Sales Coaching = Success Coaching
Successful Sales Managers understand that sales and sales training is a process, not an event and they support their people on that journey.
Too many times, sales managers get excited about a sales training event, hoping that it will be the magic bullet to help their salespeople meet their goals. Those are the sales managers who have 1 – 3 day sales training sessions, hoping that after the event everything will magically turn black on the balance sheet.
While training is really important and the right training can sometimes do wonders, it will only be effective if the sales managers support the process and if they are trained accordingly.
Recent studies have shown that it is essential to train sales managers to ensure top performance of a sales team. When sales managers don’t embrace disciplines, how would they be able to coach and guide their teams?
Don’t coach quota
The biggest misconception about good sales management training/coaching is that managers should coach their team to meet quota. While the end result should be to reach (or in the best case scenario exceed quota) the only way for that to happen in a sustaining way is not to coach to a number, but to support best practices. Sales people know when they are behind, they don’t need to be reminded all the time.
If sales people are struggling to overcome objections, they won’t be able to learn it by hearing that they missed the quarter.
And speaking of quarter-end frenzy, which seems to be going on in almost every company. If regular sales training and coaching is ongoing and successful, there is no need to have sales rallies the last week of the quarter. It disturbs the overall process, makes people frantic and leaves a bad impression with the prospects, because sales people come across as desperate. Desperation is a bad sales agent.
Understand strengths and opportunities for growth
Every sales person has unique strengths and opportunities for growth. The same holds true for managers.
Before we even start working with a client, we assess the skill set of the sales team and their management. It’s hard to know what to focus on when there is no benchmark. It’s also impossible to gauge success without knowing where improvement is taking place.
Our Assessment is composed of scenario questions from over 20 years of on-going research and extensive competency modeling, having assessed key performance indicators and best practices of over 1,000 top sales management performers in a variety of industries.
Once a benchmark is established, it is easier pinpoint gaps, understand why some teams are under-performing, identify strengths and areas of improvement and get insight on how to guide your team to become top performers.
The overarching goal is to create a framework where sales people can succeed and sales managers provide the support necessary for that to materialize. This can only happen when sales managers understand the process and back it.
Once transparency is established, it’s much easier to have honest conversations and to coach towards improvement, not a number.
Pipeliner CRM empowers sales managers to coach and mentor with precisions. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.
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