Sales coaching

A sales rep has lots of goals: closing deals, hitting quotas, generating more revenue. However, not always do sales managers understand that meeting these goals doesn’t only depend on how skilled their salespeople are. What enhances the success of a sales team is well-planned and effective coaching. 

So what is sales coaching?

Sales coaching is the process that involves organized teaching of sales reps to help them improve their skills, performance, and achieve sales goals. It’s commonly a sales manager’s responsibility that includes:

• Guiding salespeople on the tactics of the sales planning and achieving quotas
• Correcting behaviors that prevent sales reps from the successful performance
• Identifying areas for improvement 
• Providing salespeople with the necessary knowledge 
• Motivating them to self-growth
• Strengthening relations inside the sales team

Importance of sales coaching

Without exaggeration, sales coaching is the most important sales manager’s role. As reported by Sales Readiness Group, managers in high-performing sales organizations usually spend much more time on sales coaching than managers in average and low-performing sales teams:

Let’s find out why sales coaching should be a number-one responsibility of a sales manager in your company:

Sales coaching increases sales productivity

Coaching sales reps with an effective strategy at hand, you may boost your sales organization productivity by 88%. Such gain is achieved due to the individual productivity of salespeople, who’ll maximize the quota attainment of the whole team. 

Sales coaching enhances individual skills

Coaching for sales reps helps them get other necessary strengths such as communication skills, product and service knowledge, psychological background for effective sales prospecting, presentation skills, and so on. 

Sales coaching increases employee engagement and retention rates

A confident 66% of companies claim that the implementation of clever sales coaching programs may grow employee engagement. Meanwhile, 65% of organizations assure it improves the salespeople’s retention rates. 

That’s logical. When a company contributes to developing its employees, they become more loyal and stay with that organization longer. 

Sales coaching increases customer loyalty

Sales coaching isn’t only about making your sales reps more loyal. That may sound incredible but organizations that practice sales coaching see up to 56% customer loyalty growth.

Sales coaching grows sales

Create an environment where salespeople feel motivated to demonstrate top results and get valuable guidance and support on how to overcome challenges. This will increase the chances of closing more deals. In fact, sales organizations claim that effective sales coaching leads to a sales jump by 10-19%.

Sales coaching techniques

Now that it’s clear what makes sales coaching so important for your organization, let’s dive deeper into the sales coaching techniques your company shouldn’t miss a chance of using:

Analyze the sales data

Gathering sales data is a vital part of a company’s routine, provided it’s aimed at success. Having all the information in your CRM, you’ll be able to analyze it and identify those aspects that should be improved in the course of your sales coaching program. 

As a sales manager, you should regularly track conversion metrics to see the progress and compare it with the efforts sales reps have put into achieving quota. For example, you may notice that they are hurrying up to close the deal, but it negatively affects the close rates. So, you’ll need to interfere with the way they conduct cold calls or schedule meetings. 

Customize your sales coaching

No matter how well-prepared you are, be flexible enough to adjust your sales coaching to unexpected issues that may arise within. Your sales reps may communicate their challenges, so be ready to listen and make on-spot corrections.

For example, you may dedicate sales coaching to the practice of overcoming objections but then realize that some sales reps have troubles with cold emails. You’ll need to stop there and tackle the problem with cold emailing. 

Engage sales reps in the improvement process

‘You can lead a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink,’ the proverb goes. Probably not the best comparison, but it works. Your salespeople are your power, but you won’t make them perform better by simply telling them what to do. 

Engage them in a sort of brainstorming. Let them find solutions on how they think they work, how they can improve their results, and what tools or metrics they need to demonstrate better performance. 

Involve best salespeople in sales coaching

You most likely have sales reps you can be proud of: they have more closed deals, know how to reach prospects, and have some tricks up their sleeves. Ask them to share any specifics concerning sales prospecting, messaging, whatnot. 

For instance, if one of your sales reps is good at prospecting on LinkedIn, they can make a presentation to help colleagues master the art. 

Yes, your salespeople are all hunting for meeting quotas and closing deals, but it doesn’t mean the teamwork should be neglected. Sales coaching is about motivating your reps to work in coherence, remember?

Use sales coaching tools

Streamlining your business processes with sales automation platforms like Snov.io, you shouldn’t forget that a sales manager, no matter how skilled and experienced they are, also needs reliable sales coaching tools that would help them keep this practice regular, well-organized, and controllable.

Good sales coaching software may record sales conversations with customers, analyze, and score them on necessary parameters. As a sales manager, you’ll be able to look at those parameters in which reps should be given the most help and training. So, with a sales coaching tool, your approach to salespeople will be more personalized. 

Gong.io, SharpenAX, Allego, now you may find hundreds of sales coaching tools on the market. Your choice should depend on:

• The industry you are doing business in
• The sales channel of your preference
• Your business goals
• Integration possibilities

Wrapping up

If your sales organization is growth-oriented, you should never underestimate sales coaching practices. When done effectively, they can dramatically improve the performance of your sales team and your company in general. As a sales manager, always be ready to dive into the working process of your reps, help them improve their skills, and encourage a positive attitude. Special sales coaching tools will arm you with the necessary functionality. And when it comes to choosing the right sales automation solution for your team, Snov.io will be your optimal combination of made-for-sales features, user-friendly interface, and astounding possibilities, including its compelling freemium you may start using today.