Your relationship with your salespeople.

Not your CRM. Not your playbook. Not even your pipeline forecast.

If you’re not working with your team—if you’re not coaching collaboratively—you’re capping performance.

Here’s the truth: most sales managers struggle to build this kind of relationship. Why? Because to stay on top of the pipeline, they need accurate intel on every deal. That means asking probing questions. Often, a lot of them.

But when those questions feel like an interrogation, things quickly go south. Reps get defensive. They tell you what they think you want to hear. 

Or worse, they justify weak deals. You walk away with a “forecast” built on guesswork. That’s not coaching. It’s courtroom drama.

This cycle kills performance—and trust.

So ask yourself:

Do my 1-2-1s build clarity and capability—or just compliance?

Do your salespeople walk away with more confidence, direction, and insight? Or do they leave just ticking boxes?

If that question makes you pause, here’s something that might help.

Coaching That Works—Side by Side

I use a simple set of gap analysis tools designed to help sales leaders coach with their team, not at them. These tools make it easy to sit down together and objectively review the pipeline:

• What do we know about this deal?
• What don’t we know?
• What’s missing, and how can we close the gap?

Once we’ve clarified the picture, we build a practical Win Plan—a clear set of next steps to move the deal forward.

It’s a collaborative process with three big payoffs:

1. Your salesperson gains clarity, confidence, and a focused action plan.
2. You get accurate, real-time insight—and genuine engagement from your team.
3. You raise the performance bar in a way that sticks.

And we do it all in a relaxed, positive environment—not under pressure, not on the back foot.

Over time, your team starts thinking like you. They pick up your judgement, your standards, your way of qualifying. You’re not just getting better deals—you’re building better salespeople.

That’s how you shift the culture.
That’s how you build a high-performance sales team.

Tired of ineffective 1-2-1s? Ready to raise the bar? Let’s talk.

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