What Every CRO Needs to Hear About Sales Leadership
I’ve had some powerful conversations on the Coach2Scale podcast, but my recent discussion with Kevin McCarthy. CEO of Blind Spots Leadership Development, hit differently. Kevin isn’t just another leadership expert throwing buzzwords at a whiteboard. He’s lived what most of us fear: a complete professional collapse that started not from bad intentions but from blind spots he didn’t know he had.
If you’re a CRO reading this, here’s why you should care.
Kevin was a top-performing sales leader, a real estate powerhouse, and a .com founder. Then he spent 33 months in federal prison for a white-collar crime he didn’t knowingly commit. That’s not drama for drama’s sake. That’s a cautionary tale about the cost of unexamined assumptions, broken communication, and unchecked pressure.
While your managers might not be heading to prison, many are walking blindfolded into preventable failures, taking your numbers, talent, and reputation with them.
Let’s break down what Kevin shared and what it means for your frontline execution.
1. Blind Spots Are the Real Risk Factor in Your Org
Kevin’s thesis is simple and sobering. Most leadership failures come from what we don’t see, not what we intentionally ignore. Blind spots aren’t just personal; they’re systemic. Sales managers are often expected to coach, develop, inspect, and forecast but we rarely check if they’re actually equipped to do it well.
“Good people make bad choices when they operate on assumptions instead of awareness.”
You might trust your FLMs to manage deals, but who’s helping them manage people?
2. The Perception Gap Is Killing Performance
Kevin calls it the “perception gap,” the space between what’s said and what’s heard. For CROs, this is where rep disengagement and manager-rep misalignment start to spiral. Your manager thinks they’re being clear, but the rep thinks they’re being micromanaged. Nobody’s aligned, and the pipeline suffers.
Most coaching problems aren’t coaching problems. They’re communication breakdowns masked as performance issues.
3. We Promote the Stars, Then Leave Them to Struggle
One of Kevin’s hardest-hitting insights is that the most overused leadership model in sales is the battlefield promotion. We take the top rep, make them a manager, and expect magic. However, skill in selling doesn’t translate to skill in coaching, developing, or holding reps accountable. And the data proves it.
Gallup reports that 70% of the variance in team engagement comes down to the manager. Not the comp plan. Not enablement. The manager.
And yet, less than 10% of training investment is spent on managers.
4. Coaching Means Skill Development, Not Deal Inspection
Kevin pointed out that most “coaching” is really just forecasting in disguise. We prep for the board meeting, review the numbers, and talk through deals, but nobody slows down to ask the hard questions about skill gaps, mindset, or behavioral change.
“We don’t coach people. We audit deals.”
If your 1:1s aren’t driving skill development, your forecast might survive, but your team won’t grow. And your B players? They stay B players. Or they leave.
5. Your FLMs Are Overwhelmed—and Under-Coached
This one’s personal for many leaders. Kevin’s been there, and he sees it across every team he advises: frontline managers aren’t lazy; they’re drowning. They’ve got 10 reps each. They’re dealing with tech overload. They’re responsible for driving behavior change but haven’t been taught how to have hard conversations.
“We’re asking people to lead with no framework, no training, and no time. That’s not leadership. That’s triage.”
CoachEm’s own research backs this up. FLMs who use structured 1:1s within our platform consistently outperform those who don’t. Pipeline growth, rep accountability, and coaching consistency all move up and to the right when we give managers the time and tools to do the job right.
If You Don’t Fix This at the FLM Level, You’re Chasing Quarters, Not Building Teams
Kevin’s story isn’t just inspiring; it’s a gut check. As CROs, we love tools. We love dashboards. But the reality is this: culture gets built at the front line, one conversation at a time. If your managers can’t coach, you don’t have a culture. You have a spreadsheet.
Want a stronger forecast? Start coaching the people who drive it.
If you haven’t already, check out the full conversation with Kevin McCarthy on the Coach2Scale podcast. It’s a masterclass in what’s really breaking down inside our sales orgs—and what to do about it.
Need help building a culture of consistent, performance-driving coaching?
Let’s talk: www.coachem.io
