Sales Leadership At A Crossroad? Then This Is Your Road to Success!
Sales leadership coaching is the thread that runs through everything in this story – it is the reason a room full of leaders was willing to be this honest with each other.
There is something special about doing what you love – especially when you know you make an impact.
And when the payoff is in the added currency of ‘client transformation’ then that is the most validating and satisfying payment of all.
I was so fortunate to have been chosen as the sales leadership coach for an aligned and growth focussed global company this year, working with fourteen leaders – regional sales leaders from a cohort perspective and state sales leaders from a one one one perspective, and the reward for all, including myself, has been huge.
The reason why I was my buyers #1 choice over bigger businesses was because of my experience in their industry, my perceived value and my offer.
I 'got them' and they knew that.
And when you bring on board someone who ‘get’s you’, they are invested…
….That person becomes an extension of your business…
….attached to the results, yet detached from the stories – and magic happens, behaviours shift and results result.
So why am I sharing these thoughts with you now, when I have been playing in this space for years?
Because....
I want more TOP LEVEL leaders of business to stop discounting the value of their lower down leaders by not providing them a sounding board, or someone who calls them on their BS.
I want more TOP LEVEL leaders of business to invest in their lower down leaders the way they want their leaders to invest in the business and give them someone who not only grows to know them and love them but helps shift and disrupt their patterns of thinking with provocative conversations and questions.
TOP LEVEL LEADERS – Remove your bias of what you believe a business/sales/sales leadership coach to be. Give that gift to your leaders and then reap the rewards.
Invest in your people!
The end result flows downhill fast, just as the proverbial does.
It's your choice as to what you want that flow to be....
❓ What if the investment in your senior staff contributed to a faster, more efficient, and more forecastable pipeline?
❓ What if it led to top talent retention or the knowledge that your company values were being met whilst also impacting families?
❓ What if your managers turned into real leaders?
❓ And what if underneath all the whinging and whining that your leaders might do, you were able to expose their loyalty?
What Sales Leadership Coaching Makes Possible
So last night we had our final Sellebration (with both sets of leaders in the room).
The pivotal questions were asked of the guys,
🙋What strategies have you implemented?
🙋What did you find most difficult?
🙋How have you changed?
🙋How did you measure success
🙋What will you do next?
And the authenticity and vulnerability was so super inspiring!
I felt like a proud mumma bear!
Whilst I had experienced those moments one on one, to have these men share their experiences, areas of growth and improvement, and their feelings in front of their peers, and their senior leadership, was wonderful to witness.
We are all human!
None of us come to the table with all the skills, the answers, the behaviours… dare I say it, perfection!
And as their GM Tina said as we wrapped up… “you are all here because you deserve to be” .
Those words also resonated for me because I think that is something all of us sometimes forget.
One way or the other,
We are exactly where we are because we deserve to be. Period.
So if you are a CEO or Senior Leader of a company and you have managers below you who are craving some direction, need some inspiration, want some confidentiality and are keen to make their numbers, consider the following benefits in providing them a resource in the form of a coach/mentor/devil’s advocate that were shared last night:
🏆 Increased desire to learn
🏆 Greater confidence in abilities
🏆 Stronger accountability focus
🏆 More balanced and grounded emotional state
🏆 Improved communication skills where it matters
🏆 Creativity unleashed
🏆 Tools and models to make the complex simple
🏆 More aligned company values
🏆 Runs on the board
You want more business? You know what you've gotta do!
Leaders hire me to get results within the sales function of their business.
🔑 Behaviour change begins when you shift the story within.
🔑 Your value unfolds when the right buyer stories are told.
🔑 There’s much greater buy-in when all stories align.
Don’t forget to order your copy of “SHIFT and DISRUPT: Stop Selling Widgets. Start Selling Wisdom’.” written for the B2B sales profession and based on the elegant and relevant StorySelling Philosophy.
This is exactly the work sales leadership coaching is built to do: turn a crossroad into a clear road, one honest conversation at a time. If you’re a CEO or senior leader watching your team stall at their own crossroad, sales leadership coaching gives them a structured way through it – increased desire to learn, greater confidence, stronger accountability and a more grounded emotional state, all built through a regular coaching cadence rather than a single pep talk.
If you’d like to see what sales leadership coaching could look like for your team, Bernadette McClelland’s keynote presentations and coaching programs are built around this exact shift – from managing activity to leading transformation.
Good sales leadership coaching doesn’t hand leaders a script – it helps them find their own words for the moments that matter. That’s the difference between a manager reciting a process and a leader their team actually trusts.
I see the same pattern in almost every sales leadership coaching engagement I run: the leaders who ask for help early, before the numbers force the conversation, get the biggest gains. Sales leadership coaching works best as prevention, not repair – a regular space to think out loud with someone who isn’t your direct report or your boss, who can ask the question you’ve been avoiding.
Whether you call it sales leadership coaching, mentoring or simply a standing thinking partner, the mechanism is the same: a leader who is coached well ends up coaching their own team better, and that ripple effect is where the real return on the investment shows up.
A question I get asked a lot: what does good sales leadership coaching actually look like in practice, week to week? It’s rarely dramatic. It’s a leader turning up with a real problem – a rep who’s stalled, a forecast that doesn’t add up, a conversation they’ve been putting off – and working it through out loud with someone whose only agenda is their growth. Over a few months, that habit reshapes how they lead day to day, long after the formal sales leadership coaching engagement ends.
The leaders who get the most out of sales leadership coaching tend to share one trait: they’re willing to be seen not having the answer yet. That’s a harder thing to model in a room full of people who report to you than it sounds, and it’s exactly the behaviour this cohort demonstrated when they opened up in front of their peers.
None of this replaces the day-to-day work of managing a sales team – the pipeline reviews, the deal coaching, the forecast calls. What sales leadership coaching adds is a step back from all of that: a chance to look at how a leader is actually leading, not just what number they’re chasing this quarter. Over time, that shift in attention compounds. Leaders who invest in their own development tend to build teams that do the same, and that culture is far harder for a competitor to copy than any single sales tactic.
What to Look for in a Sales Leadership Coach
Not every coach is the right fit, and sales leadership coaching only works when there’s real trust in the room. A few things worth checking before you commit: has this person actually led a sales function themselves, or are they coaching from theory alone? Do they ask harder questions than you’d ask yourself, or do they just validate what you already believe? And critically, will they tell you something you don’t want to hear when the numbers say you need to hear it?
The best sales leadership coaching relationships I’ve been part of, on both sides of the table, share a rhythm: consistent time on the calendar, a leader who shows up prepared to be honest rather than to perform, and a coach who holds the standard even when it’s uncomfortable. That combination is rare, which is exactly why it’s worth being deliberate about who you choose for sales leadership coaching rather than defaulting to whoever is available or cheapest.
If your team is at its own crossroad right now, that’s usually the best moment to start, not the moment to wait for things to calm down first.
So here’s the honest version of the road to success: it’s rarely a straight line, and sales leadership coaching won’t pretend otherwise. What it does is give you a steady hand and an honest mirror while you find your own way through the crossroad – which, in my experience, is exactly what most leaders are actually looking for when they finally ask for help.
To be clear: sales leadership coaching is not therapy, and it’s not a shortcut around doing the work. It’s a discipline, the same way training is a discipline for an athlete – and like any discipline, sales leadership coaching pays off most for the leaders who stick with it past the first few uncomfortable sessions.
I’m Bernadette – founder of the Decision-Led Revenue™ Operating System and The Revenue Leader of Influence™, where I work with CEOs and sales leaders to build a sales team they can rely on to think, make the call, tell the truth about pipeline and own the result.
If any of this resonated – or if you’re staring at a revenue problem that feels like it should have been solved by now – I’d love a conversation.
BOOK A NO-OBLIGATION 20-MINUTE CALL
And if you’d rather join the discussion, you can also join me on Substack. That’s where the Revenue Leader of Influence community is starting to have these conversations in real time.
