Sales Coaching: A Sales Manager's Most Important Job

Why Sales Coaching is Critical in Management

Sales coaching is the role managers and sales leaders play in developing people, improving performance, and achieving goals. Sales coaching is best thought of as a behavior rather than a task. This behavior focuses on helping team members self-assess and self-discover ways to solve problems and grow.

The objectives of sales coaching are to:

• Assess strengths and areas for improvement
• Provide ongoing feedback
• Develop knowledge and skills
• Change behaviors
• Inspire self-motivation
• Strengthen relationships

Ultimately, successful sales coaching results in an environment where team members feel self-motivated to grow, excel, and take greater responsibility for what they do.

Effective sales coaching is the key to long-term performance improvement and organizational success. In fact, it is the most important job a sales manager has.

In this video, Richardson Sales Performance CMO, Andrea Grodnitzky, discusses the importance of good sales coaching, why sales coaching initiatives often fail, and how successful sales coaching is counter-intuitive.

Learn more about what it takes to be a great sales coach in the white paper: Great Coaching is Counter-Intuitive.

Learn more about what it takes to be a great sales coach in the white paper: Great Coaching is Counter-Intuitive.

Making Sales Coaching a Priority

It takes a certain kind of individual to step into a sales manager role — and an even more unique one to be successful at it. Most sales managers know that they must drive performance with their sales reps if they are ever to have a shot at making their goal.

A team goal simply can’t be achieved by one single sales manager. Yet, sales managers often make Herculean efforts and resort to hero tactics to win deals for their team members.

If you ask a sales manager if mastering sales coaching techniques and skills is an important aspect of their role, most are sure to agree that it is. However, in the fast-paced, modern sales environment it is easy for people to justify not making time for developmental activities.

To truly become effective sales coaches, managers need a way to prioritize coaching in their day-to-day responsibilities. But each seller requires different teaching methods and sales training skills.

Incorporating sales coaching starts with a data-driven method. Not all sellers learn the same or require the same sales skills. With a data-driven approach. This task alone can feel daunting due to time restraints and other responsibilities that the sales manager already has.

This is where data-driven coaching comes in. Data-driven coaching allows managers to access up-to-date analytics on each seller. With this data, they can quickly see what areas need attention and personalize their coaching approach.

Objectives and Benefits of Sales Coaching

The main objectives of sales coaching are to:

1. Accelerate learning
2. Achieve behavior change
3. Improve win rate

All objectives are equally important because they bring about the true benefits of sales coaching. However, most managers tend to focus their attention solely on results.

This is a mistake. To be truly effective sales coaches, managers must prioritize learning and behavior change. Emphasizing these objectives allows for long-term, sustainable growth.

To truly build a sustained and high-performance coaching culture, one must first understand the challenges that prevent success.

Common Sales Coaching Challenges

Developing strong coaching skills starts by recognizing the barriers to sales coaching. This means understanding common challenges to mastering sales coaching and acknowledging why sales coaching is so difficult to master.

When coaching a sales team, sales managers should be aware of the following pitfalls:

• Not "seeing the forest through the trees"
• An innate human propensity to tell
• Natural defensiveness
• Not knowing what effective sales coaching looks like
• Lack of precision
• The struggle for authenticity

To explore these common challenges in greater detail, download the white paper: Great Sales Coaching is Counter-Intuitive.

The next step to becoming a sales coach is to know the difference between effective and ineffective coaching methods.

Effective Sales Coaching Tips

Not all approaches to sales coaching are created equal, they fall on a continuum from directive to developmental.

In directive coaching, the coach serves as an expert, telling the team member what the problem is and what to do to fix it.

Conversely, in developmental coaching, the coach serves as a resource. They ask questions to help the team members self-discover and decide on the best action.

Directive coaching methods are less effective than developmental coaching methods because directive coaching is more about telling or evaluating rather than questioning and developing.

Shifting to a developmental approach requires the manager to change the dynamic with their team members. It requires adjustments to their interactions and approaches to communication. It also requires sales managers to learn when to coach.

Understanding When to Coach

Coaching is more than a formalized coaching plan. Not every action can follow a direct plan and timeline. To truly coach, managers need to know how to find coachable moments in unplanned conversations.

Knowing how to balance the two opportunities will ensure that coaching becomes a part of a sales organization's culture.

Some examples of formalized coaching opportunities include:

• Pipeline reviews
• Opportunity/deal reviews
• Routine one-on-one meetings
• Pre-call planning for a customer meeting
• Customer meeting debriefs
• Team meetings

Some examples of informal sales coaching opportunities include:

• When there are signs that things are off track or not working
• When behaviors have been changed successfully and managers want to encourage the continuation of those changes
• When a manager has had the opportunity to observe a customer interaction or pattern of behavior
• When a manager receives feedback from internal or external sources
• When individual reps ask for help or support
• When follow up is necessary to ensure progress

Sales managers and sales leaders should always be ready to pivot into coaching mode. This makes coaching consistent by encouraging positive behaviors and proactively seeking to improve skills.

Example Sales Coaching Activities and Techniques

Adopting effective sales coaching activities and techniques helps teams move towards more self-motivated behavior. This happens because it meets inherent psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

But to truly become coaches, sales managers need to adopt a specific set of behaviors. These derive from the Coaching Excellence capability in Richardson's Sales Management Capabilities Framework. To achieve coaching excellence sales managers must master the following behaviors:

Prepare for Coaching

Preparation for coaching is both an act and a mindset. Managers need to prepare for planned coaching sessions to:

• Engage team members
• Minimize defensiveness
• Ask thought-provoking questions
• Share thoughtful perspectives, feedback, and ideas

Preparation also helps managers ready themselves to spontaneously pivot into coaching mode when the opportunity presents itself.

Sales Coaching Activity: Preparation for a coaching session is often a matter of a few focused minutes.  When time is limited it is best to focus efforts on thinking through a preliminary assessment of positives, gaps, and desired outcomes, as well as the evidence that supports the assessment.

Open the Coaching Conversation

The human connection between a manager and a team member gives coaching its power. Without mutual respect and trust, learning won’t take place.

Sales Coaching Activity: Sales managers can position themselves for a productive, open, and collaborative interaction by first connecting with the sales team member on a personal and professional level.

Assess the Current State

Improving performance begins with a clear assessment of the current situation. This involves identifying strengths and gaps that represent an opportunities to improve.

However, this shouldn't come from just the sales manager's viewpoint. Managers should first hear the salesperson's opinion of their strength and gaps before offering their own. By allowing sellers to share first, the coaches creates a more open conversation and environment.

From here, the sales manager and the sales professional must align their understanding of the behaviors that need to change. They can achieve this through questioning and listening.

Sales Coaching Activity: One of the biggest traps in sales coaching is when the coach skips asking for the team member’s perceptions or asks just one question, gets a short answer from the team member, and proceeds to give their view. Asking focused drill-down questions to gain a more complete understanding aids alignment.

Analyze and Assess Root Issues

With the seller's background covered, the manager and seller can now create a clear action plan to improve these selling skills.

Analysis helps sales coaches and sales professionals identify the root issue that is preventing the desired behavior. Identifying the root issue is key because there is little value in fixing the wrong problem.

Sales Coaching Activity: Typically, the underlying root issue can be identified as either a knowledge, skill, or will issue, or a combination of the three. These issues are not always related to poor attitude. Many will-based issues are emotionally rooted in fear. Identifying the underlying fear often reveals a lack of skill or knowledge.

To encourage participation, coaches should allow their salesperson too self-discover the root issue of a performance gap. The sales professional should participate in brainstorming solutions, as it results in ownership of the solution. The sales coach serves as a guide, stepping in to evaluate the seller's ideas to figure out which solution is best. 

Sales Coaching Activity: Team members can perpetuate the manager’s telling. They are accustomed to being told, so they ask their managers for answers. Sales managers in coaching conversations must be careful to avoid falling into the role of being an expert that tells.

Master Feedback

Follow up is the job of a sales coach. The goal of follow up is to affect change, create an atmosphere of accountability, and demonstrate commitment to coaching.

Sales Coaching Activity: Recognizing incremental improvement and providing encouragement will motivate the sales professional to continue down the path to behavior change.

Close the Coaching Conversation

Every sales coaching conversation should end in a commitment to specific behaviors and actions that will strengthen performance. This is the time to ensure that the team member is clear on agreed-to actions and next steps that maintain accountability. When closing the conversation on a business topic, sales managers can also take this time to reinforce the relationship on a human level.

Sales Coaching Activity: Avoid apologizing. Many managers have a tendency to apologize at the end of the conversation. This detracts from credibility and reduces accountability. Offer encouragement, and state belief in the team member’s ability to succeed.

Maximize Coachable Moments: 

Coaching isn't always going to be a sit down meeting. The best managers find coachable moments in both planned and unplanned conversations.

Even when time is limited, taking advantage of coachable moments is key to developing a coaching culture. This creates an environment of continuous growth and enhanced performance of your sales team. The moments stem from two situations:

• The manager makes an observation or becomes aware of something
• The salesperson comes to the manager for help to solve a problem

Maximize Remote Coaching:

Gone are the days of physically checking in with sellers throughout the day. In today's selling environment, managers need to adapt their coaching approach for both in-person and remote coaching interactions. Coaches need to create an effective environment for supporting skill development and performance from a distance.

With remote coaching, managers should treat their coaching session just as they would a customer meeting. This begins with preparation, i.e. assessing technology, creating a back up plan, and closing down unused applications.

Importantly, the sales manager must establish presence during the call. They should avoid scheduling the call directly before or after another call. This applies to both the manager's schedule and the seller's schedule. By spacing out the time, it allows a fresh mindspace where both parties can focus on the conversation.

ROI & The Impact of Sales Coaching

A survey of 750 corporations ranked the top 22 factors that drive business results. The survey identified "formal and established sales coaching programs" as the #1, top-ranking factor.

Richardson Sales Performance customers agree. Those who have included sales coaching as part of their sales performance improvement solution have reported a number of positive outcomes.

Cargill is a global corporation that provides food, agricultural, financial, and industrial products. It is the largest privately-held US-based corporation by revenue.

As a training partner, Richardson Sales Performance provides a comprehensive solution that includes a sales coaching training element. The Cargill management team participated in Richardson Sales Performance’s developmental sales coaching training and made use of manager toolkits.

Some of the ROI of their sales coaching and training efforts are:

• 30% Revenue increase among top performers
• 10+ New large accounts acquired within one business unit
• 2x volume reported in one of their largest accounts

Another client, Ferguson, the largest plumbing wholesaler in North America, also saw results from coaching. They achieved a significant impact by developing a stronger coaching culture.

Richardson Sales Performance worked with the Ferguson team to implement a more formalized and standardized sales coaching process. After training the Ferguson team reported the following impact on their business:

• 50 basis point improvement in the trading margin
• 74% of sales team increased sales

Learn more about Richardson Sales Performance’s approach to training sales coaches or contact us today to see how we can create a personalized and effective sales coaching program for your organization.