This free sales coaching checklist is for sales managers, team leads and enablement leads who coach account executives, SDRs or account managers. One run is one coaching cycle for one rep, usually a month. It starts with the rep’s pipeline and activity numbers, so the focus skill is chosen from evidence rather than a hunch. The coach and the rep score recorded calls against the same scorecard, then hold a session where the rep assesses themselves first and leaves with one or two behaviours to change. Practice and role-play come next, then the coach observes the next live calls and a follow-up review records the progress. The last phase checks the coach’s own cadence. Choosing deal coaching adds a phase on named opportunities, and a rep on a performance improvement plan gets tasks that tie the cycle to the plan. New hires start with the Sales Rep Onboarding Checklist.
Sales coaching is the ongoing work of helping a rep who already sells to sell better. It is not onboarding, which takes a new hire from their first day to a ramp decision and is covered by the Sales Rep Onboarding Checklist. It is not call quality assurance either. A call center QA programme scores many calls for compliance and consistency, while a coaching cycle studies a few calls closely to change one habit.
Coaching usually fails in the same ways. The focus comes from the last call the manager happened to hear, the rep leaves with a long list of fixes, and nobody listens to the next calls to see whether anything changed. This checklist keeps each cycle short and closed: evidence first, one or two behaviours, practice, observation and a written record of progress. A cycle takes one of three shapes.
Covers: one skill, such as discovery, demos or handling objections, scored on recorded calls.
Best for: a rep whose deals stall at the same stage again and again.
Output: before and after scores on the focus behaviour.
Covers: one or two live deals at the stage the rep finds hardest, reviewed against your qualification criteria.
Best for: deals that stall, slip or rest on a single contact.
Output: an agreed buyer action and a planned call for each deal. Choosing it adds Phase 4.
Covers: the same cycle, with the goal taken from the plan’s objectives and the progress record shared with HR.
Best for: a rep already on a formal performance improvement plan.
Output: dated evidence for the plan’s check-ins. The plan itself runs in the PIP Process Checklist.
Eight phases run one coaching cycle for one rep, usually over a month. Phase 4 appears only when the cycle includes deal coaching, and the tasks marked performance plan only appear when the rep is on a PIP.
Done in the first days of the cycle. The numbers say where to look; the recorded calls in Phase 2 say why.
Use calls recorded under your company’s call-recording policy. Field reps without recordings can use a ride-along instead.
The rep talks first. The session ends with actions the rep has written down, not a list of things the coach said.
Shown when the cycle includes deal coaching. Skill coaching works on a behaviour; deal coaching works on a named opportunity.
A behaviour changes through repetition, not through being told about it once.
Assigned to the coach. A coaching programme slips when the coach’s own sessions do.
Phase 1 compares the rep’s numbers with the team’s for the same period. The stage with the biggest gap is where to start listening to calls. The numbers point to a stage; only the calls show the behaviour behind it, so treat each row below as a place to look rather than a diagnosis. Compare reps who sell to similar customers, because a gap can come from the territory or the lead source rather than the rep.
| What the numbers show | Skill to look at first | What to listen for on calls | How to practise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plenty of first meetings, few become opportunities | Discovery | The rep talks more than the buyer, asks little about the impact of the problem and ends without an agreed next step | Open a discovery call on a real account and ask three follow-up questions before mentioning the product |
| Opportunities stall after the demo | A demo built on discovery | A product tour that never refers back to the problems the buyer named, and no next meeting booked before the call ends | Rebuild one demo around the three problems a buyer named in discovery |
| Deals are lost late, often on price | Value and negotiation | A discount offered before the buyer asks for one, and value never put in the buyer’s own terms | Answer “it’s too expensive” three different ways without offering a discount |
| Close dates keep moving | Qualification and next steps | No named decision-maker, no agreed decision process, and next steps set by the rep alone | Review two live deals against your qualification criteria every week |
| Many dials and emails, few meetings (SDRs) | Openings and early objections | The first 30 seconds, and what happens after a brush-off such as “just send me an email” | Short daily drills on the three brush-offs the rep hears most |
| Small deals with one contact per account | Multi-threading | Every call is with the same person, and nobody asks who else is affected or who signs off | Map the people involved in two live deals and plan one new contact for each |
Score the focus behaviour, not the whole call. A scorecard with twenty criteria spreads attention across twenty things. For a coaching cycle, score the two or three behaviours that make up the focus skill on a simple 1–5 scale, with a timestamp for every low score. Use the same scorecard for the calls in Phase 2 and Phase 6, so the before and after scores mean the same thing. If your team already scores calls for QA, keep that scorecard for QA and use a short one for coaching.
The first task asks for the cycle start date, and every task falls due a set number of days after it, so the session, the practice and the observed calls land in the right weeks. A recurring schedule can start a new cycle for each rep every month, and a missed session shows as overdue on the Reports Grid instead of quietly not happening.
Choosing deal coaching shows the phase on live opportunities. Marking the rep as on a performance plan adds the tasks that tie the goal to the plan and send the record to HR. The coach, the sales leader and, if they use CheckFlow, the rep are chosen on the first task, so each task goes to the right person.
Before and after scores sit in tables beside the session notes and the agreed actions, and the sales leader signs the record off at the end. Each task shows who completed it and when. When a promotion is discussed or a plan reaches its review, the evidence is already written down.
Coaching works when it is a routine. CheckFlow’s recurring checklist software starts each rep’s cycle on a fixed date, and analytics and reporting show which cycles are on track and which tasks are overdue across the team.
Coaching sits beside other sales routines. New reps start with the Sales Rep Onboarding Checklist, and the sales onboarding guide explains the 30-60-90 day plan. The Call Center Sales QA Checklist scores calls for compliance and consistency, the Sales Call Tracker Checklist keeps the CRM data that Phase 1 relies on, and a rep who needs a formal plan goes through the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) Process Checklist.
Describe the process in a sentence and the AI checklist generator drafts the phases and tasks for you.
One full coaching cycle for one rep. Start with the rep’s pipeline and activity numbers to choose a focus skill, then score a few recorded calls against a short scorecard, with the rep scoring them first. Hold a session that agrees one or two behaviours and written actions, practise them in role-play, observe the next live calls and compare the scores in a follow-up review. Add deal reviews when you coach on live opportunities, and a check on the coach’s own cadence so sessions are not quietly dropped.
Write it for one rep and a short period, such as a month. A workable plan names one focus skill, the evidence it was chosen from, a measure you can see on calls and one you can see in the pipeline, the dates of the session, practice, observed calls and review, and who coaches. Keep it to one or two behaviours. At the end of the cycle, record whether the goal was met and choose the next focus. This template is that plan in checklist form, with the dates worked out from the cycle start.
Skill coaching works on a behaviour the rep repeats across many calls, such as discovery questions or handling a price objection, and is measured on recorded calls over several weeks. Deal coaching works on a named opportunity: what is missing against your qualification criteria, who else needs to be involved and what the next call should achieve. Deal coaching helps this quarter’s number; skill coaching changes how the rep sells every deal. Many managers do both, so the template lets you choose either or both.
Often enough that the next calls are observed while the session is still fresh. One workable rhythm is a short weekly one-to-one plus a focused coaching cycle each month, but the right amount depends on the size of the team and how experienced the reps are. Two things matter more than the exact frequency: sessions happen when they are booked, and every rep gets a cycle, not only the strongest or the weakest. Phase 8 of this checklist checks both.
Use onboarding for the first month and coaching after that. The Sales Rep Onboarding Checklist covers tools, training, certification and the 30-day sign-off for solo selling. Once the AE runs calls alone, start monthly coaching cycles: discovery is a sensible first focus, then demos and next steps, then qualification as their pipeline grows. The 60- and 90-day reviews can use each cycle’s progress record as evidence. The 30-60-90 day sales onboarding guide covers the ramp itself.
Yes, but keep the two records clear. A PIP is a formal HR process with objectives, support, check-ins and stated outcomes, run with HR. Coaching is one kind of support the plan can promise. When a rep is on a plan, take the cycle’s goal from the plan’s objectives, observe calls before each check-in and share the progress record with HR. The plan itself runs in the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) Process Checklist.
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