Coaching is about identifyingwhat kind of coaching people actually need. Without that diagnosis, coaching becomes noise instead of improvement. According to Joshua Teixidor, Vice President of Sales at QuickStart Inc., effective sales coaching isn’t about giving more feedback – it’s about diagnosing the real issue before you coach at all.
“I started noticing that performance is not always a matter of someone not doing enough or not knowing what to do,” says Teixidor. “It’s important to assess where the root cause of the problem lies – through effort, knowledge, or strategy – so that you can provide the right coaching plan.” While technology continues to improve visibility into sales performance, it cannot replace leaders who know how to translate insights into meaningful coaching.
Coaching Starts With the Right Diagnosis
Strong coaching is built on precision. Two account executives may finish the quarter with identical numbers while requiring entirely different interventions. One may lack the activity needed to create pipeline, another may have the activity but struggle to execute, while a third may simply be pursuing the wrong accounts or approaching buyers with ineffective messaging. This is where coaching actually begins. “If you don’t know whether the issue is effort, knowledge, or strategy, you’re not coaching, you’re guessing.”
Rather than defaulting to generic advice, Teixidor advocates examining the sales process itself. Pipeline metrics, key performance indicators, recorded customer calls, and live observations reveal where opportunities begin to break down before coaching conversations even start. “Being able to identify the differences between effort, knowledge, and strategy will help you create that coaching plan,” he adds. This structured diagnosis creates clarity for both manager and seller. Instead of hearing broad feedback to “do better,” employees understand the specific obstacle preventing success and can commit to measurable improvements. It also creates the consistency required for pipeline discipline, stronger quota attainment, and more predictable forecasting.
Building a Repeatable Sales Coaching Framework
One of the biggest reasons coaching initiatives fail is inconsistency. Managers often rely on instinct rather than a repeatable methodology, making coaching highly dependent on individual leadership style. “Most managers waste time by staying vague,” says Teixidor. “They just tell someone to do better.” Building a repeatable sales coaching framework requires replacing ambiguity with evidence. Once managers identify whether the challenge lies in effort, knowledge, strategy, or some combination of all three, coaching becomes targeted and actionable. Representatives can clearly see both the root cause and the expected behavioral changes.
This disciplined approach also complements broader operating discipline across the organization. Rather than isolated coaching conversations, managers begin speaking a common performance language that scales across teams. The result is a more accountable environment where expectations are clear, progress is measurable, and improvements become repeatable.
That same philosophy extends naturally into enterprise selling methodologies, including MEDDPICC coaching. This is a framework that helps sales teams qualify opportunities more effectively by understanding the factors that drive successful deals:
• Metrics
• Economic Buyer
• Decision Criteria
• Decision Process
• Paper Process
• Identify Pain
• Champion
• Competition
Organizations that understand how to embed MEDDPICC into pipeline reviews create more meaningful conversations around deal quality, execution, and forecast confidence.
Coaching the Coaches Creates Organizational Scale
Individual coaching can improve a salesperson. Coaching managers creates leverage across the organization. This is particularly important for second-line leadership, where leaders are responsible for developing managers rather than individual contributors. How to coach sales managers who manage managers becomes one of the defining capabilities separating mature organizations from average ones.
“I call them the leadership hat, the coaching hat and the manager hat,” he says. “All three are important.” Many leaders default to management alone by assigning work, monitoring activity, and reinforcing expectations. Effective leaders also motivate, develop talent, and adapt coaching to each employee’s specific needs.
As organizations expand, coaching second-line sales leadership at scale becomes essential for maintaining consistency. Senior leaders must evaluate their managers using the same effort, knowledge, and strategy framework they expect managers to apply to their own teams. That recursive coaching model strengthens leadership depth while reinforcing go-to-market alignment across sales, operations, and executive leadership.
AI Improves Visibility. Leaders Create Improvement
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming enterprise sales, particularly around forecasting, pipeline inspection, and conversation intelligence, but AI alone will not determine competitive advantage. “AI is really good at coverage and pattern matching and recognition at a scale that no manager could do manually,” he says.
Its greatest value lies in identifying coaching opportunities across large teams, allowing leaders to focus attention where it matters most. This makes improving forecast accuracy in enterprise sales organizations significantly more achievable while strengthening forecasting rigor across the business.
“The winning teams won’t be the ones with the best AI,” Teixidor says. “The winning teams will be the ones who are using AI to flag moments of improvement and turning it into real conversations to help improve effort, knowledge or strategy.” That distinction highlights why sales training fails without operating discipline. Technology can surface patterns, but only skilled leaders can translate those patterns into behavioral change, stronger execution, and lasting performance gains.
Leadership Depth Becomes the Competitive Advantage
As AI capabilities become widely available, differentiation will increasingly come from leadership quality rather than software. What separates high-performing sales leaders from average ones is not simply their ability to analyze dashboards, but their ability to diagnose performance accurately, coach consistently, and develop other leaders who can do the same.
Organizations committed to scaling revenue through process and leadership depth understand that sustainable growth requires more than better technology. It requires how to build an accountable sales culture where coaching is structured, expectations are consistent, and every level of leadership speaks the same performance language. “No one teaches anyone how to be a good coach. No one teaches anyone how to be a good leader. It is our job to serve them and ensure their success.”
Follow Joshua Teixidor on LinkedIn or visit his website for more insights on sales coaching, leadership development, and building high-performing teams.
