Your Top Rep Is Paying for Her Own Coaching. This One Won the EMEA Award.

TL;DR: Virginia Huterok, an account executive at Deel covering the UK market, paid out of her own pocket for sales coaching her company did not fund. Within a year she won Deel's EMEA award for the highest revenue on its newest, hardest-to-sell products for 2025, beating every rep in the region. The shift was executive-level conversations, mapping and naming deal risk early, and confident competitive selling. Her self-funding is the diagnosis: when development stops at product training, your best reps fill the gap themselves or they leave.

Results at a glance

• Award: highest revenue in EMEA for Deel's newer growth products, 2025 (beat every rep in the region)

• Degree of difficulty: those products compete against payroll incumbents with 20+ years in market

• Investment: self-funded, the company did not pay and her manager did not know

• Timeframe: award won within about 12 months of starting coaching

• Rep: Virginia Huterok, AE for the UK market at Deel, 4 to 5 years in sales

Last year, an account executive paid her own money to hire a sales coach. Her company would not pay for it. Her manager did not know she was doing it. Twelve months later, she walked off the Sales Kickoff stage holding the EMEA revenue award for Deel's growth products. She beat every rep in the region, including the ones the company was paying to develop.

Read that again. The rep who self-funded her coaching outperformed the reps the company was investing in. That is a diagnosis, and it is happening on your team right now whether you see it or not.

Why a top rep starts paying for her own coaching

Virginia was already doing well. On paper, her manager and VP saw a solid AE. Underneath, it felt unstable. "It was still a little bit inconsistent," she said. "I felt like how I was doing my work would have been unsustainable. Be a top performer for five years, then completely burn out."

She did not want to become a manager. She wanted a long career as a rep, moving up market, and she wanted a system that would let her stay at the top without burning out. So she went and found it herself. The reps who have been selling longer than 18 months know the difference between product enablement and real development, which is exactly why the best ones start paying to fill the gap.

Why deals that "felt like wins" kept going sideways

The pattern that drove her was the loss she could not explain. "There were deals where the calls went really well, in my view at the time, and then suddenly they went with a competitor, or suddenly it was not a priority anymore," she said. "Pretty dumbfounded, because you think you have done everything."

She also did not trust the noise. "There is so much sales coaching floating around, and you do not know what is effective until you try it. And how repeatable is it? You can win one deal from it, but can you win another ten?" What she wanted was a system she could run anywhere. "How can I be a top seller anywhere I go?"

What Virginia changed: executive conversations, risk mapping, and competitive selling

Three capabilities did most of the work, and none of them are taught in product onboarding.

First, executive acumen. Virginia had been stuck on what she calls "manager-level problems" and transactional, problem-led selling. She learned to zoom out, understand the business and its priorities, and hold high-level conversations with senior stakeholders. On a review of her early calls versus her recent ones, the change reads like a 180.

Second, risk mapping in live deals. "Before, I would feel something was not going right, but I did not address it head on. I almost felt like it would sort itself out, which is obviously not true," she said. She learned to surface and name deal risk while the deal was still open.

Third, competitive selling without the sleaze. "There were competitors I felt quite nervous about whenever they were mentioned. Now I know how to deal with them and still position us competitively," she said. She sells as an unbiased trusted advisor instead of talking down the competition, which raises her credibility across the deal.

The result: the top EMEA award on the hardest products

At Sales Kickoff in February, Virginia won the award for the highest revenue in EMEA on Deel's newer growth products for 2025. Those are the hard ones to sell. Most of Deel's revenue comes from its core product, and the growth products compete against payroll incumbents with 20-plus years in market and far more brand recognition. She sold more of them than anyone else in the region.

What this means if you run a sales team

Virginia's self-funding is the cost no dashboard shows you. Industry turnover in B2B sales runs high, and the quiet driver is development. "A lot of reps are not equipped with the right level of this knowledge. We have enablement on the product, but it very rarely teaches us how to sell," she said. "It is not nice to be a bottom performer. When targets are monthly, it is even more visible."

Here is the part worth sitting with. "I probably would have worked with you sooner if my company had paid for it," she said. Her managers are good, and they are buried. "It is so difficult to expect your manager to coach you an hour a week when there is a billion other things going on." A top rep who is funding her own growth is telling you she is committed to her career. She has not yet told you she is committed to your company. That second part is what you still have to earn.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do top sales reps leave even when they are hitting quota?

They leave when they stop growing, and growth usually stops the moment a company's investment in them ends at product training. Virginia Huterok was hitting her number and still felt her approach was unsustainable, so she funded her own coaching. A rep doing that is signaling she will leave unless the company invests in her development.

What is the difference between sales enablement and sales rep development?

Enablement is product-focused: how the tool works, how to demo it. Development is seller-focused: how to run discovery, handle a competitor, and talk to an executive. Most companies invest heavily in the first and almost nothing in the second, which is the gap Virginia paid to fill herself.

How do you get reps to sell new or harder products?

You build a repeatable selling system that transfers across products, not training tied to one SKU. Virginia wanted exactly that, and she went on to win the EMEA revenue award for Deel's newest growth products, the ones with the least brand recognition.

How do you help a rep who keeps losing deals that felt like wins?

You teach them to map and name deal risk early instead of hoping it resolves. Virginia's deals were going sideways late because risks went unaddressed. Once she surfaced them head on, the deals stopped slipping to competitors.

What should a CRO do if a top rep is paying for her own coaching?

Ask her what gap she is filling, because that answer tells you where your enablement ends. Then stop letting your best people carry that cost alone. Virginia would have engaged sooner if her company had funded it.

Want your whole team selling like Virginia, with executive-level conversations and the confidence to win competitive deals? Book a free Executive Snapshot below. We will look at your pipeline and your real call data, then show you the three best moves to get your team there.