Before MySalesCoach, performance was moving in the right direction. But Jack knew Leyton wasn't getting close to what the team was capable of.

"We felt we had this unearthed gem of a sales department. We were only really scratching the surface with it."

A lot of the team were graduates. The eagerness to learn was there. What was missing was the structure to develop it consistently. Internal coaching was happening, but it was manager-directed: leaders identified the gaps and told reps what to fix. Jack wanted something different.

"The reason we wanted to use an external provider was that it would be rep-led. These are the problems I'm facing. What's your advice? Rather than a manager saying: this is the issue we're seeing, let us fix it."

He also knew there was a ceiling on what internal leaders alone could deliver.

"There's only so much we can do. A manager is there to coach, but also to manage the team. Various other responsibilities come with that."

The most tangible evidence Jack can point to is promotions. When he sits in promotion interviews, a pattern keeps appearing.

"Nine times out of ten, when I look at the name coming into the interview, they've got a mentor with MySalesCoach. Our promotions in sales development have increased, and I would say 75% of those coming through are being coached by MySalesCoach."

The numbers back it up. In the last quarter, 11 of the 14 reps who hit quota were in coaching. Eight of the ten top performers were being coached.

But what made the difference wasn't just access to coaching. It was how it was framed.

"The way I'd position it is: it's project Sam, or project Ross. It's not project Ross for Leyton. It's just: this is you, this is what we're going to work towards, this is all going to make you better. There's no ulterior motive around performance. It's purely: let's make you better."

Reps felt that distinction. The feedback Jack gets consistently is the same.

"It just feels like it's all about me and making me better. Just for me."

Jack wasn't looking to hand coaching off entirely. He was looking for something that could run alongside what his managers were already doing, at the frequency that internal leaders couldn't sustain alone.

"It allowed us to free up a little bit of our managers' time. They could still coach and reinforce what reps had learned from MySalesCoach, but also focus on their other roles and responsibilities."

He's also clear that bringing in external support isn't an admission that internal coaching isn't good enough.

"I would say I am good at coaching. But if I can get access to 10, 20, 30 different coaches, not everyone is going to resonate with one person. It doesn't show that you're not good at that part of the job. It actually shows that you have the awareness to know you want to make sure development gets the trajectory you want."

Sam was promoted into a leadership position sooner than expected. He was already on MySalesCoach, but the conversations shifted when his role did.

"We've all gone into a position and felt like we're in a little bit too deep. It's working out how to swim, how to tread water again, so you feel comfortable."

What Sam needed wasn't his manager's perspective. He needed someone who had been through the same thing, with no agenda attached to his performance.

"Having that sounding board — not his manager, not myself — of someone who has probably been through exactly the same thing. That was the difference."

The change Jack noticed wasn't just in Sam's results. It was in how he operated day to day.

"In the past it would take him a couple of weeks to even ask if we should try something. Now he comes to me and says: the last couple of weeks I've been doing this. That's a huge difference in that person."

Sam also started bringing ideas back into the team that Jack hadn't worked with before — different communication styles, tighter feedback loops, touch points throughout the week rather than a single coaching session with a follow-up a week later.

"I'm now rolling those out to the rest of the managers. I'm learning from that side as well."

One of the things Jack kept coming back to was the quality of the coaches themselves. When reps came to sessions with real questions about how to approach bigger businesses, different sales cadences, or new conversations, they weren't getting generic answers.

"Nine times out of ten, the people coaching our reps from MySalesCoach have lived and breathed that situation before. They're able to give real examples of the successes they had by doing that, but also what they struggled with and how they got over that hurdle."

That showed up most clearly when reps moved into new roles. Lewis joined as a junior straight out of university, progressed through the SDR team, and got access to MySalesCoach just as he was transitioning into a 360 BD role with no prior experience of it. Within 12 months he was promoted again, this time to business manager. He also picked up BD One to Watch the year before and SD of the Year before that.

"If you ask Lewis what's one of the key things behind where he is now, I'd be surprised if his MySalesCoach mentor wasn't mentioned within the first two minutes."

Ross followed a different path. He had been a leader in the SDR team, then moved into a solo 360 BD role, which Jack describes as daunting for someone who had been purely managing and coaching. Within a year and a half, he was one of Leyton's top ten revenue generators.

"It's not just a year and a half in role. It's the last year where we really saw the trajectory skyrocket with him. And that links back to when he started working with a coach."

The performance impact was the reason Jack brought MySalesCoach in. Tenure was the outcome he didn't expect.

"The key reason we bought MySalesCoach in was to improve performance. But what we've seen is the tenure piece come in, and it's actually probably one of the biggest benefits we've got now."

People aren't leaving because they've stopped growing. When reps are approached by competitors, coaching is now a factor in whether they stay.

"They might not have MySalesCoach at the business they go to. They might not have access to an external coach. They're seeing the value of that as one of our biggest benefits now."

It's changed how Jack uses coaching as a tool. He now puts people on the programme not just when performance needs lifting, but when he wants to keep them.

"We might put someone on because we don't want to lose them. They're great talent. Let's get them on board with an external coach."

One rep Jack added to the programme was good but not someone he had expected to become exceptional. They went through the full promotion pathway.

"That was quite exciting to see. And now I'm getting people in Manchester who weren't on the programme, asking if they can get on it. They're talking about it amongst themselves. They're telling their peers how good it is saying if you're not on it, try and get on it."