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Sales Coaching Yields Big Returns

Everyone wins when you invest your time, effort, and resources to improve your sales team’s performance

There’s one thing that separates great sales managers from the mediocre:  They get out from behind their desks.  Above and beyond any other characteristic, we’ve seen that the sales manager’s active participation in the field is what drives a sales team’s performance upward.  The 2010 Sales Performance Optimization survey by CSO Insights confirmed our observations, describing sales coaching as “the number one key to improved performance.”

Although your time, effort, and resources are best invested with your “A” salespeople, a study by the Sales Executive Council found that B and C salespeople can improve productivity and revenue by at least 17% when they are coached consistently.  So, the better you are at coaching, the higher your company’s revenues will be, resulting in more support for your initiatives, and respect for your team. And here’s another plus:  the CSO Insights survey also found that a manager’s ability to identify salespeople who need coaching is directly correlated with his or her compensation level.  Better coaching equals better paycheck.

The most effective sales coaching requires:

• Evaluating your salespeople so you understand exactly what strengths and weaknesses they bring to the sales role and knowing how to motivate each individual to achieve his or her best.
  
  
• Insisting your salespeople learn and use a linked, sequential sales process.  Salespeople who follow a linked, sequential selling process stand a 93% chance of getting the sale... without one their chances are less than 42%.
  
  
• Going on joint sales calls with your salespeople.  Make them effective by clearly stating goals and objectives, and follow up immediately after each call with a debriefing session.
  
  
• Providing good, constructive feedback in real time, or as close to real time as possible. 
  
  
• Keeping coaching separate from performance appraisal, ensuring that feedback and course-correction are given in a development context, not a punitive one.
  
  
• Facilitating and/or participating in problem-solving discussions related to specific sales issues.  Help salespeople learn from one another and create a culture that rewards the sharing of best practices.
  
  
• Getting your salespeople actively involved in forecasting and anticipating trends in your market(s).  Find ways to be engaged with your organization’s customers – get out there and visit customers yourself, and ensure your salespeople are in touch with their customers even when they aren’t buying.
  
  
• Supporting and encouraging your B and C salespeople, but not at the expense of your superstars.

Coaching is far more than training or taking advantage of teachable moments.  Great coaches have a fundamental belief that their real job – no matter what other responsibilities they may have – is developing their salespeople, collaborating with them to reach ambitious goals and helping them beat their own previous best efforts.  When you develop a coaching mindset and make coaching an integral part of every day’s activities, everyone wins.