coaching has been identified as a key managerial behavior that organizations must promote to develop employees and achieve higher levels of performance. despite this agreement and an increasing interest in coaching, there is still a paucity of studies exploring the impact of coaching on individual performance. this paper presents an empirical investigation from two international field studies, one using b-to-b salespersons working in latin america and the other one using b-to-c frontline employees from a service organization in canada. building on leader-member exchange theory we propose that coaching increases individual performance beyond the potential impact of sales experience and tenure. we find that coaching can explain between 2.9% and 6.2% of the variance in performance when controlling for tenure and experience. the paper makes several scientific and managerial contributions, and also opens new avenues for research.