There is a good roundup of business coaching statistics doing the rounds, published by Growth Idea and it is worth reading. It gathers about twenty findings from the Institute of Coaching, the ICF, Harvard Business Review, BetterUp and others and the direction of travel is consistent. Coaching works.
I want to take the numbers seriously, and then say something about why they matter more now than they did five years ago.
What the research actually says
A few of the findings stood out to me.
Over 70% of people who receive coaching report improved work performance, better relationships and more effective communication. At one Fortune 500 company, 77% of respondents said coaching had a significant impact on at least one of nine business measures. Around 80% report increased self confidence.
On the money side, the ICF reports that 86% of companies recouped their initial investment in coaching and more. One Fortune 500 study put the return at 788%, and a broader study of Fortune 500 firms found an average return of roughly six times the cost. BetterUp's research on organisations with a strong coaching culture found 27% higher revenue growth year on year and a 225% five year average.
And the one closest to my own work: Harvard Business Review found that sales coaching improves the performance of the middle 60% of a sales team more than any other intervention. The Sales Executive Council found no training investment came close. Strong coaching produced performance gains of up to 19% and even moderate coaching lifted results by 6 to 8% across half the team.
A fair word on the data. A good deal of it is self reported, and some of it comes from organisations that sell coaching, which is worth holding in mind. The 788% figure in particular is a single case study that has been repeated so often it has taken on a life of its own. But the pattern across many independent studies is hard to argue with, and it points the same way every time. People who are coached perform better, stay longer, and lead more confidently.
Why this matters more now
Here is what has changed.
For most of my career, the person who got hired to grow a business brought two things. Deep domain knowledge and a network. Those were scarce, they took twenty years to build, and they justified a premium.
In the last two years, AI has largely commoditised both. Anyone can now research a market to a depth that would have taken a specialist a fortnight. Anyone can map a buying committee, draft a positioning statement, or model a pricing structure in an afternoon. The information advantage is gone and it is not coming back.
What has not been commoditised is the craft. Understanding what a customer is really buying rather than what they say they want. Earning trust in a room. Holding your nerve on price when a cheaper competitor is circling. Knowing which of ten good opportunities is the one that will actually close. Judgement, in other words and the confidence to act on it.
That is exactly what coaching builds and it is exactly what the research keeps measuring. The 19% lift in sales performance is not a knowledge transfer. It is somebody sitting alongside a capable person and helping them get better at the part that can’t be looked up.
So when the market is being reshaped this quickly and the old sources of advantage are evaporating, the honest conclusion is not that coaching is a nice thing to have. It is that the capability inside your business is now the advantage and coaching is the most evidenced way of building it.
Where the coaching argument is usually incomplete
I will offer one piece of friendly pushback on how coaching is often sold.
Coaching on its own asks questions. It builds confidence, sharpens thinking and leaves capability behind and the numbers above show it works. But if the pipeline is thin and the year end is coming, a founder does not only need better questions. They need deals.
The businesses I work with tend to have an excellent product and a commercial function that has never been built properly. Selling has been done by the founder, in the gaps, around everything else. Coaching alone will not fix that quickly enough. Nor will hiring a salesperson into a system that does not exist yet.
What works is doing both at once. Someone leading the selling in the short term so revenue moves, while coaching the founder or the commercial lead so the capability stays in the business when that person leaves. That is the whole idea behind Apex Sales Performance. I act as an outside commercial partner for a small number of firms and the work has three parts that only really function together. I lead the selling as a fractional sales director. I coach you or your commercial lead. And we set the go to market together, who you target, how you position and how you price.
The coaching statistics tell you the second part pays for itself. My own experience is that it pays much faster when it sits alongside the first.
A note on access
The same research contains a figure that should give the industry pause. The average UK executive coaching session costs around £1,110 for two hours, with a range from £500 to £1,475.
For a mid sized company that is a rounding error. For the founder of a six person specialist business, who arguably has the most to gain, it is a genuine barrier. That gap is why I co-founded Perch, which pairs a strategic AI with a vetted community of business coaches so that founders can get to good thinking without a five figure commitment. Different problem, same conviction. I have written about that separately.
If it is useful
If you are weighing up whether to invest in your commercial capability this year, I am glad to talk it through with no obligation and no pitch. Half an hour is plenty, and there is nothing to prepare. Book Here.
David Cheng
Apex Sales Performance Ltd
david.cheng@apex-sp.com
www.apex-sp.com
Statistics referenced are drawn from Growth Idea's roundup of business coaching research, which cites the Institute of Coaching, the International Coaching Federation, Harvard Business Review, the Sales Executive Council, BetterUp and Kabbage.
