Sales coaching is a strategic approach to improving the performance of sales reps and sales success of the organization in general. It is a critical role that sales managers execute but it must be backed by relevant data and sales coaching tools. These sales manager tools help to ensure the right behaviours are replicated among sales reps while eliminating those that don’t work.
Effective sales coaching is pegged on the accurate sales metrics that you can easily generate with the aid of sales coaching tools. Here are 4 categories of sales coaching tools sales managers can use to track sales metrics and drive sales.
· Performance-oriented metrics
The performance of sales reps can be gauged by looking at their productivity. But this is not sufficient as sales managers must dig deeper and assess advanced metrics such as win rate, the average response rate in the case of cold calls and the conversion rate of meetings versus closed deals. Such metrics come from sales manager tools and inspire managers to coach their sales reps so that they can post better results. Sales reps can then use the data to refine their pitch or learn approaches that generate a high response rate.
· Integration capability
There is so much that goes on before a sales rep can close a deal. Talk about sales meetings, follow up emails, phones calls and prospect sourcing among others. Keeping track of all these can be a huge challenge especially if you have to do it manually. However, with the right sales coaching and sales manager tools, you can access a host of information because most of these tools easily integrate with most CRMs to extract data that is rich in helping managers customize coaching sessions for each rep. This ensures you’re working with accurate information.
· Actionable alerts
Some sales coaching software will make it possible for managers to go down to the individual sales rep level so it sends alerts when specific benchmarks or milestones have been attained. This way, both the sales reps and managers are in tune with the progress. Moreover, sales managers can set new targets or adjust the existing ones accordingly.
· Real-time reporting
Nothing beats the ability to track data and generate reports in real-time. This ensures sales managers and reps access feedback for their efforts and spot opportunities for coaching. This is excellent because it is often better to offer to coach while the issue of concern is still fresh as opposed to doing so a week later.
Benefits of Sales Coaching
Using sales coaching tools will no doubt have a huge impact on your bottom line. Even then, the benefits of using sales coaching tools go beyond improving the win rates. They include the following:
Ability to replicate best practices. When you find that a particular sales rep is employing a specific strategy to achieve a better win rate, you can introduce the same to your team members. This will serve as a guide that will eventually have a great outcome not just for your team’s ability to attain their quotas but also drive sales significantly.
Improve employee retention rate. One of the biggest challenges that sales managers have to put up with is a high turnover of sales reps. Although this is usually attributed to the desire for a bigger pay and burnout, lack of opportunities for professional development is also a factor. Thus when managers coach sales reps, then they are likely to stay for a longer period.
Maximize investment in training. Companies often spend thousands of dollars on training sales reps every year. Even then, this doesn’t usually stick because effective training relies on consistent reinforcement that is left for sales managers to accomplish through sales coaching.
Sales managers must look out for sales coaching tools and best practices for sales onboarding that are best suited to simplify and improve their sales coaching techniques. The tools may include educational resources as well as software that they can use independently or in combination.
It is also important that sales managers utilize their sales manager tools to target the right members of their teams, usually the middle 60% as opposed to focusing on the top 20% and the bottom 20%.. Ultimately, managers must share their vision with sales reps so that they too feel that their efforts to the overall success of the company count. This in itself is motivation enough to embrace the coaching sessions and improve their performance.
