More coaching time does not raise win rate on its own. In CSO Insights surveys, the organizations that reported the highest win rates were the ones whose coaching was tied to what the team had been trained to do.
That finding comes from self-reported surveys, and it shows a correlation, not a cause. Treat the numbers below as a direction. Every figure was checked against its source on November 3, 2026, with the link and the date of the data next to it.
What the CSO Insights data shows
CSO Insights asked sales organizations how they run coaching and what win rate they reported, then sorted them into four groups:
- Random: coaching is left up to each manager.
- Informal: guidelines may exist, but nothing is formally implemented.
- Formal: purposeful and fully implemented.
- Dynamic: formal, plus coaching tailored and aligned to the enablement services the team gets.
Here are the win rates two editions of the study reported:
| Coaching approach | Win rate, 2019 study (918 participants) | Win rate, 2018 report (513 organizations) |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic | 55.2% | 57.7% |
| Formal | 48.9% | 54.7% |
| Informal | 47.8% | 48.1% |
| Random | 41.8% | 43.9% |
| Study average | 46.4% | 49.5% |
Sources: CSO Insights, 5th Annual Sales Enablement Study (data collected May and June 2019, page 36) and the CSO Insights 2018 Sales Enablement Report (data collected June to mid-August 2018, page 36). Both read November 3, 2026.
Three things stand out:
- Dynamic coaching reported the highest win rate in both years, and random coaching the lowest. In 2019 the dynamic group was 13.4 points above random and 8.8 above the study average.
- The gap between formal and informal is not stable. It was 1.1 points in 2019 and 6.6 in 2018. The two samples are different, so I would not read a trend into that. I would read it as a sign that scheduling coaching and writing down a process are not what separates the groups.
- The most common approach was the worst one. In 2019, 42.9% of the companies left coaching to each manager, and 12.6% were dynamic.
The same 2018 report found that organizations that agreed they aligned coaching to their enablement services reported win rates 13.5 percentage points higher than those that disagreed, whatever their coaching approach. Its authors also wrote that coaching is not a matter of managing activities, and that limiting it to opportunity discussions or a funnel review is a narrow reading of it.
Does more time help?
The surveys do not answer that directly, but other research points the same way.
CSO Insights asked managers how long they coach. In its 2017 report, which used 2016 data, 42.6% said they coach opportunities for 30 to 60 minutes per person per week, 31% said under 30 minutes, and 26.5% said an hour or more. For skills and behaviors, 45.8% said up to 30 minutes. The report's authors wrote that when managers are not prepared, spending more time on what they see as coaching is not going to improve results, and could do the opposite (2017 Sales Manager Enablement Report, page 25, read November 3, 2026).
Gartner's research on manager types found the same shape in a wider group. In a multiyear study of employees, managers who give continuous feedback were associated with performance up to 8% lower, while a second type, which the study calls Connector managers, was associated with performance up to 26% higher. That study covers employees in general, not only sales (Gartner, Connector Manager, from the 3Q19 Executive Guidance eBook, read November 3, 2026). In a December 2024 Q&A, a Gartner sales research leader said traditional strategies of more training, resources and coaching are not leading to improved performance for sellers who are already overwhelmed by the skills and tools they need (Gartner press release, December 9, 2024).
How much time do managers spend today? Objective Management Group, which assesses sales teams, reported that the average share of time managers actually spend coaching is under 18%, about 7.2 hours in a 40-hour week. Its figure comes from the roughly 250,000 managers in its own assessment database (Dave Kurlan, November 7, 2022, read November 3, 2026). It is a vendor's database, so take it as an estimate.
The math of a coaching week
Time has a cost, and it buys coverage. Here is a worked example for Corvane, a made-up software company. The numbers are assumptions, so replace them with yours.
| Step | Corvane's frontline manager |
|---|---|
| Fully loaded cost of the manager | $250,000 a year (assumption) |
| Share of the week spent coaching | 18% (the OMG average) |
| Yearly cost of coaching | $45,000 |
| Calls held by eight people, four a day | 640 a month |
| Calls heard at two per person per week | 64 a month, one in ten |
Adding hours on top would buy more of the same one in ten. Those calls tend to be ones someone flagged or a deal forced, and a step a person skips on most calls can stay invisible because it never lands in the sample. That is the case for changing what the time is spent against, before adding any.
What to coach against instead
The data says to coach against a standard, so write one down and use it every time:
- A scorecard for each call type, built from your playbook, with steps someone can hear on a recording. Sales call scoring: how to build a scorecard your team uses has templates and a calibration routine.
- Every call scored, not the few someone heard, so the pattern shows up. Software can do the listening. AI sales coaching: what it is and how to run it covers how.
- One focus per person for two weeks, taken from the scorecard step where they lose the most points. Five coaching points in one session are hard to act on.
- A practice round before the next live call, on that same step.
- The same step checked again two weeks later, on the calls after the coaching.
That last point answers the question every coaching program should be able to answer: what did you measure after the session? If the answer is nothing, the hours may be buying a calendar ritual. If the answer is a step score on the next ten calls, you can tell whether the coaching worked, and a few quarters later whether the win rate followed.
For more on how the manager's role is changing, see AI sales coaching vs traditional coaching.