Sales coaching start with Numbers. Smarter coaching, not harder

In too many companies, sales coaching is done like teenagers tidy their bedrooms: only when absolutely necessary. A deal stalled? Let's move on to coaching. A problem with the CRM? A new coaching session. Of course, these day-to-day solutions are important. The role of a sales manager should be to coach 60% of his time. So if we really want to achieve sales excellence, the kind that moves the numbers, we need a systematic, mathematical approach. Just like recruiting A-players, success never happens by chance.

Start with a winning formula, not good intentions

Effective coaching is based on figures, not impressions or gut feeling. Before you can help your salespeople succeed, you need to know exactly what success looks like in figures.

Bring the future to today and define: in x months' time, what results do I want to achieve? In other words: "What are the figures that every sales person needs to achieve? As the old saying goes, you can't improve what you don't measure.

Let's say your team needs to generate €500,000 in new revenue this year and you have 5 sales people. That's €100,000 per salesperson. If the average value of your contracts is €10,000, each sales rep has to close 10 contracts a year. That's easy, isn't it? Not so fast.

Behind every sale is a sales process: prospecting, making contact, argumentation, negotiation. Each stage has its own success rate. Sales is about ratios. Understanding these ratios helps you predict the behaviour you need, not just the results.

For example: How many telephone calls result in contacts? How many contacts lead to appointments? How many meetings turn into sales opportunities? How many opportunities lead to presentations? How many presentations lead to sales? It's not magic, it's mathematics. And yes, every salesperson will have different ratios.

That's why personalised coaching is essential. Because every sales person has a different DNA, a different motivation and a different performance. General advice is not for everyone. From a numbers perspective, create individual benchmarks

Let's go further: If John has a 10:1 ratio of calls to contacts, and a 4:1 ratio of contacts to appointments, a one-third ratio of leads to actual opportunities, a ration of 80% to presentation and 25% to closing, you can work out exactly how much effort he needs every day to reach his target:

✅ 6,000 calls/year

600 contacts/year

✅ 150 appointments/year

✅ 50 opportunities/year

✅ 40 presentations/year

✅ 10 contracts concluded/year

This translates into a daily target of around 24 calls, assuming 250 working days. John now knows exactly what he needs to do to succeed, and no longer relies on intuition at the end of the quarter.

A vs B vs C

There are different types of sales person. Simplistically, there are A players, B players and C players. A players have achieved a satisfactory level of performance. Typically, these are individuals who are motivated inside out. They get the job done. But, of course, there aren't tons of A-players (between 10% and 15% of top salespeople). So you need to spend time developing the skills and motivation of B players and, yes, little by little, get the C players out of your organisation (if you have C players, it may be because your sales recruitment needs to be overhauled. Shall we talk about it?)

Follow. Relentlessly. Coaching. Intelligently.

Once you've done the maths, track weekly performance on activity and KPIS leading. Coaching without measuring is like trying to lose weight without getting on the scales. If John doesn't reach his activity targets, it's a problem of effort. If John does the work but still doesn't achieve his objectives, it's a skills problem. And coaching is different:

1. For effort problems? Look at motivation, structure or responsibility.

2. What about skills issues? Work on objections, storytelling, proposal writing and other sticking points.

This distinction is essential. More effort isn't always the answer. Sometimes smarter efforts are better. If your sales people are making calls, presentations and pitches, but still not getting results, you need better coaching, not just more intense coaching.

Identify their weak points, for example by assessing their profiles and competencies as detailed below (examples here) to define coaching plans. If they don't dare ask their prospects questions, perhaps it's a sales DNA problem? Are they losing customers from the very first meeting? Work on their discovery techniques. Do they lose contracts at the end of the process? Work on the initial qualification?

Not getting any appointments? Review their prospecting message. That's what real coaching is all about: first the diagnosis, then the solution.

Conclusion

Coaching for success in sales is not about motivation. It's about clear calculations, personalised measurements, constant monitoring and intelligent interventions. Because when you coach by the numbers, you build teams that don't just run faster, but run smarter, faster and straight into quota-shattering seasons.