Your company’s sales drive your entire business. You can use an effective sales coaching program to improve your organization’s operations and increase sales.
You’re in business to make sales. That’s the goal of every department in your organization, and that’s why every department in your company can be positively affected when you introduce sales coaching.
Today’s business leaders are adapting to a changing buyer landscape, and if you want to remain competitive in today’s online marketplace, you will have to adjust, too.
The best way to increase sales is by using innovative sales coaching techniques. Sales coaching can help your business meet quotas and beat sales metrics. It can also make your business thrive in ways that you wouldn’t expect.
What is Sales Coaching?
Imagine your sales representatives performing better month after month.
Your entire organization grows when your sales team’s performance improves. Through successful sales coaching, your teams can achieve new goals every month.
Performance improvements in your sales department will drive improvements across your company.
Effective Sales Coaching For Your Sales Teams
Sales coaching is different from sales training. When you develop a sales coaching program for your organization, you focus on your team through inclusive and individual methods that help them reach their goals.
The right sales coaching plan will help you train your sales reps on proven strategies and create sales coaching goals that will uncover your sales reps’ performance potential.
The Benefits of Sales Coaching Techniques
Sales coaching has tremendous benefits. Sales coaching will help your team retain and use more of what they learn than a sales training program will.
Through coaching conversations with your sales representatives, your sales team will see benefits like these:
- An increase in knowledge about sales techniques,
- Full utilization of sales enablement tools,
- Improved virtual selling techniques,
- Implementation of new skills,
- Ability to maintain accountability for sales goals,
- More integration between your sales team and marketing team,
- Collaboration with other departments in your company.
Purchase a Sales Coaching Program
You can purchase a sales coaching program and set aside time in your team’s schedule to implement it. Buying a sales coaching program is a cost-effective way to bring sales coaching techniques to your team, including your sales leaders.
Watch your team’s sales performance improve after just a few lessons. Over time, you will see your sales professionals improve because of the benefits of sales coaching techniques.
1. Develop a Framework For a Successful Sales Coaching Program
Develop a framework for your sales coaching process, and your team will have more sales and bring in more revenue for your organization.
How Sales Coaching Works
Sales coaching reinforces training through daily and weekly one-on-ones and team meetings. Your sales reps create a vision during the coaching process that results in them hitting quotas and revenue goals weekly.
Effective sales coaching can change your entire organization. Your core performers will begin to stand out, and you will see a behavior change in all your sales reps.
To implement a sales coaching program, you must introduce it as part of an overall framework.
Coaching Needs To Be Structured
Sports are a perfect example of how coaching needs to happen to create a winning team. When you have structured practices, your team performs better.
Use a coaching template and schedule time for your one-on-ones. When your team knows what to expect, they are better prepared to meet those expectations.
Coaching is Teaching
An essential part of sales management is teaching your team the skills that they need.
Set goals and make it a priority for your team to use those skills. Be available to assess your team and answer their questions.
Coaching Needs to Be Consistent
A coach should have a coaching conversation with every sales rep at least once a week.
Regularly scheduled one-on-ones can help a sales rep’s performance by ensuring they are using their training. It ensures that they create good sales habits and don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over.
Regular meetings will also create accountability around goals and sales data.
Coaching Encourages Self-Reflection
Schedule time to meet with all sales reps every week. The best sales reps will do most of the talking when the sales manager asks open-ended questions to encourage them.
To get a team member to consider their performance, have them give themselves a grade for each week during their coaching session.
2. Train Your Sales Managers To Be Effective Sales Coaches
Who makes the best sales coaches? People who know your sales reps, of course. That’s probably going to be your sales manager.
But it doesn’t have to be. You can also bring in an outside sales coach to meet your sales reps’ needs and help build a sales coaching culture.
Who Are The World’s Best Sales Coaches?
The best sales coaches in the world are innovators like Tom Hopkins and Grant Cardone.
Tom Hopkins founded America’s #1 Sales Trainer and Tom Hopkins International. He has had great success in sales training and has written over 18 books, selling almost 2 million copies.
Tom is best known for his effective sales strategies that have helped millions of salespeople have incredible win rates.
Grant Cardone is considered by many to be the top sales guru. He is a best-selling author known worldwide for Grant Cardone Sales Training University, considered the ultimate sales training course on the internet.
Tom Hopkins and Grant Cardone are among the best salespeople in the world. They took what worked for them and used that to develop professional development opportunities to help other reps succeed in their sales activities.
The best sales coaches have been salespeople and now use their skills to help boost other sales reps’ performance.
The Role of an Effective Sales Coach
A sales coach is not a trainer, even though sales coaching includes training. Sales coaching takes training to another level.
Sales coaching is centered around having effective coaching conversations, which motivate sales reps and help keep them inspired.
What is a Coaching Conversation?
A coaching conversation isn’t a lecture. It’s a two-way conversation between a sales coach and a sales rep. In this kind of dialogue, coaches lead team members to find solutions rather than a sales manager telling salespeople what to do and how to do it.
Coaching conversations can be used during the onboarding process. They are also used when team members miss deadlines, don’t hit their sales quotas, or bump into other obstacles.
Conversations that keep employees on track with their goals are also part of sales coaching. Overwhelmed employees can discuss goal setting and missed deadlines with their sales coach.
Sales coaching works best when employees can talk to their sales leaders about the issues that they are having. It also works when sales coaches speak with their team members about performance improvement.
Use Coaching to Build Confidence
Sports coaches use techniques that encourage and build confidence. When you use sales coaching to assist the people on your sales teams to get better at their jobs, you help them build confidence.
People with confidence are better at selling products and services. Their confidence comes across in all of their conversations, making people feel more at ease.
Create a Sales Plan For Your Sales Reps
Your company has a sales plan, and every person on your team should have a sales plan too. They should know how much they are expected to sell and how they will get those sales.
When their feet hit your sales floor, their plan should fall into place, and they should be given all the tools they need to make sales.
Hire a Sales Consultant to Train Your Sales Manager
If you think your sales manager needs help learning how to bring a sales coaching program to their team, hire a sales consultant to help them.
You can hire a sales consultant to coach your sales managers to implement a more effective sales coaching program.
Consultants usually charge about $150-200 per hour, but they may also give you a monthly rate.
3. Use Sales Coaching Templates To Coach Reps
Setting up a one-on-one coaching plan template to use when meeting with your reps ensures that every meeting has intentionality and purpose.
A coaching template will keep your meetings on track. Your team will see that you value their time because you aren’t wasting it.
Your team will leave their sales meetings with a sense of purpose and know their next steps.
The Benefits of Sales Coaching Templates
A sales coaching template establishes specific objectives, metrics, and goals that you would like to see your team meet.
The needs of the company should drive the objectives that you set.
How to Develop Your Own Sales Coaching Template
Your organization’s sales coaching template will differ from other companies. It will also change according to what skills you are teaching your sales team.
Effective sales coaching isn’t done on the fly. Instead, it takes planning and preparation. Use a template to guide your coaching conversation during one-on-one meetings.
Prepare for meetings with your sales reps to get them the best information. Their time is valuable, and being prepared for meetings makes them more productive.
You can find excellent free sales coaching templates online.
Types of Sales Coaching Templates
Your sales managers can use templates in a variety of ways.
- Sales calls,
- Performance reviews,
- Sales training,
- Skill development.
To maximize sales rep performance, a great sales coach will use a template anytime they deliver sales coaching tips, have one-on-ones, and engage in a coaching conversation.
Using templates in your coaching model is a winning strategy to improve sales. When sales managers invest time in the professional development of their reps, they make more deals and sales.
4. Integrate Your Sales Coaching Process With a Go-To-Market Strategy
Once you have your sales team on board with a sales coaching plan, you can begin to implement a go-to-market sales strategy to increase your chances for success.
Bring Your Sales Team In On Creating a Go-To-Market Strategy
When you include your sales team in these critical sales conversations, you include them in the entire sales process. Inclusion will have a significant impact on their buy-in and their sales performance.
What is a Go-To-Market Strategy?
A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a comprehensive plan that your organization develops to bring a product or service to your customers.
GTMs are more than a marketing plan. They outline the comprehensive plan of how your organization will bring your product to your customer, including your sales plan.
Your company’s GTM strategy outlines the entire process, from identifying your audience and developing buyer personas to creating a marketing plan and sales performance goals.
Step-by-Step Guide to Bring Your Product to Market
- Identify your product as a solution to a problem that it can solve.
- Create buyer personas and messaging based on your target audience whose problem you are solving.
- Research your competition and test your messaging.
- Identify the stages of your buyer’s journey.
- Create a sales plan.
- Make SMART sales performance goals with key performance indicators and clearly defined processes.
Integrate Your Go-To-Market Strategy With Sales Coaching
When you bring your sales managers and sales reps into the GTM conversation, they will be able to create key metrics to enhance your sales pipeline.
5. Use Sales Enablement Tools For Your Sales Teams
If you want to increase your team’s quota and see them meet it, get them some sales tools and show them how to use them.
Sales Enablement Tools for Your Company
The best sales teams have great tools. Get your team the right sales enablement tools and watch them flourish.
Here are a few of the top sales tools that will make your team’s performance improve:
Customer Relationship Management Software
Customer relationship management software keeps track of customer information. CRMs work across your organization to keep everyone on the same page.
With a CRM, you will get dashboards that show data that you can use. Not only can a good CRM track your customers’ information, but it can also tell you when is the best time to engage with them.
CRMs can also bring your marketing and sales departments together to focus on the buyer’s journey, making it easy to create a sales funnel that produces excellent results.
Automated Phone System
An automated phone system can provide several benefits, including automatic dialing, integration with mobile phones, and simple call-transferring protocols.
Content Creation Tools
The perfect content delivered at the right time can make or break a sale. Your team can provide premium content at just the right time with content creation tools.
Invest in Sales Coaching Programs
Sales coaching works.
Sales coaching works best when sales managers take the time to support reps by helping them during sales calls and implementing sales strategies. It motivates salespeople, and it will have a beneficial effect on the greater sales organization.
An effective coaching model is structured and consistent. It will utilize personal development tools and a customized framework to meet your company’s needs.
With the right coaching program, your sales leaders will become excellent sales coaches, and they will be able to use cutting-edge tools to compete at the highest levels in your industry.
Sales coaching works because it creates a culture of learning and performance improvement. When you turn your training program into sales coaching, you get results.