Sales coaching · 1:1 and teams · UK & remote 1:1 and teams · UK & remote

Deals aren't lost at the close. They're lost in the first ten minutes.

I'm Alex James. Fifteen years carrying a number and beating it — as a rep, as a team lead, and as the bloke they sent in on the deals they couldn't afford to lose. Now I coach salespeople to run a process that doesn't depend on luck, charm, or a discount on the last day of the quarter.

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No pitch on the call. If I can't help you, I'll say so in the first ten minutes.

Years on the front line

200+

Salespeople coached

£15m

Closed, personally

Sound familiar

You don't have a talent problem. You have a process problem.

“The pipeline looks healthy. The forecast keeps slipping.”

Deals sit in stage two for months because nobody qualified them properly on day one. A full pipeline isn't a good one.

“Great conversation. No decision.”

Your reps are being liked instead of being useful. Rapport feels like progress right up until the day it doesn't.

“It always comes down to price.”

Price is the objection a buyer reaches for when nobody has built them a reason to pay. It's a symptom, not the disease.

“Our best rep can't explain what they do.”

So nobody else can copy it — and the day they hand in their notice, it walks out of the building with them.

The method

The Four Moves

Everything I coach comes down to four moves, in order. Miss one and the deal leaks — usually weeks before anyone notices it's gone.

Qualify hard

Most reps are far too grateful for a meeting. You'll learn to disqualify early and without apologising for it, so your week goes on the deals that can actually close — and your forecast starts telling you the truth.

Diagnose deeper

Stop demoing. Start diagnosing. The questions that get a buyer to say out loud the thing they haven't yet admitted to their own boss — and why that sentence is worth more than your entire deck.

Frame the decision

Buyers aren't frightened of your price. They're frightened of making the wrong call in front of people who will remember it. Build the business case with them, not at them.

Ask

The uncomfortable bit, done cleanly. A direct ask with no throat-clearing in front of it — and exactly what to do with each of the four answers you'll get back.

Work with me

Three ways in.

All three start the same way: a twenty-minute call where I ask awkward questions about your pipeline. Nothing is a twelve-month handcuff.

One-to-one coaching

For the rep, the founder, or the leader who still carries a bag themselves.

Fortnightly 60-minute sessions

Live call reviews — I listen to your real calls, not role-plays

Deal clinics when something big is on the line

Direct access to me between sessions

From £950 / month

Rolling. Cancel any time.

02 Most asked for

Team programme

For sales teams of three to thirty who keep missing by the same margin.

Twelve weeks of weekly working sessions

Coaching for the managers, not only the reps

A playbook your team writes with me — so they use it

Before-and-after on win rate and cycle length

From £12,000

Twelve weeks · 3–30 people

The sales audit

Start here if you know the number is wrong but not why.

Two weeks, almost no disruption to the team

I listen to calls and sit in on your pipeline review

A written diagnosis in plain English, not a slide deck

The three changes that will move the number first

£2,400

Fixed fee. Credited if you go on to coach.

About Alex

I've been top of the board. I've been bottom of it. The difference was never talent.

I've sold in finance, marketing and recruitment — three industries convinced they are nothing like each other, and which lose deals in exactly the same three places. Good markets and bad ones, including the years everybody else blamed the market.

I treat selling as a science rather than a personality contest. Everything that happens in a deal has a cause, and most of it is settled before the call even starts — in how you qualified, what you bothered to research, and which question you had already decided to ask first. The preparation is the job; the charm is a rounding error.

So I don't teach theory. I've never coached a framework I haven't run myself on a live deal with my own commission on the line. If what you want is a motivational morning and a workbook, there are cheaper options and some of them are very good at it. If what you want is somebody who will listen to your calls and tell you the truth about them, that's the job I'm actually good at.

I work with five one-to-one clients at a time and take on four team programmes a year. That's not scarcity marketing — it's the most I can do while still listening to everybody's calls properly.

Alex James Founder · Alex James Sales Coaching

Results

What they say after.

“He took apart how I qualify, and it was uncomfortable for about a month. Then I stopped chasing work that was never going to close — and my win rate went up without me working a single extra hour.”

Daniel · Founder, High Jump Digital

“Our forecast used to be fiction. Twelve weeks in, the number the team calls at the start of the month is the number we actually land, and that has changed how the whole business plans.”

Rachel Okoye · Sales Director, Kestrel Wealth Management

“Eighteen years in and I was certain there was nothing left to learn. He rebuilt the first ten minutes of my discovery call and I've not run one the old way since. We went from a 22% win rate to 34% in a quarter.”

Tom Beazley · Managing Consultant, Ridgeway Talent

Before you book

The questions I usually get.

If yours isn't here, ask it on the call. I'd rather answer it then than have you wonder about it for a fortnight.

“I've been selling for twenty years. What are you going to teach me?”

Possibly nothing — that's what the first call is for. But the people I help most are usually the experienced ones. They've built habits that worked beautifully in a different market, and nobody has taken those habits apart since.

“We've already done sales training.”

Training is an event. Coaching is a habit. Most training fails for one reason: nobody watches you do it afterwards. I watch. That's the entire difference.

“How quickly will we see something?”

You'll change something in week one. Pipeline quality moves in about a month, because it's mostly about what you say no to. Win rate takes a quarter — that one's honest, not cautious.

“Do you know our industry?”

I've sold in finance, marketing and recruitment. But the mechanics of a human being signing off money they're accountable for don't change much between sectors. The vocabulary does, and I'll learn yours in week one.

“What if it isn't working?”

Then cancel. No notice period, no minimum term, no awkward conversation required. I would genuinely rather you left in month two than stayed for six and told people it didn't work.

Next step

Let's find out if I can help.

Twenty minutes. I'll ask about your pipeline, your team, and where deals actually die. If I can help, I'll tell you how. If I can't, I'll tell you that too — and usually point you at the person who can.

Book a 20-minute call

alex@alexjamescoaching.co.uk +44 7700 900412