In recent years, companies, especially B2B companies, have become increasingly curious about the benefits of sales coaching. However, identifying the true benefits for a sales organization and forming an action plan to make an investment in coaching can be difficult without all of the facts.
Have you thought about how to equip your sales team with the tools they need to grow and improve sales before issues arise and impact your business? If so, your team could then maybe benefit from some sales coaching conversations.
Here’s what you need to know about coaching programs and how to effectively train your sales team.
What is Sales Coaching?
Coaching strategies are as unique as sales teams across industries and even between individual businesses. Hence, sales coaching is a program that the experts design to support and enhance your unique sales process.
At 360 Consulting, we offer a 12-month engagement that includes quarterly business reviews, ongoing sales mentorship, sales training, role-playing and executive consulting within the coaching sessions. And all of these will ensure your sales program stays on track and continuously delivers results.
Is this different from sales training? Yes. Where sales training is an event or series of events that enhance education, sales coaching is an ongoing relationship that focuses on optimization and growth. Coaching lays out a solid foundation and then guides your sales reps from the start to finish, with expert advice along the way.
The goal is to support every rep in a way that will enhance their ability and allow them to maximize performance.
With this in mind, it’s important to understand a few things that sales coaching is not:
- telling reps what to do. Rather, coaching will give them the tools to navigate situations on their own.
- ignoring individual strengths and weaknesses of sales team members.
- a one-size-fits-all approach, it must be tailored for each team’s specific goals.
Now, let’s look at who could benefit from this program.
Who is it for?
Sales teams everywhere are struggling with missed goals and unqualified leads, and companies are suffering because of it. Thus, coaching is appropriate for any company seeking long-term improvement from their sales team.
However, it’s important to recognize that it can’t fix everything. For example, if your rep is always late or doesn’t communicate well with team members, that may be a personal issue.
Rather, here’s a look at the issues that sales coaching can fix:
- Missing Quota
- Forecast Inaccuracy
- Poor Pipeline Analysis
- Poor or Inconsistent Deal Qualification
Have you noticed any of these issues within your sales team?
In addition to tackling the problems above, coaching will help with:
- engagement and retention
- productivity
- win rate
- even other issues that commonly plague sales teams.
What Sales Coaches Will Do for Your Team
A sales coach will help your team develop the skills they need to be successful. Through one-on-one coaching, role-play sessions, critical feedback, executive consulting, continued sales mentorship, we are able to guide you to the solution you’re seeking.
Some companies believe that coaching should be done by their sales managers. Do you recall a time when things were challenging and you were the person responsible for guiding a team through those challenging times? Would you have valued an expert to support, guide, coach or simply listen to you and your ideas? Rather than going it alone, it might be a better idea to bring in a dedicated sales coach whose sole job is to help teams develop skills and help your reps enhance their approach to growing revenue, customer acquisition and delivering value in the process.
Are you a sales leader or manager looking for guidance?
Here are a few other reasons why bringing in an outside expert can be beneficial.
Maybe you:
- may not have had the proper training to carry out sales coaching duties.
- don’t have the time to coach and also fulfill your other job duties.
- don’t have access to relevant tools and resources that can enhance the coaching experience.
Does this sound like your situation? It might be time to call in expert support. Having the right person come in to effectively coach your sales professionals could set your team up for long-term success.
Some Benefits of Coaching
There are several benefits to having a sales coach on your side, many of which we have referenced above. However, if you need a little more background to make your final decision here are some of the main benefits of coaching.
1. Improve Win Rates
By honing in on specific opportunities in the sales pipeline and guide reps how to close the opportunity.
2. Enhance Past Training
Companies make significant investment , on sales training each year. While we are advocates and facilitators for sales training, research has found that a lot of short-term training doesn’t stick. To be effective, people need consistent support and reinforcement, which is exactly what sales coaching does.
3. Sharpen Skills
Where sales training may highlight the general development needs, sales coaching is more personalized and targeted in its efforts. This can help team members improve on specific skills and build good habits. In addition, as the expertise of sales reps grows, coaching plans can be updated and modified to grow with them.
The three benefits above just scratch the surface of how coaching can add value to your company and help you reach goals. To be effective, it must be personalized, incorporated into daily and weekly routines, and have a specific purpose that is identified from the start.
Sales coaching has a lot to offer sales teams of all sizes, and is the most effective when led by experts. If you’re interested in learning more about our sales coaching program and how we can help your team grow, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
360 Consulting Can Help
We work well with companies in all industries ranging from small to mid-size enterprises that have large sales teams and multiple managers. We understand that every sales team has unique challenges and needs a custom solution to address them.
Our clients benefit from tapping into the knowledge we’ve gleaned from working with all sizes of companies to help drive successful sales rep performance.
To expedite meeting and exceeding your sales goals, it might be time to call in reinforcements. Schedule your free consultation here to find out how we help sales teams break sales records.