How to Increase Sales Performance by Becoming a Sales Coach, Not Just Hiring One

When the goal is to increase sales performance, one of the most common strategies organisations adopt is to bring in a coach.

It makes sense. An experienced coach can spark fresh thinking, accelerate development, and help shift unproductive behaviours. But while coaching can deliver short-term uplift, we believe its true value lies in something far more enduring: the creation of a sales coaching culture that enables long-term, sustainable performance.

At Consalia, we don’t see coaching as a remedial or one-off intervention. Instead, we view it as a long-term, embedded practice — one that transforms not only performance, but relationships, engagement, and leadership itself.

Which brings us to a powerful and often under-asked question:

What if the most effective way to improve sales performance isn’t to bring in a coach… but to become one?

Creating a Culture of Coaching

For Sales Directors, Managers and L&D professionals, the idea of becoming a coaching leader may initially feel ambitious. After all, sales environments are fast-paced and target-driven — where’s the time to coach?

But the truth is, sales coaching doesn’t require formal, time-consuming sessions to be effective. Some of the most impactful coaching happens in micro-moments:

• A quick reflection after a call.
• A probing question during pipeline review.
• A moment of silence that encourages a salesperson to think through their own solution rather than be handed one.

When leaders consistently show up as coaches, they create space for people to grow — not just perform.

This isn’t about being “soft” on your team. Coaching is demanding. It asks leaders to be present, emotionally intelligent, and genuinely invested in the development of others. But the return is significant:

• Better thinking
• Deeper engagement
• Higher trust
• Longer tenure
• Stronger results

Put simply, if you're asking how to increase sales performance, building a culture of coaching is one of the most powerful answers available.

Why Coaching from Within Works

To truly shift behaviour and outcomes, coaching must be more than a periodic intervention. It needs to be woven into the everyday rhythms of team life. When managers become coaches, they bring insight, empathy and guidance directly into the moments that matter most.

Let’s look at the difference in approach:

There’s certainly value in external coaching. It can model best practices and challenge assumptions in ways insiders sometimes can’t. But it’s most effective when it complements an internal culture of coaching — not substitutes for it.

When coaching lives only outside the team, growth tends to fade when the engagement ends. But when leaders coach, the growth becomes continuous. It's embedded.

A Real-World Snapshot

Consider two managers in similar sales teams.

Manager A holds weekly 1:1s focused on targets, task lists, and next steps. Conversations are efficient — but transactional.

Manager B, meanwhile, also reviews performance — but frames each conversation as a coaching moment. She asks questions like:

• “What do you think is getting in your way right now?”
• “What have you noticed about how you’re approaching these deals?”
• “If you had no fear of failure, what would you try differently?”

Over time, Manager B’s team becomes more self-directed, more reflective, and more accountable. Their pipeline becomes stronger not just because of what they’re doing — but because of how they’re thinking.

That’s the difference sales coaching can make. It doesn’t just change actions — it changes mindset. And mindset is what sustains high performance over the long haul.

Enabling the Shift: A Role for Sales Leaders

For Sales leaders, the transition to a coaching culture often begins with a question of capability. Do sales managers have the mindset, skillset, and support to coach well?

Often, they don’t — not because they lack intent, but because they haven’t been shown how.

This is where Sales leaders plays a vital role: enabling coaching not as another layer of responsibility, but as an evolution of leadership itself. That starts with:

• Investing in structured coaching development programmes
• Modelling coaching behaviours at senior levels
• Creating space in the culture for reflective practice and developmental conversations
• Recognising and rewarding coaching leadership

At Consalia, we partner closely with Sales leaders to help embed coaching into the DNA of sales organisations. Our ILM-Certified Coaching for Sales Transformation programme is specifically designed to support this shift — giving Sales Managers and Leaders the frameworks, feedback and confidence they need to coach effectively in the real world.

Because how to increase sales performance isn’t just a commercial question — it’s a cultural one. And culture starts with leadership.

Sales Coaching as a Strategic Asset

We believe sales coaching is one of the most underleveraged strategic assets in sales today.

While technology, methodology and compensation models all play a role in performance, it’s coaching that gets to the heart of human behaviour. It’s coaching that helps people connect the dots between who they are and how they sell. And it’s coaching that transforms leadership from task management to talent development.

Sales leaders who coach don’t just chase numbers — they build the kind of teams where numbers take care of themselves.

They create:

• Resilience in the face of pressure
• Confidence in moments of doubt
• Loyalty in an increasingly mobile workforce
• A sense of progress and purpose that keeps people growing

These aren’t “soft” outcomes. They are the bedrock of consistent, high-performing sales cultures.

Final Thought

There are many paths to improving sales performance. But few are as sustainable, scalable, and human as building coaching capability within your sales leadership.

So the question isn’t just:
“Should we get a coach?”

It’s:
“What could be possible if we became a coaching organisation?”

The answer might not just change your results — it could redefine your culture, your leadership, and the careers of every salesperson in your team.

Want to find out how to increase sales performance by building your own coaching capability?

Explore our ILM-Certified Coaching for Sales Transformation programme — designed to help Sales Leaders and Managers embed a coaching mindset that drives lasting, human-centred performance.

Learn more about the programme