Why Sales Managers Become Admins (And How to Reset the Balance)
In high-performing sales organisations, a manager’s most valuable role is not updating dashboards or chasing reports. You’d be surprised, but it is coaching. Coaching is what drives improvement, encourages strategic thinking, and builds the kind of sales culture that can sustain real growth. And yet, far too often, sales managers find themselves drifting away from this core responsibility.
Instead of developing people, they are triaging data. Instead of unlocking performance, they are consumed by administrative demands.
This shift doesn’t happen deliberately. In most cases, it’s a gradual slide — and one that often goes unnoticed until the effects begin to show in missed targets, stagnant rep development, and growing frustration on all sides.
It’s time to take a closer look at why this happens, what it costs, and how to correct course.
The Unseen Shift from Coach to Administrator
Sales managers rarely make a conscious decision to deprioritise coaching. It usually begins with good intentions: a few urgent reporting requests from senior leadership, a pipeline update needed for next week’s board meeting, or a data hygiene project from RevOps. One task becomes two, then three, and slowly but surely, coaching is squeezed out of the diary.
At first, this doesn’t feel like a problem. Managers are still in close contact with their teams. One-to-ones are happening. Conversations about deals are taking place. Well, here’s the catch: coaching and reviewing are not the same thing. Checking in on a deal’s stage or reviewing call notes is not the same as building the rep’s ability to think critically, plan proactively, or close confidently.
When this distinction is lost, the role of the sales manager is reduced to oversight, not enablement.
Why Managers Drift Away from Coaching
There are a number of reasons why this drift occurs, and none of them are malicious or lazy. In fact, most are entirely understandable.
1. Coaching Feels Less Tangible
Reporting produces immediate, visible outcomes: a slide, a dashboard, a forecast. Coaching, on the other hand, is slower and more difficult to quantify. This can make it feel like a ‘nice to have’, rather than an essential business activity.
2. Pressure from Above
Senior leaders often focus on numbers. Understandably so. But when the pressure for data outweighs the support for development, managers are incentivised to spend their time on what gets noticed.
3. The Comfort of Familiarity
Many sales managers were previously top-performing reps. They know the thrill of a closed deal and the satisfaction of moving quickly. Coaching, by contrast, can feel slow, nuanced, and more difficult to control. And so, without structure or support, it’s easier to revert to what feels productive in the short term.
The Real Cost of Under-Coaching
When sales managers stop coaching, performance does not remain stable. In fact, it declines. Reps lose clarity, confidence, and momentum. New hires struggle to ramp up. Middle performers plateau. Opportunities slip through the cracks not because of poor products or pricing, but because of unaddressed gaps in skills, mindset, and strategic thinking.
Over time, this affects morale, retention, customer experience, and of course, revenue.
Reclaiming the Role of Coach
The good news is that the drift can be reversed. Coaching can be re-established — not as an add-on, but as a fundamental component of sales management. Here are five steps to make that happen:
1. Conduct a Time Audit
Review your calendar over the past two weeks. Identify how much time was spent on coaching-related activities versus admin, reporting, or reactive tasks. If coaching makes up less than 25–30% of your time, it’s time to reassess priorities.
2. Protect Coaching Time
Coaching should be a fixed, non-negotiable part of the week — not something squeezed into leftover gaps. Block it out, announce it to your team, and defend it from last-minute changes. The more consistently it appears in your schedule, the more seriously it will be taken.
3. Separate Coaching from Pipeline Reviews
One of the most common mistakes is blending coaching with deal reviews. Keep them distinct. Use pipeline meetings to assess progress and metrics. Use coaching sessions to work on behaviours, decision-making, and long-term development.
4. Use a Structured Framework
Good coaching is not a casual conversation. It is structured, intentional, and outcome-driven. Frameworks such as GROW, SPICED or MEDDIC provide a reliable structure for these conversations and ensure they remain focused on development rather than just diagnosis.
5. Measure the Impact
While coaching may not produce immediate outputs, it can and should be measured. Look at skill progression over time, changes in close rates following coaching sessions, and rep feedback on how supported they feel. These are powerful indicators of progress — and ultimately, of performance.
Final Thoughts
The role of a sales manager is complex — and it is entirely understandable that coaching can fall by the wayside amid the daily demands of operations and reporting. But when coaching becomes optional, performance becomes unpredictable.
Re-establishing coaching as a core managerial function is about returning to purpose. It is about recognising that the best sales managers are not merely keepers of data, but enablers of growth.
And the best part? You don’t need permission to make the shift. You simply need to choose, this week, to start coaching again. Deliberately, consistently, and with the impact your team deserves.
