Sales leadership requires a balance of coaching behaviors and outcomes.
When sales leaders focus on outcomes too much, and you miss the daily habits that drive revenue.
Focus on behaviors too much, and your team starts going through the motions without urgency and grits.
Here are the 10 biggest sales leadership traps to stay away from:
Can you think of one more that didn’t make the list?
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Promoting top reps without leadership training.
Selling and leading are opposite skill sets. Great players need a new playbook to become great coaches. -
Focusing only on lagging indicators.
Quota attainment is the goal. Deal velocity, discovery depth, and pipeline creation are the levers you can control. -
Tolerating toxic high performers.
A rep who hits quota but destroys team morale costs far more in team attrition than their commission check brings in. -
Using 1:1s for CRM status updates.
If your 1:1s are spent inspecting deal stages, you’re an auditor, not a coach. Have the rep provide updates ahead of time, use this time for deal strategy and career growth. -
Solving problems FOR reps instead of expecting solutions.
Swooping in creates dependency. Require reps to bring 2 proposed solutions to every roadblock. -
Not forcing reps to fail fast.
Letting dead deals rot in the CRM without a clear Advance just to inflate forecasts leads to painful end-of-quarter surprises for everyone involved. -
Siloing sales from marketing.
If real-time buyer objections aren't fed back to marketing, your messaging will always miss the mark. -
Zero urgency until Week 12.
If hitting your quarter relies on 70-hour heroics in the final 5 days, your process is broken. -
Ignoring call recordings.
Pro athletes review game film every single week. If you aren't coaching on live call recordings, you’re missing the #1 skill-building lever. -
Treating every rep the exact same.
One-size-fits-all management fails. Tailor your coaching and feedback to each rep’s personality and DISC profile.
Great leaders enable the people behind the numbers.
Which of these 10 took you the longest to learn (or unlearn)? Which additional common mistake is missing from the list?
Interested in learning how sales coaching and training will help your team? Contact Benchmark Training to meet with an Executive Coach.
