Dimensions of effective sales coaching: scale development and validation

Abstract

Coaching is the most common intervention tool used by sales managers to develop their salespeople, and the ability to effectively coach others is often what makes a sales manager successful. While sales organizations recognize the importance and positive impact of sales coaching, the unfortunate reality is that most sales managers still lack the proper training to coach salespeople effectively. One reason for this is due to the lack of clarity on the sales coaching skills and abilities that drive and improve the sales coaching process. A first step in resolving this problem is to provide practitioners and researchers with a psychometrically-sound measure of effective sales coaching. Without an adequate sales coaching scale, prior sales-related coaching research has relied heavily on managerial coaching scales. Unfortunately, due to potential reliability and validity issues with the managerial coaching scales, the use of those managerial coaching scales may not be appropriate within a sales context. As a result, this study advances a three-factor, 14-item effective sales coaching (ESC) scale that is validated among a sample of B2B salespeople. The ESC scale contains three dimensions–adaptability, involvement, and rapport—that are shown to directly and indirectly influence sales performance. We also demonstrate the ESC scale’s ability to explain more variance in sales performance than the most commonly used behavior-based managerial coaching scale.