Sales coaching in 2025 with MySalesCoach Founder Kevin Beales

Did you know that sales reps who hit their quota are 50% more likely to be receiving external coaching? That’s just one of the findings from MySalesCoach’ recent report in partnership with Aircall.

The survey titled, The state of sales coaching in 2025, is the largest of its kind and features insights from the experiences of 1600 sales professionals (both reps and leaders).

The findings uncover the impact of coaching on sales teams – from frequency and quality to performance outcomes. All of which are particularly relevant now as advances in AI put sales performance and human capital efficiency under increased scrutiny.

In this interview, MySalesCoach Founder and CEO Kevin Beales takes us through the highlights from the report and shares his advice for sales leaders looking to boost team performance with better coaching in 2025.

What is sales coaching?

Coaching in sales is a generic term that’s often bucketed in with mentoring and training. To understand the results of the survey, we asked Kevin what exactly sales coaching is, he said:

“We’re really talking about how we are helping someone grow, how we are helping them develop skills, develop themselves personally, and become a better seller.”

In the report, both reps and leaders highlighted coaching as important and a driver for success:

“99% of reps say that it’s key for their role and key for their satisfaction in their role. And equally, leaders recognise it as being really important.”

When it comes to who should be responsible for coaching in a sales organisation, 75% list coaching as the number one task or priority for their sales managers and leaders. But in practice, previous reports have shown that sales managers typically spend just 5% of their time coaching.

A dichotomy between sales reps and leaders

Kevin went on to explain that the often muddled definition of coaching causes a discrepancy between how leaders and reps view the level of coaching delivered in a company.

The report found that while:

37% of reps felt that they didn’t get enough or were rarely coached,
And 1 in 7 reps don’t get any coaching at all…

…90% of leaders said that they deliver coaching each month.

This disparity comes from instances like the below:

“When leaders sit down with their teams one to one and they do a pipeline review or they ask about this deal and where it’s up to, a sales leader can often feel like they’re coaching. A sales rep never feels in those conversations like they’re being coached. They don’t feel like they come out of those conversations and I’ve developed my skills and I’ve grown. They feel like they’ve been given a grilling about sales pipeline or where a deal is up to.”

According to Kevin, there are two main reasons as to why this high-level, performance based approach to coaching takes precedence over one focused on skills and professional development:

Lack of time: Sales leaders have many roles and responsibilities, most of which are more time critical than coaching.
Coaching ability: In the survey, more than half of sales leaders didn’t feel like they were great at sales coaching and wanted more help and support in becoming great coaches.

What does good coaching look like?

“One of the benefits of true coaching is that it’s all about the individual. It’s all about understanding your goals, understanding how I can help you grow, how I can help you improve, and making that conversation dedicated to helping them do that.”

Leaders clearly have an appetite to become great coaches but what exactly does good sales coaching look like in 2025?

Ultimately, it’s “anything that is genuinely helping someone grow and develop skills”. This includes things like live coaching and shadowing as well as individual plans and peer mentoring.

To help you get started delivering better coaching, he shared his top three pieces of advice:

Have a coaching plan for each rep. Identify the skills that you would like to improve and have a coaching plan between an individual, a manager, and (if applicable) an external coach.
Have consistent coaching. There has to be a cadence of frequency if you want coaching to have impact. It’s about building a coaching culture.
Leave your agenda at the door. Make the conversation about how you can help this person grow and develop their skills.

The impact of good coaching

While sentiment towards coaching is already positive, the results speak for themselves:

“27% of the reps that completed the survey hit quota. But those that said that they were either frequently coached or their coaching was of a high quality, or ideally both were far more likely to hit quota than others. So, there’s a direct correlation between [coaching] and attainment.”

Interestingly, the report also pointed out that those who hit or exceeded their quota were amongst the most enthusiastic to receive more coaching.

“There’s often a perception that coaching is to help people that are struggling… But actually, a thing that came out loud and clear is that, one of the audiences or cohorts that wants coaching the most are people that are already achieving. They’re achieving for a reason. They learn, they want to grow, they want to develop, they are ambitious. All of those things that lean into a craving for coaching rather than having that need.”

Using this insight and empowering your top performing reps to become peer coaches is something Kevin identified as a “quick win”. It fosters development and allows reps to practise news skills, leading to a culture of coaching that can level up entire teams.