MARK ZIDES
MARK ZIDES
Home / Services / Sales and CEO Coaching
Process work fixes the system. Coaching fixes the person running it, which is usually the founder who is still closing every deal that matters, or the revenue leader who has never built the machine before.
The room
Three people, three different engagements. The founder who is still the only closer, the revenue leader promoted into a system nobody built, and the reps working inside it. Which one you are decides the work, and it is settled on the first call.
The founder
Every deal above a certain size still comes to you. Revenue is capped by your calendar and you know it, which is a different problem from not knowing what to do.
What the work isTransferring what is in your head into a team, and then holding you to staying out of it.
The revenue leader
A capable VP of Sales or CRO, new to the altitude, inheriting a motion that was never written down and a forecast nobody trusts.
What the work isRunning pipeline reviews that coach rather than report, and owning a number in front of a board.
The team
Reps who need deal strategy, qualification discipline and the conversations they avoid. Coached through the leader, not around them.
What the work isDeal reviews, call coaching and a qualification bar the team applies without being asked.
The offer
A standing coaching relationship tied to a number somebody is accountable for. Weekly work against live deals and live decisions, the operating rhythm installed around it, and an exit criterion agreed at the start so the engagement is designed to end.
One to one against real deals and the decisions being avoided, plus the pipeline review run as coaching rather than as reporting.
A cadence the business already runs on, so the coaching attaches to the calendar rather than sitting beside it.
What is in the founder's head written down and taught, so the capability stops depending on one person being in the room.
The hour
Not motivation, and not a framework read out loud. Four things, in roughly this proportion, tied to deals that are live and decisions that are pending this week.
The deals on the table now, the hire you are avoiding, the price you are afraid to hold. Real situations, worked through while they are still decisions rather than regrets.
What keeps recurring. Most founders discover their pipeline problem is the same conversation avoided in six different deals.
Where the process is making a person look like the problem. This is where coaching hands off to sales consulting.
One or two commitments, written down, checked at the start of the next session. Coaching without accountability is conversation.
The rhythm
Coaching fails when it is an event. It works when it is a rhythm the business already runs on, so the conversation attaches to real deals and real decisions rather than to a calendar invitation.
Live deals, the decision being avoided, and what was committed to last time. Short, and never a status update.
Coached rather than reported. Deals get advanced, killed or reframed in the room, with the leader running it.
What keeps recurring across deals and reps, and which of it is a person problem rather than a process one.
Whether the leader still needs the seat. The measure of good coaching is how quickly it becomes unnecessary.
The shift
These are the outcomes worth paying for. None of them is a feeling; each is observable from outside, which is how you know whether the coaching earned its place.
The distinction
Coaching develops the person who owns the number. Consulting rebuilds the system around them. Fractional leadership means Mark holds the seat himself for a while. Most engagements start as one and reveal the need for another, which the first call is for.
The syllabus
The same six moves that run a consulting engagement, used here as the syllabus. The leader learns to do them rather than watching them being done, which is the only version that survives your last session.
Learning to find the real constraint rather than the loudest symptom, and to say it out loud in front of the team.
Separating the few levers that move the number from the twenty ideas that only create motion.
Choosing what to fund and what to kill, with the discipline to actually kill it.
Building the cadence, the accountability and the hiring plan that make the motion survive a bad quarter.
Turning what works into something teachable, so the knowledge stops living in one person.
Leading a company that grows without the founder in every decision. The exit criterion for the coaching too.
The choice
Five questions worth asking Mark before you commit, and worth asking anyone else you are considering. The answers here are stated so you can hold him to them.
Coaching sales without having sold produces advice that sounds right and does not survive a real objection.
A coach who only sells coaching will find a coaching problem. Ask what they do when the honest answer is a systems fix.
It should be observable from outside: someone else closing your largest deal, a forecast defended by the leader, a hard conversation actually had.
Coaching without accountability is conversation. There should be commitments, written down, checked at the start of the next one.
A coach with no exit criterion has an incentive problem. The engagement should be designed to become unnecessary.
FAQ ( Here to Help )
Sales coaching is working on the person who owns the number rather than the process around them. For a founder that usually means getting out of every deal; for a new VP of Sales it means learning to run a system they have never built before; for a rep it means deal strategy and the conversations they avoid.
Both, depending on who is in the room. Mark coaches founders and CEOs on how they lead revenue, and revenue leaders on how they run a team. He is not a general life coach, and the sessions are always tied to a number the person is accountable for.
A business coach works on the business as a whole. A CEO coach works on the person running it, usually on the decisions only they can make: what to stop, who to hire, when to let go of the deals. Mark has sat in that seat six times, which is the difference.
Leaders first, and reps through them. Coaching individual reps inside a broken system produces better-spoken versions of the same number. If the process is the problem, sales consulting fixes that first and the coaching sticks afterwards.
Usually a standing rhythm rather than a fixed schedule, built around what the business is going through: heavier through a build or a hire, lighter once the leader is running it unaided. The point is to become unnecessary.
That is the most common finding, and saying it plainly is part of the job. Founder-led selling that worked at two million is usually the exact thing capping growth at ten. The work is transferring what is in your head into a team that can do it without you.
The founder stops being the only closer. The forecast becomes something the leader defends rather than assembles. Pipeline reviews turn into coaching rather than status. And the hardest conversations, on pricing, on underperformance, stop being avoided.
The first call
Thirty minutes on what only you can currently do, and what it would take for somebody else to do it. If the answer is that the process is broken rather than the person, he will say so.