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Sales coaching plan template: one skill per rep per quarter, with 3 examples (2026)
Short answer
A sales coaching plan is a one-page record, per rep and per quarter, of the one skill you are working on together, with the evidence behind it, what good looks like, the rep's weekly practice, your commitment, and the two numbers that show whether it worked. One skill per quarter, because 10 minutes a week inside the 1:1 is about two hours of coaching in 12 weeks, and a measurable change needs everything else held still. Review it weekly, monthly around a recording, and at quarter end to close, extend or replace it. The template, three filled examples and the rhythm are below.
What goes in a sales coaching plan? The 9 fields
Nine fields, one page, one rep, one quarter. Two of them decide whether the plan works. The skill has to be a behavior you could check on a recording, never a category like "discovery", and the measure needs a baseline or the plan can never be closed. Copy the table into one document per rep.
| Field | What to write | Example entry |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Rep and quarter | Rep, quarter, date written, review dates. | Rep A, Q1. Written Jan 6. Reviews Feb 13 and Mar 27. |
| 2. The one skill | One observable behavior, never a category. | "Ask who decides, who signs and what happens if they do nothing, before any demo." |
| 3. Evidence | Two or three dated moments that made you pick it. | Jan 3 call: demo by minute 6, no timeline question. Two Q4 deals lost at proposal, one contact each. |
| 4. What it is costing | The deal or number where the gap shows up now. | Proposal-stage win rate 25% against the team's 40%. |
| 5. What good looks like | The standard, so you and the rep agree whether a call met it. | Before a demo is scheduled, the three answers are in the CRM. |
| 6. Weekly practice | What the rep does on real calls each week. | Three questions on every first call; two calls tagged for the 1:1. |
| 7. Your commitment | What you do weekly and monthly. | 10 minutes in each 1:1 on one tagged call; one joint first call a month. |
| 8. Measure | A weekly behavior count, a monthly outcome metric, a baseline for each. | Leading: first calls with all three answers logged, baseline 1 of 6. Lagging: proposal-stage win rate, baseline 25%. |
| 9. Done when | The exit criterion. | 5 of the last 6 first calls meet the standard. |
Why one skill per rep per quarter?
Because the coaching time is small and the measurement has to be clean. According to a 2025 ATD State of Sales Training report, cited by Sales Assembly, 73% of front-line sales managers report spending fewer than 30 minutes per rep per week on coaching. Ten minutes a week over 12 working weeks is about two hours per rep per quarter. Over three skills that is 40 minutes each; on one skill it is 12 looks at the same behavior. And if three behaviors change at once and the win rate moves, neither of you knows which one moved it.
Pick the skill once a quarter. Start from the rep's number furthest from plan, find the behavior behind it in two or three recent calls or deal records, and check it is inside the rep's control. Write it as a sentence you could verify on a recording, and ask the rep whether they see the same thing. A plan the rep disagrees with gets practiced on no calls.
Watch out
The plan with five skills
A plan that lists five skills reads like a performance review and gets the attention a performance review gets, read once and filed. Nothing on it is specific enough to try on Tuesday's call. Put one of the five in the plan.
What evidence to bring from calls and deals
The plan runs on evidence in week 1 to choose the skill, every week to review one moment, and at quarter end to decide whether it is done. Each skill leaves traces on calls and in the CRM; bring one moment a week, with its timestamp. Use only calls recorded under your company's recording policy and the consent rules where your reps and buyers are.
| Skill | On calls | In the CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery before the pitch | Minutes before the first demo; whether timeline and decision process were asked | Deals lost as "no decision"; no decision maker in the contact roles |
| Multi-threading | How many buyer-side people appear across the deal (calls and email) | One contact role past the qualified stage |
| Setting the next step | Whether the call ends with a dated next step the buyer agreed to | Empty next-step fields; close dates pushed more than once; deals in a stage over 1.5× the median days for won deals |
| Pipeline generation and qualifying | Whether the rep asks questions that could disqualify | Deals created per week against the rep's usual number; open deals with no logged activity for 7, 14 or 21 days by cycle length |
Three filled-in sales coaching plan examples
Three plans for three situations. The reps and every number in the table are illustrative, made up to show the shape of a good entry.
| Field | Rep A, second-year AE losing at proposal | Rep B, SDR in month 4, meetings not converting | Rep C, senior AE whose forecast slips |
|---|---|---|---|
| The one skill | Ask who decides, who signs and what happens if they do nothing, before any demo. | End every first call with the prospect naming the problem in their own words. | Leave every late-stage call with a dated next step the buyer agreed to on the call. |
| Evidence | Two January calls: demo by minute 6, no timeline question. Proposal-stage win rate 25% against the team's 40%. | Three January meetings the AE could not explain. Meeting-to-opportunity conversion 20% against the team's 45%. | Five close dates pushed in Q4, three of them twice. Calls ending with "I'll send times". |
| Weekly practice and your part | Three questions on every first call; two calls tagged. You join one first call a month. | A two-question close on every call; two calls tagged. A 20-minute role play every other week. | Proposes the next step out loud on every call. You sit in on one late-stage call a month. |
| Measure | Leading: first calls with all three answers logged, baseline 1 of 6. Lagging: proposal-stage win rate, baseline 25%. | Leading: meetings booked with a stated problem, baseline 3 of 12. Lagging: meeting-to-opportunity conversion, baseline 20%. | Leading: late-stage calls ending with a dated next step, baseline 2 of 8. Lagging: close dates pushed per month, baseline 5. |
| Done when | 5 of the last 6 first calls meet the standard. | 10 of the last 12 booked meetings carry a stated problem. | 7 of the last 8 late-stage calls end with a dated next step. |
Tip
The lagging metric lags
Rep A's win rate will not move in week 3; the deals reaching proposal then were discovered under the old habit. Judge the first month on the leading indicator alone.
How often should you review a coaching plan? The quarterly rhythm
Ten minutes every week inside the 1:1, 30 minutes once a month on the skill alone, a midpoint review in week 6 and a quarter-end review in week 12. MySalesCoach's State of Sales Coaching 2026 found that in teams coached weekly or more, 76% of reps hit quota, against 56% with monthly coaching and 47% with quarterly or less, a correlation in its own survey rather than a controlled test. Its 2025 survey, on the same page, has 32.6% of respondents naming lack of time as their top barrier, which is why the weekly block sits inside a meeting that already exists.
- Week 1. Pick the skill from the evidence, write the nine fields with the rep in the room, and record both baselines.
- Weeks 2 to 11. Ten minutes in every 1:1, in the skills block of the sales 1:1 template. One tagged moment, the standard, one thing to try.
- Once a month. Thirty minutes on the skill alone, around a recording, a role play or a joint-call debrief.
- Week 6. Midpoint review. If the leading indicator has not moved, change the practice, the standard or the skill, and keep the plan.
- Week 12. Quarter-end review, both numbers against baseline, the rep's reading first. Close it, extend it with a higher bar, or replace the skill.
The weekly 10 minutes, inside the 1:1
- 2 min. Read the skill and the standard from the plan.
- 4 min. One tagged moment. The rep says what they did and what the standard says; you add what you saw.
- 2 min. Update the leading indicator: how many calls met the standard this week.
- 1 min. One thing to try on the next call, in the rep's words.
- 1 min. Your commitment, checked.
How do you measure whether the coaching worked?
Two numbers per plan, against the rep's own baseline from week 1. A leading indicator counts the behavior and moves within weeks; a lagging metric is the deal outcome it should change and moves within a quarter or two. In MySalesCoach's research, 22.65% of respondents said they struggle to measure the impact of coaching, the barrier right after time. Choose both numbers before the coaching starts, when nobody is tempted to pick the one that went up.
- The leading indicator is a count the rep keeps and brings to the 1:1 ("first calls with all three answers logged, 4 of 6 this week"); spot-check one call a week if you have recordings. The lagging metric comes from the CRM once a month.
- Judge against the rep's own baseline, two quarters for the lagging metric and six calls for the leading one. Comparing with the team is how you picked the skill; team-level numbers belong in the pipeline review.
How diffi helps
The plan stays in your document, and diffi gathers the evidence it runs on. A visible "diffi Notetaker" bot can join and transcribe Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, each with a summary afterwards, so you can ask what was said on a call and get the answer linked to its source. Every rep has a file with a summary, a timeline across the sources you connect, active signals such as a coaching gap with its evidence, open actions, 1:1 prep and meetings, and the chat answers pipeline and win rate questions for a rep. Feedback you capture by voice or text becomes part of the rep's record, and your 1:1s run as a recurring series with suggested agendas and prep items reps fill in through a link. Choosing the skill, writing the standard, keeping the count and the quarter-end verdict stay with you. Book a demo to see it on your own team.
See it on your own teamFrequently asked questions
What is a sales coaching plan?
A one-page record, per rep and per quarter, of the one skill a manager and a rep are working on together. It holds the evidence behind the choice, what good looks like, the rep's weekly practice, the manager's commitment, a leading and a lagging measure with baselines, and the criterion for calling it done. It is a plan for changing one behavior, which makes it different from a performance review or a PIP.
What should a sales coaching plan include?
Nine fields. The rep and quarter, the one skill written as an observable behavior, the evidence from calls and deals, what it is costing, what good looks like, the rep's weekly practice, the manager's commitment, the measure (a leading indicator, a lagging metric and their baselines), and the exit criterion with review dates.
How many skills should a sales coaching plan cover at once?
One per rep per quarter. With about 10 minutes of coaching a week, a quarter gives one skill roughly two hours and twelve looks at the same behavior; three skills would get 40 minutes each. One skill also keeps the measurement clean, because you can tell which change moved the number.
How often should you review a sales coaching plan?
Every week for 10 minutes inside the 1:1, once a month for 30 minutes around a recording or a role play, a midpoint check in week 6, and a quarter-end review that closes the plan, extends it or replaces the skill.
How do you measure sales coaching?
With two numbers per plan against the rep's own baseline. A leading indicator counts the behavior weekly (first calls that met the standard, 4 of 6) and a lagging metric tracks the outcome monthly from the CRM (win rate at a stage, meeting-to-opportunity conversion, close dates pushed). Write both baselines in week 1, and judge the first month on the leading indicator only.
What are some sales coaching examples?
Three from this page. An AE losing at proposal who commits to asking who decides, who signs and what happens if they do nothing before any demo. An SDR whose meetings do not convert who ends every first call with the prospect naming the problem in their own words. A senior AE whose forecast slips who leaves every late-stage call with a dated next step the buyer agreed to. Each has a weekly count, a monthly CRM metric and an exit criterion.
Is a sales coaching plan the same as a performance improvement plan?
No. A coaching plan is for every rep, including your best, and it changes one behavior a quarter with no consequence attached beyond the next plan. A performance improvement plan is a formal process with documented consequences, run with HR. If you are choosing between them, diagnose the cause of the shortfall first; a coaching plan is the right tool when the cause is a skill the rep can practice.