We’ve been talking a lot about transformational strategies lately. Another one is sales coaching.
What is Sales Coaching?
Sales coaching is the process of providing constructive feedback, training, and practice designed to improve sales performance. If sales is the engine that drives business, coaching is the tune-up.
Sales coaching helps instill a mentality of constant improvement in your team. Just as importantly, it also helps ensure every prospect has a great experience, and every customer is set up for success.
Top-notch sales coaching helps you create an efficient and focused sales team that will take your company to the next level.
If your sales team coaching process isn't clear, you’ve got a clear opportunity to improve that will save resources and improve performance. Win-win!
To start building scheduled coaching, think about moments where your team will need it most. For example, you’ll definitely want to schedule coaching for new sales team members. You’ll also likely want to schedule coaching sessions at a regular cadence with your existing team members.
Another tip to formalize your coaching is to coach for performance improvements that are likely to deliver results for your business, such as:
Do your best to assign metrics to these goals, so that they feel measurable for your sales team.
As you implement more formal structure, make sure to keep an eye on culture. After all, sales coaches should be supportive, encouraging, and trusted sources of guidance.
Predictable sales moments - like demos - are perfect coaching opportunities. However, there are a range of other dynamic coaching opportunities that you can use to keep coaching fresh. You can think about “dynamic” in terms of who is involved in coaching, as well as what criteria might trigger a coaching session.
For example, will you implement coaching when you get close to reaching your goals? What about when the team appears to be falling behind? What format will those coaching sessions take?
For example, you might try group evaluations. In these sessions, team members can provide constructive criticism and positive feedback to each other.
This dynamic approach is successful because it ensures that coaching reflects the reality of your business. Plus, any type of collaborative, shared coaching exercises can help build culture, trust, and accountability across the team.
Sales managers may be skilled sales people themselves, but that doesn't always mean that they're naturally good coaches. When your sales manager isn’t a good coach, it can result in employee churn. That’s why it’s important that sales managers get coaching, too.
Sales manager coaching should help them get better at: guiding performance improvements, motivating sales representatives, building team culture, and prioritizing individual and shared goals.
It may be helpful for managers to look at a few key performance indicators, or KPIs, to guide their coaching sessions. Here at Calldrip, we look at “appointments set” as a KPI before and after coaching to gauge its efficacy. Typically, we see a dramatic increase in appointments set.
Managers should feel comfortable providing both qualitative and quantitative feedback. After all, emotions play a major role in sales.
Examples of qualitative feedback include:
With coaching that supports the entire team, you'll be well-positioned to succeed.
If sales is a priority for your business, sales coaching needs to be part of your performance improvement strategy.
We recently published a free, in-depth eBook full of tips about how to implement and enhance your sales coaching. You can get it here.