Sales coaching can have a big impact on your team’s performance. One study shows that teams with structured coaching programs experience an 88% boost in productivity and a 28% higher win rate. Most sales managers fully stand behind sales coaching, believing it leads to increased morale and engagement.
Mindtickle’s Poornima Mohandes says effective sales coaching can also lead to revenue growth. When sales reps become better at their jobs, they begin to close more and bigger deals, which directly impacts the bottom line.
How can you help excellent sales reps become even better? Read on. In this issue of PromoPro Daily, we share Mohandes’ top sales coaching tips to help you get the best out of your team.
1. Make regular coaching part of your routine. Mohandes points out that at many companies, sales managers begin as top-performing reps who get promoted. They excel at selling but have less experience leading people. This is why it’s so important to train sales managers. They need coaching so they know how to mentor, teach and encourage others.
2. Take a formalized approach. If you approach sales coaching haphazardly, it’s difficult to see the benefits from each session. Instead, Mohandes recommends having a formal plan, structure and cadence to your sessions. Aim to formalize your coaching approach by making it part of all your 1:1 meetings.
3. Review your reps’ current skills. Before each coaching session, Mohandes suggests reviewing your sales reps’ skill levels against your benchmarks to see their strengths and improvement areas. This helps you identify topics that offer the biggest opportunities for improvement for individual reps so you can focus on these as your top priority.
4. Focus on one thing at a time. It’s tempting to try and improve everything all at once, but it’s better to zoom in one skill or competency at a time. Otherwise, you risk overwhelming the sales rep and you might see smaller improvements. Mohandes advises tracking skill levels over time so you can spot incremental improvements.
5. Don’t coach everyone the same way. Your sales reps are individuals with their own specific strengths and weaknesses. If you coach them all the same, you’ll be wasting valuable coaching time helping them develop skills they may already have. Mohandes says you’ll see much bigger improvements if you tailor your coaching initiatives to your reps’ individual needs.
6. Know the difference between deal and skills coaching. If all your coaching conversations focus on the sales pipeline, you’re only focusing on the short-term. Mohandes recommends adding skills coaching to your discussions to set your reps up for long-term success.
Incorporating sales coaching is a vital part of building a high-performance team. With proper coaching, you can help your reps reach their quotas while encouraging personal growth.
Compiled by Audrey Sellers
Source: Poornima Mohandas contributes blogs for Mindtickle, a sales and revenue enablement platform.
