Call coaching is a manager or coach going through one real sales call with the rep, finding what helped or hurt the deal, and agreeing what to change on the next call.
Working through one recorded call
The rep and coach take a recorded call, usually a recent one on a deal that is still open. They look at what the buyer said, where the rep asked a good question or missed one, and what the call left out against the team's method. In most teams it happens after the fact: a manager listens to a recording and talks the rep through it in the next one-on-one.
- 01Take a recent recorded callOn a deal that is still open
- 02Look at what the buyer saidGood questions, missed ones
- 03Agree what to change
- 04Brief the next buyer conversation
It becomes coaching for the deal when the debrief sets the brief for the next buyer conversation, which is the loop at the center of a sales coaching framework.
What good and bad call coaching look like
Weak call coaching replays the whole recording and lists everything the rep could have done better. The rep leaves with eight notes and changes none of them. Good call coaching picks one moment that moved the deal, agrees one change, and ties it to a named next call. The question a manager opens with is "Where did the buyer tell you something you didn't follow up?", and the one to close with is "What will you ask on Tuesday that you didn't ask today?"
Anchor the conversation on the buyer's quoted words. In our call scoring research, trained assessors marking the same calls disagreed on 18% of scores, so a general verdict on the call is easy to argue about. The buyer's own line is much harder to dispute.
A call that ended with "send us some information"
This example is illustrative. A rep's first meeting with a healthcare software buyer ended with "send us some information." In the call review, the coach and rep find the moment: the buyer described three manual steps in their billing process, and the rep moved straight to a demo. Nobody asked what those steps cost. For the follow-up call on Tuesday, the rep plans to go back to the billing steps and ask what they cost each month and who feels it most.
Related terms
FAQ
What is the difference between call coaching and deal coaching? Call coaching works one conversation: what happened on it and what to change next time. Deal coaching works the whole opportunity across every call and contact. Call coaching is often the way into deal coaching, because one call shows what the deal is missing.
Is call coaching the same as call center coaching? They overlap. Call center coaching develops support and service agents against service measures. Sales call coaching works on a rep's calls with buyers, against the team's selling method and the deal it belongs to.
Can AI do call coaching? Yes, if the scoring underneath is checked first. In our research on AI call scoring, one model changed 15% to 17% of its scores between identical runs, so test any automated score before coaching from it. With that in place, our AI sales experts go through a call with the rep, name what the deal is still missing and help plan the next conversation. Every rep gets a debrief, including the ones a manager never reaches, and leaders see the pattern across the team (for leaders).