Are you a sales leader wondering if sales coaching can unlock your team’s true potential but lacking the resources to do it yourself?
If so, this guide is designed to give you a full insight into everything you need to know about hiring a sales coach before making a decision.
About Me
My name is David Craig White, and I am a professional sales coach with over 15 years of experience as a sales leader, trainer and coach.
I have provided sales training and coaching to over 5,000 salespeople and entrepreneurs in over 120 countries.
My clients include some of the world’s fastest-growing startups, including Trustpilot, Siteimprove, Falcon.io (Brandwatch), Mitek, and many others.
“David is the BEST Sales Trainer/Coach I have ever come across. He can identify precise areas of improvement and emboldens sales reps to reach beyond comfort zones. I cannot recommend David highly enough. This is your guy if you want to take your sales team to the next level.”
Graham Hillgren – Sales Executive at Trustpilot
Sales coaching is, by far, the most effective tool for getting the best out of the individuals in your sales team.
But sadly, most sales leaders don’t have the time or resources to plan and deliver coaching sessions on a regular basis, if at all.
I know this because I worked as a sales leader for almost ten years, spending my days forecasting, recruiting, firefighting and sitting in internal meetings.
If you’re a sales leader looking to unlock the true potential of each individual in your team, sales coaching is the perfect solution.
Book a free consultation to learn more about how sales coaching can help you unlock the true potential of your sales team today.
Common Questions About Sales Coaching
Below, you will find my answers to the most commonly asked questions about sales coaching.
Click on any of the questions to jump to the answer:
- What is Sales Coaching?
- What are the Benefits of Sales Coaching?
- Who is Sales Coaching for?
- How Does Sales Coaching Work?
- What is the Difference Between Sales Coaching & Sales Training?
- What Does Sales Coaching Cost?
If you have other questions or prefer to talk, feel free to book a free consultation call with me.
What is Sales Coaching?
Sales coaching is a professional service focused on helping sales professionals develop their sales skills and mindset and improve performance.
It involves working one-on-one with a sales coach to identify areas for improvement and set tangible goals to help develop the skills and habits needed for sales success.
Many sales professionals also use their sales coach as a sounding board for career advice, new ideas or troubleshooting problems.
What are the Benefits of Sales Coaching?
Sales coaching, when done correctly, can have a long-lasting impact on the skills, performance and motivation of the individuals in your sales team.
The reason working with a sales coach is so effective is that coaching sessions are tailored to each individual’s needs and preferred coaching style.
This means you can work with Sarah to improve her cold-calling skills and then work with James on his closing or time-management skills.
Benefits of Coaching for Sales
Coaching for sales can result in many benefits for the individuals in your sales team, including but not limited to the following:
- Increased self-awareness
- Increased confidence
- More accountability
- Improved sales performance
- Improved resilience
- Enhanced communication skills
- Faster career progress
- Development of relevant sales skills
- Stronger mindset
You may also have team members with mental health issues like anxiety holding them back, which is another crucial area where a qualified sales coach can help.
Benefits of Sales Coaching for Sales Leaders
Investing in sales coaching for your team can have a dramatic impact on you as a sales leader and on the organization as a whole for many reasons.
The benefits of coaching for sales leaders include the following:
1. Coaching Saves You Time
The biggest challenge every sales leader faces is time. Whether you learn how to coach your team yourself or hire a sales coach, it is guaranteed to save you time.
Coaching takes the emphasis off you as the sales leader to come up with all the answers and prepare for things such as forecast meetings and passes the responsibility over to the sales rep.
There are many other examples of how coaching sales can save you time, including enabling members of your team to run coaching sessions without you.
2. Sales Coaching Improves Forecasting
In my experience, most sales leaders and reps see forecast meetings as a tedious, repetitive and time-consuming task that is critically necessary.
When done correctly, coaching can help you turn your tedious weekly forecast meetings into sharp, time-efficient coaching sessions that are more enjoyable for all.
3. Coaching Builds Trust & Loyalty
When you invest in coaching your sales team, you will get to know each individual on another level, resulting in them feeling more valued.
I don’t need to point to any studies to prove that an individual who feels more valued will have more trust and loyalty to their leader.
4. Sales Coaching Reduces Sales Recruitment Costs
Recruiting and retaining salespeople, especially the good ones, is another common headache shared by sales leaders in organizations of all sizes.
The trust and loyalty mentioned above not only help you retain your existing team members but also help attract new sales talent to the team.
One of the best sales recruitment tactics to use is by leveraging the power of your current team members and having them speak with potential candidates.
4. Sales Coaching Develops Internal Leaders
One of the hidden benefits of sales coaching for sales leaders is that it often highlights the individuals within your team who have leadership potential.
When people experience the impact of working with a sales coach, they often enjoy playing coach themselves, which can greatly reduce your workload.
5. Sales Coaching Maximises the ROI of Sales Training
Sales coaching is the perfect way of maximising your return on investment in sales training.
It’s no secret that knowledge retention falls off a cliff within a matter of weeks following sales training, with people retaining as little as 5%.
Using sales coaching to reinforce the sales training ensures your sales team are implementing their learnings and getting results.
Once I realized the added value of combining coaching with sales training, I began declining new sales training projects that didn’t incorporate coaching.
6. Sales Coaching Improves New Hire Onboarding
Most sales onboarding programs are either too thin, too heavy, non-existent or too focused on product training, resulting in a poor onboarding experience for new hires.
By integrating sales coaching into your new hire onboarding program, your new hires feel less isolated, and you get the opportunity to steer them in the right direction.
7. Sales Coaching Enables You to Get the Best Out of Everyone
In my experience, the sales reps that often get the most one-to-one time and attention are the low performers and new hires.
This results in top and average performers not achieving their full potential and feeling less valued, resulting in a lack of motivation and high churn risk.
The tailored approach used by a sales coach is designed to maximise the performance of every individual, regardless of their role and experience.
8. Coaching Makes You a Better Leader
Whether you learn how to coach your sales team yourself or hire a sales coach, you will instantly see the benefits of coaching.
There is no doubt that sales leaders who invest in the development of their people create loyal, motivated and high-performing teams that deliver.
Coaching is one of the most important skills to learn as a modern-day sales leader and can help scale your team faster and progress your career to the next level.
Book a free consultation to learn more about how sales coaching can help you unlock the true potential of your sales team today.
What is the Difference Between Sales Training & Sales Coaching?
Sales training and coaching are similar in some ways but very different in others.
Sales training is very instructor-led and often focused on developing sales skills, with the sales trainer providing the answers and instructions to a group of salespeople.
The biggest challenge with sales training programs is that they are often generic and only relevant to a percentage of the attendees, making it difficult to measure the impact.
Unlike sales training, coaching is about helping individuals find the answers for themselves and is primarily delivered in a one-to-one format.
This results in a more confident, independent and accountable individual who doesn’t go running to their sales leader for all the answers.
Sales coaching also focuses on developing sales skills but also involves working with individuals to strengthen their mindset, become more accountable and increase confidence.
Ultimately, you will find combining sales training with coaching the most effective way of maximising your investment in sales training for everyone in your team.
I have never met such an effective sales trainer and sales coach in my 20-year sales career. I have been through countless training courses, from Franklin Covey to Sandler, and what David can teach you in half an hour adds more value than most of these expensive and globally recognized courses can teach you in years.
Mel Simons – Senior Account Executive at Trustpilot
How Does Sales Coaching Work?
Sales coaching typically involves one-on-one coaching sessions over a period of time between a sales coach and a salesperson.
In these coaching sessions, the sales coach will help the salesperson identify areas for improvement, set achievable goals, and develop a personalised plan for success.
The sales coach may receive feedback and direction from the sales leader before the sessions. However, the salesperson ultimately decides what they want to work on.
During the coaching sessions, the sales coach typically provides resources, homework, and other follow-up activities to support the salesperson’s development between sessions.
My Coaching Framework
I use the ACE Sales Coaching Framework, designed to benchmark, coach, and evaluate the performance of your sales team and the return on investment on coaching.
My goal is to create a culture of constant improvement where each individual is driven towards their specific set of personal goals.
When you measure, coach and evaluate your team on an ongoing basis, it becomes much easier to identify areas for improvement and take action.
Examples of Sales Coaching
There are different how to coach salespeople, which can be used to suit the roles, experience and preferred coaching styles of the individual or team.
Skills Coaching
Skills coaching is intended to improve the sales skills, techniques and overall knowledge of the salesperson in specific areas of sales.
One of the most common ways of delivering skills coaching is via call coaching sessions, where the sales coach and salesperson listen back to a call recording.
This can be used with sales reps of all roles or experience levels and can easily be adapted to run group coaching sessions.
Performance Coaching
Performance coaching is a more advanced type of coaching often focused on improving the overall performance of the salesperson.
I often work with sales leaders to help them transform their forecast meetings into performance coaching sessions.
Performance coaching typically involves the salesperson coming to the session prepared with their figures and feedback from the previous week(s) performance.
Rather than skills and techniques, performance coaching is typically focused on pipeline management, time management and forecasting, etc.
Transformational Coaching
Transformational coaching is where a coach works with an individual on a very personal level to help change their beliefs and behaviours dramatically.
This is typically used with more experienced salespeople who might be a little stuck in their ways, but unaware of how it is limiting their success.
Transformational coaching is often one of the hardest and most long-term types of coaching but is also one of the most rewarding and impactful for the coach and coachee.
Life Coaching
Life coaching is another advanced type of coaching that requires a sales coach with more than just sales experience to deliver successfully.
Knowing how to uncover the key driving factors behind each individual is crucial when it comes to motivating them long-term.
Some of the common driving factors for people could be; money, promotion, education, this year’s holiday destination, a new car or a number of other things.
Understanding an individual’s private challenges can also provide insight into what could hold them back at work, and talking about it can help them greatly.
Life coaching can be a very personal and private conversation, so not every individual will open up in this area, especially if they do not feel a bond of trust with the sales coach or manager.
In my experience, successful life coaching can only be achieved by an experienced external sales coach, talented internal sales leader, or HR specialist.
Book a free consultation to learn more about how I can help you unlock the true potential of your sales team today.
Who is Sales Coaching for?
Salespeople of all roles and experience levels can benefit from working with a sales coach, including but not limited to:
- Sales Development Reps (SDRs) or Business Development Reps (BDRs)
- Sales/Account Executives
- Account Managers
- Customer Success Managers
I also offer executive coaching services to founders, sales leaders and managers at all levels who want to learn how to coach and develop their leadership skills.
Why Hire Me As Your Sales Coach?
Coaching is my passion, and I am constantly looking to drive myself and my clients to refuse to live in a world where being average is acceptable – because it’s not.
Beyond this, here are the top three reasons you should consider hiring me as your sales coach.
1. I’ve Walked the Walk
Sales teams are always resistant to working with sales trainers or a fluffy sales coach with little to no sales experience.
I have over 20 years of hands-on experience in cold calling, booking meetings and closing deals, and I’ll happily show your team how it’s done.
2. I’m an Advanced & Educated Sales Coach
I am a Neuro-Linguistic Master Practitioner (NLP), and am certified by the Harvard ManageMentor Coaching program.
I also hold several psychology-based and mental health diplomas and have over 1,000 hours of experience as a coach.
Sales experience will only get you so far as a sales coach, as you often need to use advanced coaching strategies to help people progress.
3. I Get Results
I have trained and coached over 5,000 people in over 120 countries.
“David is by far one of the strongest sales trainers and coaches I have ever come across…perhaps THE strongest!
Aki Danmark Palikaras – HR Director at Maersk
My past clients include Trustpilot, Siteimprove, Clerk.io, RWS Group, and Falcon.io, where I have a proven track record of helping individuals succeed (read my reviews).
I pride myself on delivering high-quality work. As a result, more than 80% of my new customers come from word-of-mouth.
How Much Does Sales Coaching Cost?
The average cost for hiring a sales coach ranges from £100 to £500 per hour, depending on the coach’s experience and the format and duration of the coaching package.
My coaching plans start from £1,800 per year for individuals, and I have special corporate coaching plans available for team coaching.
Book a free consultation to learn more about how sales coaching can help you unlock the true potential of your sales team today.
Sales Coaching FAQ
The answer is yes if you or your team are open to feedback and hungry to developing yourself.
Coaching is very often considered for less experienced salespeople. However, it is top performers that can get the most value from having a sales coach.
Coaching is usually more beneficial for more experienced salespeople because in order to find the solutions for yourself, you will need a certain level of knowledge.
For new salespeople, I usually recommend sales training first, followed up with coaching in the following weeks.
As a sales coach, I typically work with three types of coaching depending on the scenario and individuals.
Skills Coaching – This is the most common coaching used for sales teams. It is where I work with people on developing various sales skills.
Skills coaching is often done via listening to live calls or call recordings and maybe even role plays for newer sales reps.
Performance Coaching – This is where I will focus on working with sales reps on improving their performance levels, similar in many ways to a forecast meeting.
This can include working on things such as goal setting, time management or sales forecasting, to name just a few areas.
I often work with sales leadership teams to help them transform their weekly forecast meetings into performance coaching sessions which are much more valuable.
Transformational Coaching – This is one of the most advanced types of coaching that requires patience and a lot of coaching experience.
Transformational coaching is where I work with an individual on a very personal level to help change their beliefs and behaviours dramatically.
One of my fundamental rules for coaching is never to try and coach someone who does not want to be coached.
I have some fantastic success stories with underperforming sales reps who were on the verge of being axed, but those reps were open to coaching.
That being said, I always like to make my own judgement on every individual as I often discover reps are labelled unfairly and are often great to work with.
One of the major benefits of working with an external sales coach is that I can get breakthroughts with team members you cannot.
This isn’t because I am more experiened or skilled than you – it’s because people often don’t always feel comfortable opening up to their managers.
Yes – I actually prefer to work with the sales leadership team and create a coaching culture that continues when I am gone.
My sales coach training is typically packaged in to a sales team coaching project, so I can work with the team and sales leaders at the same time.
I suppose the real question is, what is the cost of not doing it? 😉
My coaching for individuals typically starts from £1,800 per year for 10 hours of live coaching and ongoing support via email.
For teams, I offer various packages based on the scale of the project so would need to know a little more before giving out any estimates.
I am more than happy to provide you with multiple references from my past and present clients.
You can also read some of my many customer reviews where you can find a broad range of feedback from individuals I have helped over the years.
Book a Free Consultation Call
Complete the form below to request a call back if you want to discuss hiring me as a sales coach for you or your team today.
Customer Reviews
I have worked with some amazing people around the world during my career, many of whom have moved on to bigger and better things.
I pride myself on delivering the best coaching services possible, and most of my new clients come via word-of-mouth referral.
Read some of my reviews below to find out why.
“David is the best sales and leadership coach I have come across and helped me develop in these areas like I would’ve never imagined possible. He’s structured, hardworking, passionate and a natural-born sales leader and coach.”
Michael Rosetti – Head of Sales Development at Ocean.io
There are many superlatives that could be thrown around to describe David, but for me, his most impressive attributes have always been his way of communicating to everyone that they can be as successful as they wish to be.
He approaches everyone and everything with sincerity and a 100% can-do attitude. If you’re in sales no matter at what level he’s a guy you can learn from and he’ll always have time to help you achieve your goals.
Tony Carballo – VP Sales at Trustpilot
David was my mentor and coach and helped me with everything from how to structure coaching sessions to how you can establish a company coaching culture.
He also helped me with my self-awareness and emotional intelligence and take ownership of my personal development.
I can truly recommend David to every organisation that wants to grow through motivated and skilled employees. He will always be my number 1 success coach.
Kenneth Brandt Ibsen – Sales Coach at Falcon.io (Brandwatch)
David is a highly motivated and qualified sales leader with vast experience managing all aspects of business strategies, including sales, operational and employee relations.
David is extremely good at motivating, coaching and advising sales teams. He is a great people manager and knows how to organize and monitor a team while managing discipline and dealing directly with any internal conflicts.
David is a results-driven professional who drove our strategies into sales like very few I have worked with, and I would highly recommend him for any sales leadership, education and coaching roles.
Berkant Kamilov – Head of Sales (Nordics) at Falcon.io (Brandwatch)
David has always stood out as an individual getting the best out of the people he worked with as a coach and trainer. Over the past year, our sales floor has gone from good to really great, a huge part of this success has been due to the efforts of David. I would highly recommend people to hire him in the future to get the very best out of their sales people.
Danny Lajer – Sales Director at Eficode
David is an exceptionally talented coach who can operate at all levels, from grassroots to the boardroom. He operates with charisma and enthusiasm, energising those around him while helping individuals rapidly and memorably learn key skills.
As a person, David is an absolute gentleman, definitely someone I am glad I had the chance to work with.
James McDowell – Sales Executive UKI at Trustpilot
“I would define David as a sales encyclopedia with the ability to inspire each and everyone around him to be a better version of themselves and exceed sales quotas. With the ability to develop, coach and motivate sales talent in such a hands-on approach, rapid development and growth were not uncommon across the department.
Similar to his knowledge, his leadership qualities are second to none. Humbleness, visionary, people-centric, and strong motivator are among the characteristics that he demonstrated and always “walking the talk”. Hence, resulting in him being greatly admired and respected by all of his team.
With such a level of dedication and commitment to creating an environment prone to success, I would recommend to anyone working in sales; David is one of those guys you want to have in your corner/network.”
Aruven Ramen – Sales Development Representative at Ocean.io