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Sales Coaching
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Sales Coaching Insights

LocalMasters offers a platform and provides strategic insights for your success. Connect with us today for a free personal consultation or if you are interested in implementing Sales Coaching into your workplace. If you need more information first, below are some frequently asked questions that address sales coaching so you have a better understanding of what it is and how it can benefit your work environment.

Fundamentals

Objectives

Implementation

Tracking

Management

References

Methodology
For Success

Step 1

Defining Sales Coaching

Step 2

Importance of Sales Coaching

Step 3

Implementing Sales Coaching

Step 4

Measuring Sales Coaching Success

Step 5

Sustaining Sales Coaching Efforts

Fundamentals

Fundamentals

What is Sales Coaching?

A fundamental goal of every sales business that will never change? Revenue generation. Sales companies will only go as far as their employees will take them. Therefore, how an organization chooses to set their staff up for success directly correlates to that ultimate goal. Sales coaching provides sales reps the opportunity to enhance selling skills and close more deals. Sales coaching delivers results.

Where to focus?

Concentrate your focus on what matters. Leadership in many sales organizations continue to spend vast amounts of time on sales related activities such as forecasting, meetings upon meetings, and selling. While those aspects of the business have their place, too much focus on them defeats the purpose and ends up reducing success, rather than improving it. Leadership that focuses on coaching their sales teams see drastic improvement from their reps – who achieve quotas, versus organizations that choose not to employ coaching, who will continue to have underperforming sales reps that won’t achieve quota.

Quickest Path to Success?

Most sales companies don’t invest in sales coaching due to the following common factors of resistance they face: a general misunderstanding of the benefits of sales coaching, the ‘lack of time’ attitude to implement coaching from management, fear that coaching will be detrimental to sales reps confidence, and baseline confusion on how to coach. Achieve success quicker by identifying and addressing what creates roadblocks inside your organization. Pushing past these barriers will ensure your sales coaching program is backed and supported by your staff and management a like.

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Objectives

Objectives

How Do Sales Coaches Help Reps Strategize?

Top sales coaches know how to help their reps discover their purpose. They provide a framework for goal identification and achievement. Most sales reps have generic goals: meet or exceed their quota, close sales. What they lack is often the proper guidance and support from a successful and experienced professional who can help them reach their full potential.

How Do Sales Coaches Help Reps Execute?

A sales coach sets your sales team up for long term, self sustaining success. Instead of focusing on short term, one-off sales deals, coaches help reps form long term sales habits. Learning new habits can be quite challenging, so the coaching relationship serves as an excellent accountability system to keep sellers in check. Working with their coach, once positive long term sales habits are formed, the sales rep is empowered by understanding the relationship between actions they take and the goals they’ve set. Reps will learn what to do, but perhaps more importantly – what not to do, which leads to the best possible results.

How Do Sales Coaches Advise?

What is the secret to success when it comes to sales coaches and how they advise their coachees? Asking the reps the right questions. Just like sellers must become experts at asking questions to their buyers, coaches are experts at asking exploratory questions.  These types of questions lead the coachee toward self-reflection and critical thinking, ultimately finding their own answers. Additionally, coaches will be able to not only offer advice, but deliver it in a manner that works best for the individual they’re coaching. Some situations may call for direct advice, (do this) whereas other advice might call for a collaborative approach (let’s design a solution process together).

How Do Sales Coaches Help Develop?

During the initial stage of the coaching engagement, good sales coaches will perform a detailed evaluation of their coachee’s sales skillset. Once an assessment has been performed, the coach now has baseline metrics with which to compare against going forward. The key here is for the reps to understand true potential stems from seller ownership. Coaches will help sellers understand that in order to get the most out of themselves, they must believe in their own development. This shift in thinking allows sellers to start to see developmental gaps, which they may have been aware of before, but perhaps were apprehensive to address due to it being perceived as a weakness by peers and management. Coaches provide a safe environment to discuss these skill gaps, reframing them so the seller begins to see them as opportunities for greater levels of success.

How Do Sales Coaches Help Motivate?

While there are basic goals that all sellers have in common, coaches know that every individual has their own unique goals. Coaches navigate their coachees towards identifying and bringing forth their individual goals, and align them with the company’s broader goals. A coach will ultimately train sellers to challenge themselves. At this point, a coach will turn into a reliable tool for positive reinforcement and support, strengthening the seller’s motivation. Knowing someone has your back, cheering you on, and there for you if you falter and you need help? It’s hard to determine exactly how much value a good coach can bring to the table, because they provide so much.

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Implementation

Implementation

How To Build An Effective Sales Coaching program?

To obtain the best results possible from a coaching initiative, organizations must first determine what exactly it is you wish to accomplish from said program. Gain clarity on existing strengths and weaknesses.  Then, identify what skill sets are linked to each. Are there any patterns or shared gaps in development that need to be addressed? The clearer the objectives are, the better the chances of success.

Are People Aware?

If your organization does not know a coaching program exists, then it will not have the desired impact. Get the word out. Participation depends on it. Create company newsletters, send emails. Create talking points in meetings and discussions. Utilize all forms of digital media inside your organization in addition to traditional print media like bulletin boards and signage.

Are You Following Up?

Make sure you actually schedule the coaching sessions. The last thing you want to do is create the program, announce it, find the coaches, and not get sessions booked. You’d be surprised how often this seemingly obvious and simple aspect of coaching does not occur. Most of the time when there isn’t a scheduling system in place upon launch, the coaching program is dead on arrival.

Is Leadership On Board?

This may be the most impactful objective of them all: get your leadership to champion the coaching program. They must serve as ambassadors and cheerleaders for coaching to thrive. If leadership buys in, so will the staff. Management absolutely must lead by example. Coaching will not succeed long term in an organization if it is not supported by executive leadership. Great coaches, a scheduling system and good communication about the program are all important, but without support from the top your coaching program is probably not going to last very long.

What are the Benefits of Sales Coaching?

  • Empower the Team. How many direct reports does a typical sales manager have? Five, ten…twenty? To save time, sales managers resort to telling their reps what to do. This short term solution may work for a while, but ultimately it leads to training dependent sales reps who will learn that problems require their manager to help. Sales managers who become “directors of problem solving” versus a leader who builds and grows their teams will underperform. It will impede progress from staff learning valuable skills, time will be wasted, and confidence will dwindle. Conversely, when sales coaching is injected into teams, they become self reliant, they problem solve, they increase their skills and gain more knowledge. Empowering your staff to achieve more strengthens the team overall and frees up management to pursue strategic objectives and focus on what matters. 

 

  • Increase Selling Skills. Traditional sales training focuses on a broad selection of general sales skills. Sales coaching, on the other hand, is tailored to the individual and focuses on distinct selling skills based on strengths and areas of improvement. The varied approach that coaching offers allows management to work with each member of their team on areas that are relevant to each sales rep’s development. This builds confidence and also helps reps feel like what they do is important and that they matter. Coaching plans can be adjusted as reps develop, transitioning to other skill areas as they progress. 

 

  • Accelerate Closure Rate. When reps receive coaching on how to increase their win rate, they are learning about targeted opportunities – not generic advice about how to close a deal. Coaching pinpoints key aspects such as asking the right questions, so the coachee can formulate solutions themselves, rather than being told what to do. When sales professionals begin to think for themselves about what actions to take in the sales process, they take ownership of the sales process, building their confidence. Closure rates increase when reps learn why deals fall through and apply lessons learned going forward. Sales coaching provides unique opportunities for self realization, reflection, and learning. 

 

  • Mutual Growth. Sales coaching not only builds up sales reps, it also benefits management as well. Managers who develop into coaches begin to see that their role is vastly more important than they had previously realized. Managers grow when they discover how impactful coaching can be. Sales managers stuck in the perpetual cycle of bouncing from one problem to the next can unlock their own and their reps’ potential through a sales coaching program. In this space, they can not only address conflict, improve communication, and inspire their employees – they can also help push forward their sales vision.

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Tracking

Tracking

How Do You Know Coaching Is Working?

Sales coaching, like all programs, will need measurable data in order to evaluate its effectiveness, and make adjustments. A great way to hold an initial evaluation is to compare overall performance of staff who have received coaching versus those who have not after a certain time frame is reached. KPI and other existing performance metrics can also be used to track sales performance, in relation to those who are receiving coaching.

How Do Sales Coaches Improve Reps Productivity?

Organizations who implement sales coaching will see positive spikes in their employee surveys and improved feedback from management regarding staff performance. It’s not uncommon for sales reps who have been paired with a sales coach to see an increase of 70% and above who report individual productivity gains.

Can Coaching Individuals Lead to Overall Organizational Improvement?

Absolutely. Sales coaching elevates performance of individuals. If enough individuals begin to operate at optimized levels – then companies will see a shift in performance as a whole. In order to steer a large ocean liner, you move the wheel with a small course correction. Over time, that ship will begin to turn. Individual change leads to organizational change.

Will Sales Reps Indicate Improvement?

Sales reps who receive coaching will undoubtedly report not only noticeable productivity increase, but also improvement in other skills such as listening, time management, communication, sales process, confidence, motivation, engaging with prospects, and more. A good sales coach will also make the rep feel valued and more connected to the end result of their work. Coaches help reps see that what they do matters.

Can Sales Coaching Impact Engagement?

Without question. Sales reps will feel more connected to the work they are doing. Due to the time, effort and resources coaching takes, those who receive it understand that they are valued and important to the organization. Otherwise, had they not mattered, they wouldn’t have been assigned a coach.  When employees can see that their company is investing in them, they become more engaged.

Does Sales Coaching Affect Retention?

Sales rep retention remains a highly contentious topic. The trend that has occured for over ten years is that sales rep tenure has plummeted.  Most organizations have seen this average decline from 3 years down to 1.5 years. When companies choose to allocate funds towards developing their people, besides improved performance – companies also benefit from staff that stay longer, because they feel cared for and important.

What Tools Are Used to Track Sales Coaching Results?

When it comes to metrics and data for the sales industry, there is no shortage of it. It’s what businesses choose to do with it that makes the difference. 

 

  • Use Integration to Improve Efficiency. Companies use advanced software to help them compile emails and calls that can then be used in coaching programs. Combined with enterprise software that pulls data from other sources, it can place everything into one convenient spreadsheet. Coaches will have the ability to refer to exacting measurements when discussing strengths and weaknesses, enriching the overall coaching experience. 

 

  • Real-Time Tracking. Gone are the days of discussing situations that happened weeks ago. Now, coaching can discuss pressing issues in real time with the data and metrics to refer to. This feedback helps the coaching relationship stay up to date and relevant, ensuring the person receiving the coaching is obtaining maximum value from the process. 

 

  • Diverse Metrics. Everyone is familiar with KPI and the traditional sales metrics. To get the most out of sales coaching, coaches should be gathering data from multiple sources, taking advantage of the wealth of data in order to support their coaching initiatives. 
    • Performance data tracks sales performance and can include velocity, pipeline value, quota completion, win rate, funnel seepage, revenue and deal size.
    • Engagement metrics focusing on customer interaction can include conversions, downloads, demo requests, appointments booked, email responses and opening, pages viewed, feedback from customers, support tickets and social media interaction. 
    • Activity metrics can identify time expenditure including phone calls, emails, demos, prospect generation, and new leads.
    • Cultural metrics can give you real insight into the value of sales coaching, depending on how this data is affected, it will help you identify the impact of the coaching program. It can include rep retention rates, direct feedback, employee satisfaction rates, internal promotion results, sick days taken, levels of stress.

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Management

Management

Unlocking Potential is the Key to a Sustainable Sales Coaching Program

Management and Leadership may not understand coaching’s true purpose. They may in fact think that coaching is just a process where you are telling people what to do.  Sales coaching has the greatest impact when it’s coaches understand that they are helping their reps, rather than teaching them. Managing a successful sales coaching initiative requires a change in approach. 

 

Wellbeing is important. To establish a strong bond between coach and coachee, a focus on overall wellbeing is important to establish early on in the coaching relationship. While overall goals are to improve sales skills, allowing reps to express how they feel is also a critical component of coaching. 

 

Developing Trust. For coaches to have the desired impact, they must establish trust with whom they are coaching. Good coaches are aware that authentic, personal stories about their own experiences are a great way to foster trust. When a rep hears from a manager about how they too struggled with the very issues they are currently facing, they realize they are not alone and feel supported. 

 

Promote Self-Evaluation. Debriefing and self reflection are an essential part of growth and skill development. Coaches should be guiding their sales reps to incorporate self evaluation tools so eventually they can be self-sufficient. Skilled coaches will ask open ended questions to allow their reps to find their own answers. Self awareness is a key component to growth and confidence building. 

 

Goal Setting. The best and most effective goals come from the individual themselves. Remember, a coach should help, not teach. If someone is given goals, they won’t take much ownership or feel connected to them when they reach them. Instead, a good coach will empower the rep to come up with their own goals, and align them with the overall sales goals of the company. Reps will discover that achieving goals that they’ve made themselves leads to improved satisfaction, desire, pride and buy-in to the coaching process.

Company Culture and Behavioral Change

Another benefit that a sales coaching program provides is that it can impact your company culture and act as a catalyst for behavioral change inside an organization. Due to its individual focus, coaching allows a safe environment, space and time to tackle one improvement at a time. Often, companies want to see change and improvement in multiple areas at once.  This leads to reps feeling overwhelmed, and company culture can suffer.  When coaching is brought into the fold, it can greatly improve the atmosphere and culture. Sales reps will feel cared for and important, which drives engagement and strengthens their resolve. By tackling improvement in small increments, with a coach to provide support, reps will find inner strength and gratitude toward the company for offering coaching.

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References

References

Sales Coaching Trends Gaining Attention in 2022

The world has gone through a major change in the past two years. From the COVID-19 pandemic, to global lockdown, remote working, economic recession, all these factors will continue to have an impact on the future of the sales industry, and what sales coaching programs will look like in 2022 and coming years. 

Here are a few trends that companies should pay attention to while rethinking, updating, and developing their sales coaching strategies and initiatives. 

  1. AI in Sales Operations – advances in artificial intelligence will continue to drive sales industry tools in many aspects. Predictive analytics, mining leads, and projecting trends are just a few examples of how AI can improve sales reps effectiveness. Coaches are keying in on how AI is changing the sales landscape and marketing. 
  2. Customer Relationship Management – CRM is another tech based tool that continues to transform the sales industry.  Never before has customer data and personalization been more clearly defined and accessible. Sales coaches will be focusing on helping reps utilize CRM to improve sales now and in the future. 
  3. Social Selling – Social media continues to drive brand advocacy, which has generated incredible returns in the sales industry overall for years.  The social selling trend continues to explode, due to it’s ever increasing ability to personalize every interaction and directly impact customer experience on an individual level. 
  4. Blending Human and Digital Interaction – Tech advancements in data analytics and software combined with social media and automated processes continue to drive change in the sales landscape. Sales coaching can tap into this trend by guiding sales reps toward involving personal interaction. If automation isn’t balanced with the human element of selling, then sales will not rise. People at their core, still want to feel important, and that is achieved through personalized interaction with other humans, combined with streamlining processes through technology.

Sales Coaching Thought Leaders to Follow in 2022

Here are some sales coaching thought leaders who are transforming workplaces with innovation, motivation and encouraging others through their passion and expertise in the sales coaching industry.

Companies with Impactful Sales Coaching Programs

Here are a few examples of companies that have robust and successful sales coaching initiatives.  By implementing sales coaching into their business model, they provide inspiration and a model of just how integral coaching can be to an organization. 

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