Sales Coaching Tips & Benefits to Succeed: The Definitive Guide

Coaching ensures each sales team member brings value to all stages of the sale. One way to ease the adoption of new processes is to involve the sales team in developing the training program. This gives them the opportunity to bring their expertise and contribute to the creation of new processes or techniques like a sales pitch or lead qualification.

To keep up with the constantly evolving sales world, competitiveness and efficiency are key. To adapt to these frequent changes and improve their sales performance, salespeople must constantly train. Sales coaching is the ideal tool for managers who wish to help their teams develop their skills and boost their sales prospecting.

What is sales coaching?

What is sales coaching? Sales coaching is the training of sales people to develop their professional skills. This is a long-term process and provides a framework including work methods and advice on how to more easily and quickly reach objectives.

How do I become a good sales coach?

There are several steps to follow to succeed in your sales coaching:

1. Identify the needs of the sales person.
2. Define the objectives of the coaching.
3. Choose the methodology.
4. Monitor the performance of the sales team.
5. Debrief with the sales team.
6. Exchange and share best practices in order to make coaching part of the team culture.

How do you coach a sales team successfully?

Let's take a detailed look at how to coach your sales team.

Identify and understand sales team needs

The best way to start your sales coaching program off the ground is by identifying the needs of your sales team. You'll need to understand what they want and perhaps even help them articulate where they need to improve.
To kickstart this step of the process, observe the team's processes, workflow, and tools to identify the obstacles sales people face at all stages of the sales cycle.

The objectives of coaching

Developing your sales team's sales skills isn't the only objective of sales coaching. Sales coaching also allows you to:

• Identify obstacles and streamline work processes
• Engage, motivate, and retain salespeople
• Improve prospect targeting and lead qualification processes
• Gather information on and optimize the customer journey

What do sales coaches do?

What are the different types of salespeople?

The behaviors and approaches of sales people evolve dramatically depending on a number of factors. For example, a sales person in their first year will operate very differently than someone with five years of experience. Whoever is developing the sales coaching techniques and processes must take these variations into account to successfully coach the team.

• The Hunter: This person loves a challenge and will follow each lead closely until the deal is done. They like autonomy and usually prefer a flexible management style. To adapt to this type of salesperson, be direct and factual. Base your advice on facts and figures, and present the sales person with a few options so they can make their own decision, thus maintaining their autonomy. Finally, don't dwell on their negative points. In this case, it's better to frame feedback on stockings points as ways they can improve.
• The Analyst: This type of sales person is very methodical and data-oriented, and generally disinclined to take risks. Precision is a priority, so they prefer to have time to process new information before making any decisions. Once again, a fact-based approach is best here, and they may benefit from live coaching on their phone calls. Finally, don't forget to acknowledge their precision and how well they know their files.
• The Social Butterfly: This sales person will often consciously or unconsciously seek diplomatic solutions, and they know how to put their prospects, clients, and colleagues at ease. As a manager, you'll have to keep an eye on this type of sales person's time to sale, as they love socializing. Once again, listening into their calls (through double-listening for example) can help, as well as putting pressure on them to get that signature. When managing this profile, speaking inclusively (using “we” or “us” instead of “you”) can be helpful.
• The Unifier: This type of sales person is extremely collaborative, to the point that they may forget their personal goals and put the group first. This can be a source of frustration for the manager–especially because the unifier may step on the manager's toes. For a healthy relationship, boundaries need to be set. To optimize the relationship, boundaries need to be set. But, the manager will do well to remember this type of salesperson is a natural leader, and will be happiest if the manager supports them in their career development and helps them gain the skills necessary to become a manager.

How to be a good sales coach?

There's an important and significant difference between teaching, which allows for the passive acquisition of knowledge, and coaching. Coaching's goal is to help people reach their full potential. When successfully done, coaching allows people to identify their own strengths and what impactful improvements they could make. For managers, coaching isn't always easy. So how do you go about it? What are the qualities and skills you need to become a good sales coach?

• Be a good listener during individual sessions.
• Always ask open questions. They'll open up discussion and potentially lead to interesting insights.
• Help the sales person to identify areas of improvement.
• Provide clear solutions based on the individual salespeople's profile to help them perform.
• Support salespeople's initiatives and motivate them to improve soft skills.
• Be transparent and honest.
• Be proactive.

How to measure the effectiveness of sales coaching

To assess the sales team's progress and the effects of the sales coaching, the manager should look at the following indicators:

• Retention and renewal rate (individual)
• Volume and frequency of additional sales (individual)
• Profitability (individual)
• Number of contracts (individual)
• Percentage of sales team members meeting or exceeding objectives (number of sales)
• The percentage of lost customers
• Satisfaction of sales people with their work, the hierarchy, and the company

Communicate regularly with the sales team

Team workshops and individual interviews are important opportunities for the manager to show empathy and goodwill. And on their side, the salespeople can use these meetings for self-assessment. However, when it comes to giving and receiving constructive criticism, it's important to be prepared adequately. If the manager or coach doesn't have thoughtful and impactful comments ready, and the sales person isn't capable of accepting constructive criticism, the meeting may do more bad than good.

Make coaching part of the team culture

Sales coaching opens up opportunities for the sales coach and sales team to gather valuable individual insights that can be disseminated to the entire sales team. This information-sharing not only makes it easier to adopt best practices, it helps to strengthen team cohesion.

What are the top sales coaching techniques?

There are many coaching methods to improve sales performance. Below you will find a range of the best sales coaching techniques:

Self-diagnose

The sales coach usually identifies areas of improvement and strengths before the coached sales person, especially because the sales coach has an outside view and potentially access to more data. However, if the sales coach just summarizes the sales person's strengths and weaknesses, they'll miss an opportunity to engage the sales person. The sales coach must lead the sales person to identify their strong and weak points on their own. This can be done through questions such as:

• What could you do differently?
• What do you want to focus on today?
• What have you learned from this method?

Personal development

Self-diagnosis logically leads to personal development. After having identified areas of improvement, the coached sales person is then aware of their potential and can plan actions to be implemented. Here again, it is not up to the sales coach to list these actions. As a coach, you should simply guide your sales person with questions such as:

• What do you think you need to do to get to this goal?
• How can I help you achieve this goal?
• What obstacles might you encounter? How could you overcome them?

Setting up an action plan

The sales manager must then create a personalized action plan with the sales person to achieve the objectives set in the previous phase. This action plan should include a calendar with milestones and one to three actions the sales person can start immediately to get the ball rolling.

Motivation

After defining the action plan with your salesperson that will enable them to achieve their objectives, it is time to take care of their motivation. You can keep them motivated by giving them positive feedback and otherwise keeping them engaged. Here are some questions that can help you spark a discussion about that motivation:

• Do you need clarification about this plan?
• How do you feel about all these actions?

Performance monitoring

During the next one-on-one coaching sessions, you will use the sales person's action plan to assess their progress. During these meetings, you can review their progress, encourage them, and give feedback if necessary. When a sales person's actions succeed and bring significant impact, share them with the whole team.

Which tools help with sales coaching?

Here are the different tools that are useful for sales coaching:

Coaching platforms

There are sales coaching platforms entirely dedicated to coaching your sales people. These platforms generally come with modules for:

• Facilitating role plays for customer interactions
• Create and implement action plans
• Monitor performance

They have the advantage of supplying useful and flexible features. Plus, they're often integrated with your business tools.

Coaching tools integrated to Ringover

The Ringover omnichannel communication solution for companies goes far beyond prospecting call campaigns. In fact, Ringover has functionalities designed for sales coaching and performance monitoring:

Call Supervision

Call Supervision is an improved double-listening functionality. With this feature, you can listen to a call in progress and automatically switch to the next one to ensure the quality of the exchanges and collect data that will serve as a basis for individual coaching sessions.

Discrete intervention

Call whispering allows you to speak to your salesperson during a phone call without the customer or prospect knowing. You can intervene discreetly to give advice or share information that could help reassure a prospect or close a sale more easily.

Call Recording

Call recording is a key tool in the sales coach's toolbox. As a coach, you can record the calls of your employees in addition to the double-listening. This recording will serve as a support for your individual interviews and team workshops, giving you valuable soft data points for constructive criticism sessions.

The analytics dashboard

To measure the performance of your employees, Ringover provides you with a range of statistics that include essential performance indicators for a telephone prospecting platform (volume of outgoing calls, pick-up rate, SMS statistics, etc.). You can analyze the performance of your sales representatives at the team and individual levels.

To conclude

Sales coaching is a great way to identify your team's needs, areas for improvement, and strengths. The sales coaching process allows both salespeople and managers to understand their potential and understand how to maximize it.

Sales Coaching FAQ

Why is sales coaching important?

Sales coaching is important because it is an effective way of optimizing sales team performance and increasing the conversion rate. Sales coaching programs put in place consistent individualized sessions whose sole purpose is to provide personalized feedback and advice to sales representatives.
Many sales representatives may turn to their more experienced colleagues for guidance on specific questions. This type of ad-hoc mentoring doesn't provide the kind of long-term support needed to see the significant performance gains attainable with a sales coaching program.

What do sales coaches do?

A sales coach works with individual sales representatives to identify their strengths and weaknesses and develop a long-term plan to help them maximize their potential. A sales coach will also choose tools like software to help the sales team work more efficiently and reach performance goals.

How much does a sales coach cost?

The cost of a sales coach can vary. Public programs can cost from $500 to $5,000, but often these programs lack the personalized attention necessary for a sales representative to optimize their performance.

How can I be a good sales coach?

Sales coaches must strike the precarious balance between enforcing behavioral change and creating a trusting enough relationship that sales people will open up about their shortfalls. The key to being a good sales coach is encouraging the sales representatives to self-diagnose. That means that the sales coach doesn't simply tell the sales representative where they need to improve. Instead, they guide the salesperson through professional introspection by asking open-ending questions. Because the sales coach has created an environment that supports honest conversation, the sales representative will be empowered to take an unflinching look at their shortcomings.

How do you coach a sales call?

First of all, to best coach a sales call you'll need sales tools like call supervision, call whispering, call recording.

1. Don't mention or hand out any disciplinary action during a sales call. Creating a trusting relationship with the salesperson is key to successful sales coaching. A salesperson is under pressure during a phone call, and increasing that stress through disciplinary action could compromise the relationship between yourself and the sales agent.
2. Repetition works. Don't be afraid to go over optimized conversational habits many times. In order to successfully and consistently respond to prospects under stress and on the fly, sales representatives need those good conversational habits to be a true habit.
3. Keep it professional, not personal. Making sure your feedback is constructive, specific, and focused on professional performance is key. You won't alienate the salesperson by saying something they may find offensive or inappropriate, and the salesperson's performance will benefit from the actionable advice.
4. Focus on just two skills per call. Drilling down into a limited amount of skills ensures the salesperson isn't overwhelmed. Plus, if you focus on just two skills at a time, you'll be able to proceed through the salesperson's improvement plan in a methodical manner.

What is the difference between sales coaching and sales training?

The main difference between sales training and sales coaching is a matter of continuity. Sales training is an isolated event or series of events with a scheduled ending. In contrast, sales coaching is an ongoing process without a scheduled end date.