Great sellers aren’t born; they’re made — and they’re made with the help of sales coaching.
For more than 12 years, we’ve had a front-row seat to what great sales coaching can do for sellers, sales culture, and the bottom line. High-quality, meaningful sales coaching is something sellers want, and it’s something managers should prioritize.
However, the Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report revealed this troubling stat: 36% of respondents say their company does not offer coaching right now.
A sales organization that lacks sales coaching is leaving money on the table, and we’d like to change that, starting with this blog post. If you’re a sales or enablement leader looking to roll out sales coaching programs or optimize your current tactics, peruse 10 of our best sales coaching tips below.
1. Establish clear outcomes
In order to start or refine any sales coaching framework, leaders need to cast a clear vision of what success should look like. So, decide which outcomes you’re after, and work backward. Some common goals sales leaders set before they deliver effective sales coaching are:
- Improve productivity: Could your reps accomplish more in less time with better processes? Could they more efficiently navigate their customer interactions without sacrificing quality?
- Increase engagement: Does it seem like your reps are a bit checked out or maybe doing the bare minimum? A coach who cares could be just the re-engagement incentive they need.
- Decrease turnover: This goes hand-in-hand with increasing engagement. Reps who feel invested in and well-supported by their management and leadership are 20% more likely to stay.
- Grow revenue: Are you hoping for higher average close values (ACV)? Maybe stronger win rates? When done well, coaching refines a seller’s natural skills and gives them a chance to work on their weaknesses, leading to better overall company performance.
2. Coach from a place of expertise
To become (and stay) a great sales coach, you’ll need to find a coach or two for yourself. Before you ever start coaching others, seek out enablement and mentoring from admirable, effective sales coaches.
You’ll quickly notice that the way they provide feedback isn’t sporadic or chaotic; it’s methodical, consistent, and deliberate. If you study their ways and learn the sales playbook(s) at your organization inside and out, you’ll deliver feedback that’s exponentially more impactful to the sellers on your team.
3. Provide coaching regularly and in different formats
After you have a good understanding of your goals, it’s time to think about the logistics and frequency of your coaching. The best coaches offer coaching on an ongoing, regular basis, but remember this: Coaching does not always have to happen in live, 1:1 sessions.
In fact, our recent survey of 1,200 GTM professionals found that 76% of people who have quick access to coaching and training content say it keeps them from second-guessing themselves when they’re interacting with customers.
Consider making asynchronous coaching and feedback using a tool like Seismic Learning one of the types of sales coaching you focus on. You’ll be able to create data-driven sales coaching plans that focus on each rep’s knowledge gaps and offer that coaching on a self-serve basis.
4. Practice common sales scenarios
This advice may feel basic, but it’s important: You should practice the most common and most difficult situations sellers face with them. You can do this at scale with automated coaching software, and skip the endless hours of role-play.
With sales coaching software like Seismic Learning, you can ask reps to record and share their latest elevator pitch, or maybe even practice a personalized pitch for a specific persona. Reps can practice during a time that works well for them, and you can evaluate their submissions at a time that works well for you. It’s a win-win.
5. Shadow sellers and provide constructive feedback
We also recommend hopping on live calls with your sales reps every once in a while to evaluate them and provide constructive feedback directly after. As long as you approach this from a place of support and kindness, this is a setting to deliver highly-tailored feedback and get some quality facetime with your reps. This is especially helpful for newer reps who are ramping.
6. Celebrate wins, both publicly and privately
Yep, part of a great sales coaching strategy is celebrating when sellers do outstanding work. This could look like sharing a video snippet from a recent successful call, sending an email or Slack message to the broader sales organization about what a seller did and why it worked, or even sending a DM to that seller to recognize their work and progress.
7. Encourage self-reflection and assessment
A great coach teaches salespeople how to be more self-sufficient, and part of that looks like coaching them well enough that they notice when they do something well or when there’s room for improvement. Offer them frequent opportunities, ideally via sales coaching technology, to evaluate themselves and their performance progress over time.
8. Offer coaching via various channels
In the same way sellers interact with their prospects on phone calls, video calls, in-person meetings, and email, you should do the same. Give your sellers a way to receive coaching and refine their craft on their own time using a learning library of content.
Case in point, our research shows that 79% of people who use enablement technology to give them quick access to content, information, and/or coaching agree that it empowers them to speak to clients from a more informed standpoint. Enablement technology is a critical coaching channel.
9. Don’t be their only coaching resource
We can’t stress this enough: A good sales coach scales their efforts so they aren’t the entire team’s sole source of professional development. Set up peer coaching groups. Encourage sellers to attend training and webinars. Push for your organization to send them to conferences. Recommend books and people who they should add to their network to grow and learn from.
10. Lean on data
The best sales coaching also happens when coaches are constantly asking themselves, “Are my words, actions, and efforts really making a difference?”
In sales coaching specifically, “making a difference” looks like supporting the bottom line and getting reps in your charge closer to quota. With an enablement platform that handles learning and coaching and integrates seamlessly with your CRM, you can easily generate reports to see what kind of training is moving the needle. You can also see where reps are falling short, and this intel can inform your future coaching efforts so you know what to focus on in future months.
Maximize your potential with Seismic Learning
As we’ve mentioned a few times throughout this blog post, Seismic Learning is a loved-by-thousands coaching tool for sales leaders and managers around the globe. It leans on AI to recommend onboarding, training, and coaching materials to managers. Our latest AI-focused research revealed that only 45% of GTM professionals already use AI tools to support their learning efforts. So if you’re ready to get ahead of the curve and amplify your sales coaching techniques with AI, Seismic is the answer.
Ready to learn more about Seismic Learning? We’re ready to chat with you about our sales coaching tools whenever you’re ready.
