Why most sales coaching fails

If your January sales kickoff didn't change Q1 numbers, it wasn't coaching. It was theatre.

Q2 starts next week.

Somewhere today, a VP of Sales is sitting in a QBR looking at a number that didn't move.

They paid for the workshop. The reps turned up. The scores were good. The smiles in the post-training NPS were real.

And the forecast looks exactly like it did in December.

Here's the thing nobody in enablement wants to say out loud.

A 2-day offsite in January cannot change what a rep does on a Tuesday afternoon in March.

Not because reps are lazy. Not because the trainer was bad. Because skills don't install. They drift.

Performance drift is what happens between the training room and the actual call. It starts within 24 hours. Within 30 days, most of what was taught is gone.

So we run another workshop. Buy another platform. Roll out another certification.

The definition of insanity, basically.

Here's what actually works.

Five minutes on a Tuesday with a rep on a real deal. Ten minutes on a Thursday reviewing the email they're about to send. A quick debrief after the call that just went sideways.

Weekly. In the work. On the work.

Not a workshop. Not a certification. Not a dashboard showing completion.

Coaching is a rhythm, not an event.

End-of-quarter reviews are starting. If yours feels like déjà vu, you don't have a coaching problem.

You have a coaching model problem.