The Impact of Sales Coaching Programs Matters

One of the most effective ways to improve sales performance is through the impact of sales coaching programs designed for your specific sales strategy and unique sales culture.  Based upon over 800 sales training measurement projects, we know that sales coaching is the one of the greatest leverage points to raise the performance of your sales team.  But it is surprising how few sales managers recognize the impact of sales coaching and how few know how to lead, manage, and coach their teams to higher performance.

The Research Behind the Impact of Sales Coaching Programs

Our organizational alignment research found that effective sales coaching improves sales performance (defined by meeting or exceeding quota) by a 4-to-1 margin compared to sales reps who receive inconsistent or ineffective sales coaching.  If you are a sales leader or sales manager, you should be spending at least 25% of your time coaching one-on-one with your sales reps. Though you were probably promoted to sales manager because of your stellar performance as an individual sales rep, now your responsibility is to achieve team sales goals. Your success is now dependent upon the success of others.  Your objective as a sales leader is to build a high performing sales team. It is up to you to see that your sales reps are performing at their peak.

The Steps to Create Impact of Sales Coaching Programs

1. Assess Your Sales Team’s Effectiveness
   First you need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team. This can be done through a standard training needs assessment or a sales leadership simulation assessment process.  The objective is to diagnose key gaps of your current sales team against a proven profile of the critical few sales skills, competencies, and behaviors that you know work in your particular marketplace.
2. Follow a Proven Sales Coaching Process
   Sales coaching should instill confidence and strengthen your relationships with your sales team.  Effective sales coaches focus on one capability and one behavior at a time.  They prepare for sales rep excuses, objections, and concerns.  They focus on helping their sales reps to achieve their personal and professional goals in a way that helps their ideal target clients to succeed.  They let sales reps self-assess where they are and use customer-based data to guide discussions.
3. Develop a Sales Improvement Plan
   Effective one-on-one sales coaching should result in an agreed to and customized individual development plan and process to improve the necessary sales skills, behaviors, knowledge, and results.  This may include customized solution selling training, business sales training, sales presentation skills training, or sales negotiation training to close identified skill gaps.as with any behavior change, follow up to see that the new behaviors are becoming a part of the sales rep’s new process. Reinforce the desired behavior and praise the effort toward improvement. Slowly but surely, your sales coaching will show the results you seek.

The Bottom Line
Your sales coaching methods should not be the same for every rep. Some will need more hands-on guidance than others. Where there is a lack of proficiency, your coaching is needed. Where a sales rep’s performance is high, your interest and praise is appreciated but over-involvement in their sales process would be a waste of your time and theirs. In other words, spend your sales coaching time where it’s needed most.

To learn more about the impact of sales coaching programs, download 5 Sales Performance Coaching Best Practices