Coaching
Built around Meridian Intelligence, the hypothetical company on the Case page. The coaching program, scorecards, and targets below are my own designs for this case and all numbers are illustrative. Sources are at the bottom of this page and on the Sources page.
In brief: training builds a skill, and coaching keeps it in use. Without coaching, new behavior tends to fade. This program gives every manager a short, regular, structured way to coach on real calls and meetings, trains managers to do it, and sends the patterns back to training. It serves sales, customer success, and account management. Short on time? Read the next three sections and the sample scorecard.
Why coaching is part of the design
Reinforcement is where change breaks. In Hiatt’s ADKAR model, the last step is reinforcement. Without it, people drift back to the old way.
Coaching supplies what training can’t. Make It Stick is strong on how memory works and lighter on how people build skill through feedback and error correction. Coaching does that work on real calls.
Managers are the delivery channel. Many are promoted for strong individual results and never taught to coach, so the program equips them as well as the team.
It connects to the rollout. Coaching is the reinforcement step (Phase 5, “Lock It In”) of the Adoption Loop on the Real Work page.
Who coaches: the player-coach
On this site, the coach is the person’s manager. Meridian’s managers aren’t dedicated coaches. They lead their teams and still carry some deals or accounts of their own, which Val Markos and Tammy Martin call a player-coach: someone who does work and leads others at the same time. Enablement builds the coaching program in stages across the first year, starting with the discovery scorecard and weekly call review, and hands each piece to managers as it’s ready.
A common trap for a manager who also carries deals or accounts is that when someone’s work falls short, it’s faster to do it yourself. That saves time today, but the person never learns the skill and the manager’s load keeps growing. Coaching is the way out, so the program protects the time for it.
How coaching answers the Case
1. Slow ramp: weekly reviews for new hires, with a peer mentor for the first 60 days (see Onboarding)
2. Inconsistent discovery: a shared scorecard on reviewed calls, calibrated across managers
3. No CS health signal: CSMs are coached on reading health signals on their own accounts, not just on sample accounts in training
4. Messaging drift: call review catches the gap between what reps say and what Marketing says, and sends it back to training and Marketing
The four pillars
The coaching conversation: weekly for new people, every two weeks once certified, 10 to 15 minutes on one competency, run by the manager and following the GROW model.
Manager enablement: training, protected calendar time, a one-page guide, and a way to escalate roadblocks.
Virtual delivery: recorded calls, a peer-learning library, and practice formats built for a remote team.
Measurement: whether coaching is happening, whether skills are improving, and whether results are following.
Design choice: managers coach, and enablement calibrates. The alternative was enablement coaching reps directly. With one enablement hire, that would reach a handful of people and then stall. Putting the coaching with managers keeps it going, at the cost of managers having less time. It would change if managers consistently could not hold the cadence, which the player-coach signal is built to catch.
The conversation follows GROW: Goal (what do you want to get better at, or get from this call?), Reality (how did it go, in your words first, then the manager adds one specific observation), Options (what could you try, with the person offering ideas first), and Will (what exactly will you do on your next call, and when?). Then the person practices the focus skill in a short role-play, right there. Each session ends with one to three written commitments, an owner, and a deadline.
A sample scorecard. A single review uses no more than three competencies, chosen for the person’s current focus. Scores run from 1 to 4: 1 is “not yet,” 2 is partway there, 3 meets the standard, and 4 goes beyond it.
A sample discovery scorecard for a sales call (tap to open)
| Competency | Not yet (score 1) | Meets the standard (score 3) | Sample score | Sample note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opens with an upfront contract | The call starts with no agreed purpose, time, agenda, or outcome | Purpose, time, agenda, and outcome agreed in the first two minutes, including what happens if the answer is no | 3 | Agenda and outcome agreed in the first two minutes, including the no outcome. |
| Depth of discovery | Stops at the first problem named, with no reasons or impact | Moves from the surface problem to its reasons to its business impact, in the buyer's words | 2 | Impact never quantified |
| Stakeholders identified | Does not learn who decides, who champions, or who competes | Names the champion, the economic buyer, and the competition, with a next step for each | 3 | Economic buyer named, access still to be arranged |
This call does not yet meet the standard: every competency reviewed has to score 3 or higher, and depth of discovery scored 2. The coaching conversation would focus on that one competency. Illustrative design with sample data.
More detail
-
The weekly conversation runs about 10 to 15 minutes and focuses on one competency, so managers can sustain it. Before it, the manager spends about 15 minutes reviewing one recorded call against the scorecard, which is why the review is limited to one call and no more than three competencies. Once a month there’s a longer session of about 30 minutes for a fuller review of progress, commitments, and next steps. In the first 60 days, a named peer mentor from Onboarding handles day-to-day questions between sessions, so the manager’s time goes to the coaching conversation itself. The manager runs the sessions and owns the scorecard, and enablement runs the calibration.
Principles: skills over deals (sessions develop a core skill and don’t post-mortem one opportunity), one focus at a time, and a simple structure where every step is a single question.
Commitments are written down, with an owner and a deadline, which the person says aloud. Managers can ask: What did we agree on? How confident are you? When will it be done? How will I know? What support do you need? The next session starts by reviewing those commitments against results.
Feedback habits: observe before coaching (coaching without seeing the work is guesswork), listen first, let the person self-evaluate first, make feedback direct, specific, and actionable (“Great job on objections” fails all three), lead with a specific strength before naming constructive feedback plainly, and look forward to the next call, not back at the last one. Accountability looks both ways: the person owns their outcomes, and the manager owns the growth of the person and the team.
Scorecards: behind every track is a competency matrix that rates each skill from beginner to expert. The sales matrix covers opening with an upfront contract, depth of discovery, stakeholders identified, success criteria confirmed, next steps agreed, and balanced talking and listening. The customer success matrix covers customer goals confirmed, health signals read correctly, value story told, risks surfaced, and next steps agreed. The account management matrix covers value evidence used, an opening agreed with the CSM, one coordinated voice, and the customer’s priorities reflected.
Calibration: before a scorecard is used for real, managers score the same recorded call separately, compare, and resolve differences, so two managers rate the same call the same way. For new hires, that means before their week 7 live discovery reviews.
-
The Player-Coach describes four parts of the job: set direction, secure resources, coach individuals, and build the team. The program covers them with scorecards and the competency matrix (direction), protected calendar time, access to recordings and the peer library, and a short business case for blocked work (resources), the coaching pillars (individuals), and the peer-learning library, recognition of milestones, and shared call review (team).
What managers get:
Coaching training: a short course on GROW, giving feedback, and running the weekly conversation, for the managers of each team and the heads of Sales and CS.
Calendar protection: coaching sessions go on the calendar, and low-value recurring meetings get audited and cut to make room.
A one-page guide: the GROW questions, the commitment questions, and the scorecards on one page.
Practice: open questions over answers, role-plays of hard conversations such as a tenured rep who resists the scorecard, and delegation practice (set clear expectations, stay out of the way, remove roadblocks, give credit). Delegation is the direct fix for the “I’ll just do it myself” trap.
Stretch assignments and recognition: learn what drives each person, assign stretch work such as leading a team session or taking a harder account, and celebrate certifications and wins specifically.
A standing agenda item: a coaching update in the weekly managers’ meeting.
A way to escalate roadblocks: when a tool, a process, or another team blocks someone, the manager raises it with a short business case instead of absorbing it.
Accountability runs both ways. How well a manager coaches is part of their own review, assessed by the head of their function: whether sessions are held and documented, how closely their scorecard ratings match their peers’ in calibration, and how their team’s skills are moving. A person who repeatedly doesn’t engage escalates to the head of Sales or CS and People Ops, with the record showing what support was offered. The 70-20-10 idea (most growth comes from experience, some from other people, a small share from formal training) is a rule of thumb, not precise research, so the program uses it as a lens: pair every training session with real work to practice on.
-
Meridian’s team is remote, so coaching is built for that. Sessions review real recorded calls, which the Case page notes are available. A tagged peer-learning library of strong discovery calls, kickoffs, business reviews, and expansion openings replaces the learning that happens in an office. Practice formats include role-plays, practicums, and short pitch-offs, with feedback right after. Between live sessions there are short written or recorded notes and open office hours. The manager guides and the person does the work.
-
Coaching is measured five ways:
Activity: session frequency, average length, and consistency per manager.
Competency: scorecard results before and after, then behavior observed in live calls, pipeline reviews, and deal outcomes.
Performance: for sales, win rate, stage conversion, and sales cycle length, with average deal size and sales velocity read as context. For CS, early-flag rate. For account management, the share of expansions that followed a healthy account.
Team: share of reps at quota, win rate by team, and competency improvement by manager.
Feedback: an advisory group of reps, CSMs, and account managers that managers don’t attend. Questions: How confident do you feel after coaching? What has improved? What still needs work? Are the cadence and quality meeting your needs?
Watching for the player-coach trap: the monthly check includes a simple signal of how often coaching sessions are skipped, or replaced by the manager doing the work themselves, such as running the call or handling the account. Managers report it themselves and it stays informal. It is a way to spot when coaching time is being squeezed.
Coaching frequency and team results can move together without one causing the other, so these numbers are reported as signals, not proof. The program starts with a baseline and compares each cohort to it. The Metrics page has the rules for reading results and the definitions for every measure.
-
Patterns across many call reviews show where the system is failing, so call review does a second job beyond developing individuals:
To training: if many reps struggle with the same competency, the session behind it needs redesigning.
To Marketing: if reps describe the product differently than the approved messaging, that’s drift (Problem 4), and Marketing hears about it.
To RevOps and managers: if people know the behavior but tools or incentives block it, the fix isn’t more coaching or more training.
To leadership: roadblocks such as a missing tool or a blocked process go up with a short business case, so the manager isn’t the only one solving them.
To the program: each month, enablement reviews the patterns and logs the changes made.
Builds on: Training (scorecards and the competency matrix) and Onboarding (the first 60 days).
Feeds into: Metrics (coaching activity and competency results), Training (patterns from call review show which sessions to redesign), and Collaboration (messaging drift goes to Marketing).
Real work behind this page: Onboarding and coaching new SDRs (real, informal): informal peer mentoring and coaching alongside a full quota. I was a peer mentor, not a manager, and the coaching program here is a design, not that work. The Adoption Loop (designed), whose fifth phase, "Lock It In," is the reinforcement step. Details on Real Work.
Sources for this page: PMA Sales Enablement Masters (the GROW model and competency matrices); Highspot's Train and Coach Reps (scorecards, commitments, manager enablement); Player-Coach; Make It Stick; ADKAR. Full list on Sources.