Technology
In the life sciences industry, coaching isn’t just a support function — it’s a key driver of performance, engagement and revenue growth. Yet, for many organizations, measuring the return on investment (ROI) of coaching has historically been challenging. Traditional models often rely on subjective feedback, observational assessments and inconsistent documentation, making it difficult to draw a straight line between coaching activities and financial results.
With the emergence of sales coaching platforms powered by artificial intelligence (AI), that’s changing. These tools bring structure, scalability and measurable impact to the coaching process, enabling life sciences organizations to quantify coaching ROI in clear, data-driven terms.
While the value of coaching is widely accepted, its impact is rarely easy to quantify. A Gallup study found that organizations with engaged workforces achieve higher earnings per share and rebound more quickly during downturns. However, converting engagement and coaching activity into hard financial figures remains difficult due to challenges like:
Subjective performance assessments.
Reactive, delayed feedback.
Inconsistent coaching across teams and regions.
Weak or absent financial linkage to key outcomes like revenue, retention or cycle time.
AI-powered coaching platforms introduce objectivity, consistency and real-time visibility into the coaching process. They analyze rep interactions, sales behaviors and engagement metrics to deliver quantifiable improvements in both individual performance and business outcomes.
Objective, real-time performance data: AI removes subjectivity by applying consistent criteria to evaluate coaching, performance and sales interactions. Management and leadership receive unbiased performance scorecards that guide more targeted coaching.
ROI insight: According to RAIN Group’s 2022 Top-Performing Seller Research, sellers are 63% more likely to be top performers when supported by an effective manager, regular coaching and effective training.
Real-time feedback for faster impact: AI delivers coaching insights, allowing managers to focus on skill gaps and enabling reps to adapt messaging and objection handling while opportunities are still active.
ROI insight: According to a Demand Gen Report summary of Gartner research, organizations with a strong sales coaching culture can improve sales performance by up to 8%.
Faster ramp-up for new hires: Onboarding new reps is expensive and time-consuming. AI coaching platforms accelerate ramp-up by delivering consistent, structured feedback aligned to your sales model and selling competencies, helping new hires reach full productivity faster.
ROI insight: Gartner also notes that ramp-up time is one of the most coachable and high-impact phases of the sales lifecycle.
How does AI-powered sales coaching improve team performance? AI coaching platforms drive performance by helping managers deliver more consistent, focused and data-driven coaching. They promote adoption of your sales model, accelerate skills development and support long-term rep growth.
Can AI coaching be customized for different sales teams and therapeutic areas? Yes. Coaching platforms can be configured to align with your unique selling frameworks, therapeutic areas or territory structures — ensuring feedback and evaluations are relevant and meaningful.
Is AI-powered coaching effective for complex, high-value sales environments? Absolutely. These tools are ideal for enterprise and B2B environments like life sciences, where messaging quality, objection handling and clinical knowledge are critical to success.
What kind of data is used to measure AI coaching effectiveness? AI platforms evaluate a range of structured and unstructured data — coaching conversations, field reports, skill scorecards and behavioral trends — to produce consistent, trackable insights across reps and managers.
Can AI coaching reduce new hire ramp-up time? Yes. By reinforcing coaching with real-time data and aligned competency models, AI tools help reps master your sales process and messaging faster — often saving weeks or months in onboarding.
Life sciences organizations invest heavily in their sales model, selling competencies and coaching frameworks. But real business value comes from consistent, team-wide adoption — and that happens through coaching.
Sales managers are critical to that success. With a fully loaded cost of $264,000 per manager, even a mid-sized organization with 50 managers represents a $13.2 million investment. Enabling those leaders with the right tools — like AI-powered coaching platforms — can dramatically amplify their impact. Here are some key metrics to track sales coaching ROI:
Revenue growth & win rates.
Sales cycle acceleration.
Manager coaching efficiency.
Rep retention & ramp-up time.
Adoption of sales model & selling competencies.
Imagine you’re leading a commercial team with 500 reps and 50 managers. With a typical onboarding period of several months, even shaving 30 days off each rep’s ramp time could save your business millions in productivity. Add in the cost of turnover and the hidden cost of unproductive coaching time, and suddenly the numbers get serious.
Here’s how it breaks down using conservative estimates and attributing just 33% of the gains to your AI coaching solution:
Faster ramp-up time: ~$2.44M
Reduced representative turnover: ~$2.97M
Manager time saved: ~$165K
The estimated ROI from an AI coaching solution is $5.58M per year, not including any sales performance gains.
While AI coaching solutions deliver measurable value on their own, there’s even greater potential when they connect with the broader commercial ecosystem, such as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, sales enablement tools, learning management systems (LMS), learning experience platforms (LXP) and training content libraries.
Connecting coaching with other sales and learning systems makes everything work better together. It streamlines how reps and managers engage with content, reinforces consistent messaging and leads to more productive coaching conversations based on real performance data.
AI-powered coaching platforms equip managers to coach more often, more consistently and with greater impact. For life sciences organizations, that means faster onboarding, improved retention, stronger sales execution and higher coaching ROI.
And when sales performance improvements are factored in, the return becomes even more compelling.
Simon Mormen is managing director of Atomus. Email him at Simon.Mormen@atomus.com or connect through www.linkedin.com/in/simon-mormen-2b805613g.
