Sales managers, Team leads, Sales enablement managers, Revenue leaders, Frontline managers
Prepare the Required Inputs listed in the Workflow Prompt. Use as much detail as necessary.
1. Copy the Workflow Prompt.
2. Paste it into your AI tool.
3. Replace the "Required Inputs"
4. Run the prompt.
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You are a frontline sales coaching specialist. Your task is to create a practical coaching plan for improving one specific sales skill or performance gap.
### Required Input
- Rep or Team Profile: [Example: "new SDR team, experienced AE, underperforming enterprise rep"]
- Coaching Focus: [Specific skill or gap. Example: "weak discovery, poor next-step control, low call confidence"]
- Current Performance Evidence: [Metrics, call notes, CRM patterns, manager observations]
- Desired Behaviour: [What good should look like. Example: "asks business impact questions before pitching"]
- Sales Context: [Example: outbound, inbound, enterprise, SMB, renewal, expansion]
- Timeframe: [Example: two weeks, one month, one quarter]
- Manager Constraints: [Example: limited call review time, remote team, weekly 1:1s only]
- Available Materials: [Call recordings, scripts, playbooks, dashboards, scorecards]
- Success Metrics: [Example: meeting conversion, discovery quality, stage progression, call score]
- Tone: [Example: supportive, direct, developmental]
### Input Validation
Review the required inputs before creating the plan. If the coaching focus is too broad, such as "get better at selling," ask the user to choose one measurable behaviour. If evidence or success metrics are missing, ask for clarification and pause.
### Instructions
Build a coaching plan that changes behaviour, not just awareness. Start by diagnosing the gap using the evidence provided. Identify whether the issue is skill, confidence, process, product knowledge, prioritisation, or motivation.
Define the target behaviour in observable terms. Explain what the rep should say, do, ask, document, or stop doing. Avoid vague goals like "be more strategic" unless translated into specific behaviours.
Create a coaching sequence that a manager can actually run. Include preparation, coaching conversation structure, practice exercises, live application, review cadence, and reinforcement. Make the plan realistic for the manager constraints.
Include coaching language the manager can use in a 1:1. Provide questions that help the rep self-diagnose, feedback phrasing that is clear but constructive, and practice prompts for role-play or call review.
Finish with a measurement plan. Define leading indicators, lagging indicators, review milestones, and what to do if performance improves, stalls, or declines.
### Output
Produce the coaching plan with these sections:
- Coaching Goal
- Performance Gap Diagnosis
- Target Behaviour Definition
- Coaching Conversation Guide
- Practice Activities
- Call Review or Deal Review Checklist
- Weekly Coaching Cadence
- Manager Feedback Phrases
- Rep Action Commitments
- Success Metrics
- Reinforcement Plan
- Escalation or Adjustment Plan
Add a version designed for a 30-minute weekly one-to-one coaching session.
Target Objective: Transition from early product-feature pitching to a value-led discovery model over a disciplined 4-week cycle. The rep must consistently uncover, quantify, and document a prospect’s operational business drivers, capacity bottlenecks, and financial risks before introducing any technical software capabilities or module demos.
| What the Rep Must STOP Doing | What the Rep Must START Doing (Observable Actions) |
|---|---|
| Launching an immediate screen-share demo or explaining API endpoints the moment a buyer mentions a workflow pain point. | Acknowledge the buyer’s pain point with a validating statement, then immediately ask a follow-up diagnostic question to explore the macro operational consequence. |
| Accepting vague, high-level answers like “Yeah, manual customs data entry takes our team a long time.” | Isolate and quantify the operational cost. The rep must ask clarifying questions to extract specific metrics: average manifest prep times, error rates, and port delay costs. |
| Concluding a meeting by sending a generic marketing deck without an agreed-upon, metric-backed next step. | Secure a locked calendar invite for a 20-minute Technical Database Mapping Sandbox Review, explicitly tying the session to solving the quantified bottleneck discovered on the call. |
Manager Prompt: “Let’s review the tape from your call with Vanguard Logistics last Tuesday. Before we play the audio, walk me through how you felt the conversation went when the Director mentioned their current reliance on manual spreadsheet templates.”
Goal: Guide the rep to realize that their immediate shift into pitching cut off the buyer’s explanation of their upcoming 25% shipping volume surge.
Manager Wording: “I noticed that at the 8-minute mark, the prospect stated their team spends a lot of time typing data into Excel. You immediately jumped into explaining our pre-configured data gateways. Your technical explanation was highly accurate, but notice how the buyer stopped sharing details after that? We missed the chance to uncover how many hours they are losing every week and how much they are spending on border fines. When we pitch features too early, we take the spotlight off the buyer’s pain and put it entirely on our software.”
Manager Prompt: “On your next discovery call this Thursday, when a prospect mentions their manual spreadsheets, what is an alternative question you could ask to explore the broader business impact instead of switching into product demo mode?”
Execution Framework: The manager acts as an operations buyer and throws out various workflow pain signals (e.g., “Our dispatchers are constantly fixing typing mistakes in our shipping forms.”). The rep is legally banned from using any product feature names or technical terminology. They must respond with a validation statement followed immediately by an impact-probing discovery question.
Example Success Track:
Buyer: “Our customs manifests take forever to get out the door.”
Rep: “That seems to be a common bottleneck when managing cross-border runs. When those manifests are delayed, how does that ripple down to impact your overall fleet utilization and port departure schedules?”
Execution Framework: During the weekly pipeline review, the rep must open three top-funnel deals. They must point directly to the text fields in the CRM showing the quantified impact metrics (e.g., “Prep time: 45 min/manifest, Error rate: 4%, Fine exposure: $2,500/mo”). If those numbers are missing, the sole objective for the next interaction is defined as metric extraction.
Managers should use this scorecard to grade call recordings during asynchronous reviews (Max 10 minutes per call):
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