Coaching salespeople is one of the sales manager’s most important roles, especially during economic uncertainty. As purse strings tighten, many businesses are wary of making room in their budgets for unplanned costs even if the product, service or widget you sell is to their benefit.
How do you have strategic coaching sessions with your salespeople to help them adapt to changing markets and continue to perform at a high level?
Here are the three steps to supercharge your sales team through effective coaching.
1. Take Inventory (Data)
Whether you’re at the beginning of the fiscal year, near the end or anywhere in between, good sales coaching starts with a clear roadmap to success. As the sales manager, it’s your job to evaluate your team’s progress and the trajectory of each salesperson.
Great sales managers excel at severing the emotional connection to key performance indicators. Instead, put on your white gloves and get forensic with the evidence.
Before coaching your team, it’s critical that you are a gap manager and know how the salesperson is tracking related to their goals. Some examples:
- Examine existing revenue streams, relationships and churn rate
- Evaluate new business generation
- Analyze profitability to ensure you’re maintaining your margins
- Review customer satisfaction metrics.
Equipped with the data, you can identify the areas of improvement for each individual salesperson and ensure your targets are realistic yet challenging.
If your team is on track and you’ve set the bar high enough, take time to celebrate the individual and collective achievement and build momentum towards your stretch targets.
2. Coach to the Gaps (Mind the A and B)
Salespeople thrive when coaching is based on the numbers. Leaving emotion at the door is the best way to help your salespeople push past barriers and boost performance.
To begin, have each salesperson rate their performance in each skill on a scale of one to 10 and compare their self-assessment to the data you uncovered. Involving the salesperson in the process will help you to identify the root cause of the issue and coach accordingly. More often than not, it’s a matter of ability or motivation. Sometimes, it’s both.
If ability is the problem, set goals and create improvement plans to focus on key sales skills and strategies. If motivation is lacking and leading to missed targets, it could be a signal to update your compensation plan. However, if the salesperson’s attitude is the issue, it’s time to coach up or coach out. It’s that simple.
3. Revisit and Revise (Cadence)
Effective coaching is an ongoing process. While training focuses on teachable skills with a clear beginning and end, coaching should be a constant for every sales manager and with every salesperson.
Whether your products are flying off the shelf and your salespeople are hungry to produce profit or you’re trudging through an economic downturn, the overall goal of coaching is to strengthen weaker areas and help your salespeople reach new heights. By taking a forensic approach to data analysis, using quantitative self-assessments and through proactive coaching, you can pinpoint the needs of your team and coach your salespeople to shatter targets all year-round.
At HireMeASalesperson, we’ve spent more than 30 years hiring, training and coaching salespeople in all markets and offer flexible packages to meet your needs. Give us a call at 1-888-966-2284 or contact us online to get started.