never made the playoffs in four seasons.
Gretzky didn't become a bad hockey mind. Playing and coaching are different jobs. A great player does the work himself. A great coach gets the work out of someone else.
Sales works the same way. Most companies promote their best rep to manager. It feels like a reward, and it seems logical: who better to lead the team than the person who sells the most? But the skills that made that person a top rep—handling objections on instinct, closing hard, trusting their gut—don't teach anyone else how to do those things. Often they get in the way. A great rep who becomes a manager tends to do what Mike did. When a deal is at risk, he takes the wheel.
The result: you lose your best rep and don't gain a coach.
How Many Sales Managers Actually Coach? The 7% Problem
Our data science partner, Objective Management Group, has evaluated millions of salespeople and sales managers. Their data tells a consistent story across a decade.
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In a 2016 analysis of about 100,000 sales managers, only 3% spent at least half their time coaching their salespeople.
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In a 2018 look at 9,000 sales managers, 63% scored weak at coaching, and more than half of those spent 10% or less of their time on it.
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In 2024, OMG's Dave Kurlan reported that managers who coach consistently see a 28% revenue increase from coachable salespeople. When the coaching is consistent and effective, the increase is 43%. Only 7% of sales managers do both.
That last finding shows there are two separate problems.
Problem one is consistency. Most managers coach when something goes wrong, not on a rhythm. Coaching happens after a lost deal, or when a rep asks for help, or never.
Problem two is effectiveness. Even managers who make time for coaching often don't know how. They tell the rep what to do, or they do it for him.
Fixing the first problem gets you to 28%. Fixing both gets you to 43%. Here's what that gap looks like in dollars. Say you have ten reps carrying $1 million each, and six of them are coachable. That's $6 million in coachable quota. A 28% lift adds about $1.7 million. A 43% lift adds about $2.6 million. The difference between a manager who shows up and a manager who knows how to coach is roughly $900,000 a year on one team.
How Do You Turn Sales Managers Into Coaches? Change the System.
Nobody sets out to rescue instead of coach. Most managers were never taught how. They're paid for the number, not for the people. And they don't know exactly what each rep needs. We break those reasons down in our companion article, Why Sales Managers Struggle to Coach.
That's why telling managers to "coach more" rarely works. You have to change the system they work in. The SalesIndex approach has three parts, Assess, Coach, and Train, and each one removes something that stops managers from coaching.
Assess: Know what each rep needs. An objective assessment shows each rep's strengths and skill gaps across 21 core sales competencies. The manager doesn't have to guess. He knows Jason's real issue is handling price objections, so that's what they work on. The assessment also shows how well the manager himself coaches, so you know where he needs help, too.
Coach: Give the rep daily lessons, and the manager a reason to talk. Personalized daily audio coaching teaches the rep the skill. The manager no longer has to teach from scratch. His job is to help the rep use what he's learning, and every one-on-one has a built-in topic: what did you learn, what did you try, and how did it go?
Train: Teach managers how to coach. This is the step most companies skip. Managers learn to ask questions instead of giving answers, debrief a call, and run a quick role-play. Most of all, they learn to stay quiet on a ride-along and let the rep sell. For what that looks like week to week, see our companion article, Sales Managers: Managing Isn't Coaching.
Rescuing saves the deal. Coaching saves the next hundred.
Three Moves You Can Make Monday Morning
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Assess your managers, not just your reps. Find out which of your managers can coach today, which can learn, and which are better off back in a selling role.
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Put coaching on the calendar. Give every rep a 15-minute weekly one-on-one that is about skills, not pipeline. Pipeline reviews go in a separate meeting.
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Train your sales managers to coach. Start with one habit: on the next ride-along, the manager doesn't speak unless the deal is truly at risk. Then debrief by asking questions instead of giving answers.
From Rescuer to Coach
Your managers already want their reps to win. Most of them just learned to do it the only way they know: by doing the work themselves. Give them a clear picture of what each rep needs, a rhythm to coach on, and the skills to do it well, and they stop rescuing and start building.
There's still a question here, though. A manager can only coach what he can see. How does he know whether Jason needs help with price objections, qualifying, or asking for the close? And how does he know the next rep needs something completely different? That's Fix #4: using data to personalize the path for every rep. It's where we'll go next.
Read the full series: Your Sales Training Didn't Fail, Your System Did · Sales Training Needs To Become a Daily Habit, Not a One-Time Event · Your Reps Need Help Today. Your Training Is Scheduled for March.
At SalesIndex, we help sales managers become sales coaches. The assessment shows each manager exactly what every rep needs, the Coaching Engine delivers daily lessons on those skills, and our manager training teaches managers how to reinforce them. Let's talk.
