Answer extracted from the The Athena Rebels Podcast — listen to the full episode below.
Why is mentoring and coaching important even for experienced or top-performing salespeople?
No matter where you are in your sales journey, you are always going to need support, mentoring, coaching, and honest feedback. Even world-class athletes at Olympic level maintain multiple coaches to identify blind spots and improve further. Difficult, honest feedback is more valuable than praise because it reveals exactly where you can improve.
The comparison to elite sports is instructive. Top performers across every field—from athletics to business—rely on external eyes and structured guidance. As Lamara Thorne explains in the episode, this principle holds true for sales professionals at every level, regardless of years of experience or track record of success.
Experience, while valuable, creates its own liability: the blind spots that come from doing something the same way for years. A person with 15 or 20 years in sales has developed habits, patterns, and assumptions that they no longer consciously examine. Without external coaching, those blind spots remain invisible. Feedback from a mentor or coach acts as a mirror, revealing what you cannot see from inside your own performance.
The quality of feedback matters enormously. Praise reinforces what you already know you do well; it does not push you toward growth. Difficult, specific feedback—the kind that points out where your approach falls short or where your technique could sharpen—is what drives continuous improvement. This willingness to seek out and act on hard truths is what separates practitioners who stall from those who keep advancing.
"Even the best sports people in the world at Olympic level still have coaches, sometimes multiple coaches, to further improve and identify blind spots."
Lamara Thorne — Strategic Consultant at Pax8 Academy. With 15 to 18 years of sales experience starting from a support role at Nielsen, Thorne has built a reputation as a sales authority. She now mentors others in the Pax8 Academy, helping both emerging and seasoned professionals develop mastery in sales as a deliberate craft.
Continuous improvement in sales is not optional once you reach a certain level of competence—it is essential. Markets shift, buyer behavior evolves, and technology changes. A detailed discussion of how long deals typically take to close reveals that most sales require multiple touchpoints between the fifth and twelfth contact—a reality that demands constant refinement of approach, messaging, and relationship management.
The deeper reason mentoring matters is that sales is not a fixed skill you acquire once and maintain forever. It is a dynamic discipline that requires you to stay curious, to remain open to critique, and to actively seek growth. A top performer who stops seeking coaching is choosing stagnation, even if their current results look strong.
Blind Spots: What You Cannot See Alone
One of the hardest things for any professional to accept is that their greatest weaknesses are invisible to them. A salesperson might think they are building rapport when a buyer perceives them as pushy. They might believe they are listening carefully when they are actually waiting for their turn to speak. These patterns, repeated hundreds of times, become so automatic that they vanish from conscious awareness.
A coach or mentor sees what you cannot. They notice the moment you interrupt, the tone shift when objections arise, the way you frame your solution without fully understanding the buyer's constraints. This external perspective is invaluable precisely because it targets the habits you have stopped noticing. Without it, you plateau.
For a more complete picture of how to identify and address these deeper issues, see the discussion on addressing root causes rather than surface-level challenges in sales.
Key takeaways
- Mentoring and coaching are not luxuries for underperformers—they are essential at every career stage, even for top performers.
- Blind spots—patterns you can no longer see because they are automatic—require external feedback to be identified and corrected.
- Honest, difficult feedback is more valuable than praise because it points to real areas for improvement rather than reinforcing existing strengths.
- Continuous improvement is mandatory in sales because markets, buyers, and competitive dynamics are constantly shifting.
See also
How long does it typically take to close a deal and why is consistent follow-up critical?
Only 2% of sales happen in the first or second contact, with most occurring between the fifth and twelfth contact. Consistent follow-up is critical because most salespeople give up too early.
What is the importance of addressing root causes rather than surface-level challenges in sales?
Deeply rooted challenges are what is most compelling in a sale, whereas surface-level issues are never the actual problem. When you start unpicking the layers, you find the real driver.
How should salespeople adapt their communication style to different personality types?
Sales is fundamentally about psychology and understanding people. The key is to become a chameleon without losing your authenticity, adjusting your approach while staying true to who you are.