Webinar Details
At GTM Engine, we’ve built a new AI platform that not only automates the administrative burden of sales and sales leadership, but more importantly prescribes exactly how leaders can have better, more individualized, and more impactful coaching conversations.
We believe coaching is the ultimate sales-leadership superpower. It's the skill that separates elite sales leaders from average ones.
Yet research consistently shows that most leaders are not as effective or as impactful at coaching as they think they are. Too many rely solely on data or content to guide those conversations.
That’s why we focus on empowering leaders to go beyond content and become contextual coaches. Contextual coaches consistently outperform content-driven coaches by orders of magnitude.
In this Podcast, Robert joins the show to share how the best leaders make this shift and why every leader should be paying attention to this conversation and to the work we’re doing at GTM Engine.
Session Highlights
Sales leaders want to coach, try to coach, and believe they’re coaching… but they lack the visibility needed to do it well.
They’re handed fragments. Rep summaries, dashboards, CRM fields, and expected to diagnose performance.
It’s like fixing an engine with the hood welded shut.
The Coaching Gap: Intent vs. Reality
Most coaching is built on four weak foundations:
- Dashboards filled with lagging indicators
- Rep summaries that oversimplify reality
- CRM fields that quickly become outdated
- Deal reviews that talk about stage movement, not behavior
Actual selling happens in conversations, inboxes, and subtle signals, not in CRM fields. Leaders end up coaching from guesses, not truth.
Content Coaching Is a Mirage
Traditional coaching is content-based:
- Try this script
- Follow the framework
- Use the playbook
These aren’t wrong, but they assume the leader knows what really happened in the deal. Reps don’t remember everything. Leaders fill in gaps. Everyone ends up coaching ghosts.
Contextual Coaching Is the Real Superpower
Contextual coaching uses what actually happened instead of what was remembered or summarized.
It sounds like:
- “Stakeholder engagement has been silent for 8 days. We need to fix that.”
- “Your last reply didn’t address the buyer’s security concern. Let’s rewrite it.”
- “Procurement surfaced early. Let’s adjust now.”
- “A competitor entered the thread yesterday. Let’s neutralize their position.”
These are observations grounded in real activity. Truth creates precision. Precision creates performance.
Why Leaders Struggle With Context
The sales system hasn’t evolved.
- It rewards inspection instead of improvement.
- Leaders spend their time reviewing pipeline instead of shaping behavior.
- Coaching turns into checking homework.
The Shift: From Reporting to Execution
Dashboards show what happened. Context tells you:
- why it happened
- what’s missing
- what needs to happen next
A modern sales system must surface context automatically, without relying on memory or manual updates.
Anatomy of a Contextual Coaching System
A functional system must:
- Collect all interactions (emails, calls, meetings, messages)
- Process them into meaningful signals
- Act with nudges and guidance
- Learn from patterns across reps and deals
This doesn’t replace leaders. It amplifies them.
What Changes When Coaching Gains Context
- Coaching becomes individualized and grounded in actual behavior
- Risks surface early instead of at end of quarter
- Forecasting becomes credible and driven by buyer signals
- Reps gain time back since they aren’t reconstructing deal history
- Leaders coach what matters: alignment, momentum, objections, stakeholder coverage
- Coaching shifts from performance theater to performance engineering
The Modern Sales Environment Demands Context
Sales has changed dramatically:
- Bigger buying committees
- Longer cycles
- More noise
- Higher scrutiny
Intuition cannot keep up. Experience cannot keep up. Content coaching cannot keep up.
