How to Prep for Coaching Sessions with AI Pre-Reads

Every sales manager knows the feeling: it's five minutes before a 1:1, and you're scrolling through a rep's metrics, goals, and past session notes, trying to connect the dots on what to focus on. Good prep can take 15 to 30 minutes per rep. Multiply that across a full team and it makes sense that the prep often gets skipped, which is how coaching sessions slide into status updates.

Ambition's Coaching Pre-Read takes that work off your plate. With one click, it pulls together a rep's performance metrics, goal progress, and coaching history into a single summary, then suggests the questions and approach for your next conversation. You walk in knowing what changed, what's stuck, and where to push.

The Pre-Read lives right inside the session, so your prep is already waiting where the coaching happens.

7 Steps to Generate and Use a Coaching Pre-Read

1. Open the Session You're Prepping For

Pre-Reads attach to the coaching meeting you're prepping for. In Ambition's updated experience, these meetings are called Sessions. If you're on the legacy experience, you'll see them as Check-Ins. Same meeting, different name. Go to Coaching → Sessions (or Coaching → Check-Ins on legacy), use Filters to find the one you need, and click to open it. Starting from the meeting itself means the Pre-Read attaches to the right conversation.

2. Head to the Prep Tab

Inside the session, click the Prep tab. This is your staging area before the conversation starts, and it's where the Pre-Read will live once it's generated.

3. Set the Date Range

By default, the Pre-Read analyzes the last three months of data. That's a solid window for most 1:1s, but you can adjust the start and end dates. Tighten it if you want to focus on what's changed since a recent kickoff, or widen it for a quarterly review.

4. Click Generate Pre-Read

Click Generate Pre-Read and let the AI do the digging. It reviews performance metrics, goal data, and notes from past coaching conversations in the same program or template. Within moments, the summary attaches to the session so you can come back to it anytime.

5. Read It Like a Coach, Not an Analyst

The Pre-Read is organized into five sections: Performance Metric Insights, Goal Insights and Pacing, Coaching Data Summary, Net-New Questions to Ask, and Recommended Approach. Resist the urge to treat it as a report card. Look for the story underneath: a metric that's been sliding since your last session, a theme that keeps coming up, or a win worth recognizing. The goal is to find the root cause, not just the symptom.

6. Dig Deeper with Continue in Chat

Have a follow-up question? Click Continue in chat to ask an AI agent about the Pre-Read directly, like why a trend is moving or how to frame a tough conversation. If you want a fresh take or a different date range, click Regenerate Pre-Read at any time.

7. Build Your Agenda Around One or Two Priorities

The best Pre-Reads end up shaping the conversation, not just informing it. Pick one or two coaching priorities from the summary, pull in a suggested question or two, and focus on behaviors rather than outcomes alone. After the meeting, capture notes and action items so your next Pre-Read has even richer context to build on.

Who can use it: Managers, admins, users with Coaching: All Access, and co-coaches can generate Pre-Reads. The Coaching: Session Pre-Read feature (Coaching: Check-In Pre-Read on legacy) must be enabled. Reps can't view or generate Pre-Reads for their own meetings, and higher-level managers with Executive Visibility can view them but not generate new ones.

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Better Prep, Better Conversations

A Pre-Read doesn't replace your judgment as a coach. It clears the path so you can use it. According to Gartner research, teams using data-driven coaching are 2.2x more likely to achieve quota. When the data gathering takes seconds instead of half an hour, you spend your energy where it counts: on the conversation itself.

As Benjamin Hershorin, Senior Sales Enablement Manager at Paycor, put it, "AI takes the time-intensive thought process out for a sales leader who is balancing multiple roles. Ambition AI will give managers a framework and a path forward that leads to the next right step."

Want to go deeper? Read What Is Ambition's AI Pre-Read and How Does It Work? and AI for Sales Manager 1:1 Meetings, or check the help articles for Pre-Reads on legacy Check-Ins and Pre-Reads on Sessions.

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