What is mentoring?
Mentoring is a longer-term relationship in which an experienced person advises a less experienced one on career growth. The mentor often sits outside the mentee's reporting line, which makes it easier to talk about ambitions and doubts. The US Office of Personnel Management separates the two practices by scope. Coaching targets current performance and skills, while mentoring supports long-term career development.
Why it matters to a revenue leader
In a sales organization, mentoring is how a top seller learns what a manager's job involves before taking one, and how a new manager gets advice from someone who is not grading them. The move from seller to manager is a hard one, and a mentor who has made it can describe the parts no job description covers. For a CRO building a bench in a PE-backed company, pairing strong sellers with managers in other branches is a low-cost way to test interest and readiness before a promotion decision. OPM's guidance also describes mentoring as a support for succession planning and for new hires during onboarding.
Example
A fire and life safety company wants future sales managers ready before the next acquisition. The CRO pairs a few senior sellers with branch managers in other regions for the year. The pairs meet regularly to talk through hiring, pipeline reviews and how to handle a missed quarter. By year end, one seller decides to stay in sales, which is a useful answer to get before a promotion instead of after.
"Which of my future managers has a mentor outside their own chain of command?"
Sources
- Best Practices: Mentoring checked 9 Oct 2026
- Mentoring and Coaching checked 9 Oct 2026