Most companies, small or big, have a sales team that is saddled with the responsibility of converting prospects to achieve sales through the medium of empathy, persuasion, NLP, and a fair bit of common sense. However, most sales departments lack a sales coach, one who can show the team the way to better conversion rates and top sales targets.
Sales Coaching
In most companies, there are sales managers who carry out training or coaching, but this is not how it should be done ideally. Every company, regardless of size, requires a proper sales coach who has the requisite skills to pass on to sales reps. If you are located in Sydney, you can opt for sales training in Sydney for your sales team. It will not cost you big. Rather, take it as a long time investment in personal development that is badly needed for each and every sales rep in your service, in spite of their experience.
Here are the 10 best sales coaching tips:
1. Focusing On The Well-Being Of Reps
Statistics show that out of every 5 sales reps, two will have problems with mental health. Being in sales is a high pressured job as there is the Damocles’ sword of targets hanging over their heads. With COVID-19 being the flavour of the season, the sales rep will have to adjust to the remote work environment and the change in routine whilst adhering to the sales target. Sales coaching in Sydney involve asking open-ended questions to the sales reps like how their day went and how they felt at the end of the day. If done properly with the help of an experienced coach for sales training in Australia, the results will be surprisingly good.
2. Real Stories For Trust-Building
If the sales coaching is to work, the sales coach needs to earn trust. It enables the reps to be truthful and honest about the challenges they face. Effective sales coaches encourage sharing both personal and professional stories so that the process of training the reps becomes as organic as possible. It is alright if the story deals with failure or weakness. The sales coach can also pitch in with his own early sales experiences that are just as authentic, helping reps to identify with the coach.
3. Recording And Reviewing Calls
Back in the day, a sales rep would learn from the calls made by a seasoned and tenured sales executive. This practise is still followed, but with things going virtual, it is a challenge. A good sales coach will employ conversation intelligence software to record and analyse calls, dig out the ones that are really good and share the insight with the sales reps. A sales coach is a curator, he needs to have a list of best practices and a list of things not to do for the team to follow.
4. Emboldening Self-Realization
When the sales coach is doing post-call briefings or one on ones, the sales rep has to be merciless in identifying his or her performance. With this, sales coaches will encourage the reps to evaluate their performance and identify areas that can do with some help. Instead of direct feedback, a sales coach asks open-ended questions to facilitate the rep to self-evaluate. Those reps who can do this successfully will in time be self-aware, which is the first step towards self-confidence and increased sales.
5. Allow Reps To Set Goals For Themselves
An effective sales coach will never set goals for a sales rep. Instead, he will allow the rep to identify his focus areas and set his own targets. This will instil a very strong desire to achieve the goal as it has been self-set. However, in some cases, the rep will not have an answer to a problem area. This is where the rep can be coached on aligning personal and professional goals.
6. One Improvement Area At One Time
Sales coaches, especially the effective ones, work with individual reps to improve one area at a time. They ensure that the rep is not overburdened with improvement tips and jargon. If this is followed, the rep will be focused on work and there will be measurable progress in his development. If there are multiple inputs at the same time, the rep will tend to feel overwhelmed and falter in performance.
7. Create An Action Plan
A top of the line sales coach will have a sales rep to write down a plan of action based on what techniques and tactics he has been taught in the past. The plan should have attainable goals, achievable steps and an action plan. When the sales rep writes out his plan of action, he is crystallizing his thoughts while cementing allegiance to their commitment.
8. The Accountable Sales Rep
Once the action plan has been deployed, the sales reps will have to be accountable for their actions. The sales coach will evaluate their performance over the coming weeks and will ask the reps questions about their measurable progress, current challenges, as well as plans to overcome hurdles. Once the sales rep is accountable, he will be more focused and committed to his/her plan of action.
9. Creation Of Boundaries
The pandemic has sent most if not all sales reps to work from home in a virtual setting. This has drawbacks like continuous emails, phone calls, text messages and video calls that take away the focus from selling the product or service. This confusion can be avoided with boundaries created for your team. The work hours should be clearly defined, and reps urged not to make calls or schedule a sale outside these hours.
10. Opportunities For Professional Development
A huge majority of employees polled in different surveys have said that they will remain loyal to their company if it has professional development plans for its employees. And for a sales rep, his professional development is made possible through the sales coach. If there is a noticeable effort made by the company to improve the skill set of its sales team, it sends out a positive message as a whole.
Conclusion
A well-known and successful sales coach will define the strategies and goals, help sales reps to execute their task effectively, provide adequate guidance where required, develop the knowledge and skills of the reps, as well as motivate the reps to perform at their best without feeling the pressure of sales targets and figures.
