10 Sales Coaching Tips and Techniques to Improve Sales

Poornima Mohandas on April 26, 2024

Effective sales coaching can improve quota attainment by 21% and win rates by 19%. As it significantly impacts your team’s revenue generation, it’s essential to make time for coaching — even in your busiest periods like the end of the quarter.

Sales coaching can only be effective if you know how to coach your reps. Sales managers are busy, meaning companies must provide the tools, training, and resources to help them deliver effective sales coaches without requiring much prep time.

1. Provide regular training for your sales coaches

At many companies, sales managers are often top-performing reps who get promoted into managerial roles. These new leaders know how to sell but have less experience managing a team or leading their reps.

As a result, their coaching efforts are unfocused and less effective than they could be. So, it’s essential to train your sales managers. You need to help them develop their coaching skills so they know how to mentor, teach, and encourage the sellers on their team.

Sales manager coaching shouldn’t be a one-off activity. Instead, it should be an essential part of your onboarding process for sales leaders hired into the organization and reps who have been promoted into leadership roles.

Run sales manager coaching at least a couple of times a year to help sales leaders remember best practices and learn from each other. Add coaching sessions into your annual sales and midyear kick-offs so that managers benefit from coaching sessions at least every six months.

2. Don’t coach at random

Random sales coaching means you have no formal plan, structure, or cadence to your coaching sessions. It’s ad-hoc and sporadic, so it’s difficult for sellers to see the benefits from each session.

Unsurprisingly, ad-hoc sales coaching is far less effective than formalized coaching which happens on a regular basis. Research shows that dynamic coaching (purposeful, formally implemented, and tailored to the needs of your reps) makes a significant difference in sales outcomes. Compared to random coaching, dynamic coaching brings a 27.9% improvement in quota attainment and 32.1% in win rates.

Providing regular coaching for your sales reps can feel overwhelming and like it will be a significant time commitment for everyone involved. But sales coaching doesn’t need to be separate from other meetings and conversations you have with your sellers.

Make it part of your recurring 1:1 meetings so your reps receive coaching interactions regularly. That way, you can help your salespeople make incremental improvements over time rather than trying to make big changes less frequently.

There are many different sales coaching techniques and approaches, but we’ve found the GROW model to be effective and flexible for teams of different sizes. This format is a helpful starting point if you’re not sure how to kick off your coaching conversations:

  • Goal — What are they working toward? What’s their target and what are they hoping to achieve?
  • Reality — What does their current situation look like?
  • Options and obstacles — What options do they have to overcome the obstacles between them and their goal?
  • Way forward — What are the specific next steps they can take to work toward their goal?

3. Understand your reps’ current skill levels

You can’t help your reps develop their skills if you don’t have a current idea of their proficiency levels across each of your core competencies.

Before each coaching session, review their skill levels against your benchmarks to see their strengths and areas where they struggle. This will help you identify topics that offer the biggest opportunities for improvement for individual reps so that you can focus on these as your top priority.

Compare your reps’ performance against the benchmarks and expectations you’ve defined in your IRP. This data can come from multiple sources, such as:

  • Self-assessments of reps against each competency, so you know how they feel about their performance and current capabilities.
  • Scores from training exercises such as quizzes and virtual role-plays and identify the topics where they perform better or worse than average.
  • Call recordings and other interactions with prospects to see their sales skills in action.

Mindtickle’s revenue productivity platform brings all of these insights in one place to determine the readiness of your teams. You can learn more about our Sales Readiness Index here. 

Mindtickle sales readiness index by role

4. Focus on one thing at a time

One of the big temptations with sales coaching is to try and improve everything, all at once. But the most effective coaches focus on improving one skill or competency at a time rather than trying to change everything. If you try and change too many things at once, you’ll overwhelm the rep and will likely see smaller improvements as they have to remember too many new things at the same time.

Help your sellers make targeted improvements in their skill set by prioritizing areas where they’re weakest. By focusing on one skill at a time, your reps have a chance to improve and master that skill before trying to make changes in other parts of their sales process.

Use data from your sales tools to track how your reps are improving over time, to assess when they’ve mastered a core competency and are ready to focus on a different skill.

Mindtickle provides detailed analytics and reports so you can see how reps’ skill levels change and improve. Our sales readiness index helps you set benchmarks for the skill levels of top-performing sales reps and tracks your sellers’ progress against those benchmarks. Learn more about our sales enablement analytics and reports here.

5. Don’t coach everyone the same way

Your sellers all have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, some may excel at negotiation conversations, while others are better at discovery calls.

If you coach all your reps on the same topic, you’ll be spending lots of valuable coaching time helping some of them develop the skills they already have. At best, it’ll be a waste of both your time. At worst, they’ll switch off and disengage with your coaching, damaging the trust and relationship between you and your sales rep.

Taking a one-size-fits-all approach to sales coaching may give you small gains across your sales team. However, you’ll see bigger improvements if you tailor your coaching initiatives to your reps’ individual needs, taking each person’s strengths and weaknesses into consideration.

Creating a personalized coaching plan for your sellers can be a lot of work if you do it all manually. A sales readiness platform gives you the tools to automate much of the scoring, analysis, and planning so you can focus on delivering high-quality, tailored coaching instead of analyzing rep calls and touchpoints.

6. Coach skills, not just deals

When you think of sales coaching, you probably think of targeted conversations to help sellers navigate the specific issues they’re experiencing that may stop them from closing their current deals. But if all your coaching conversations are about their pipeline, you only focus on the short term.

Instead, you should add skills coaching to your conversations. This type of coaching will set your reps up for long-term success by helping them strengthen their core skills and develop the competencies that will help them progress in their roles.

Learn more about the difference between deal and skill coaching.

Our research found that only 24% of sellers receive coaching on skills. But sales managers whose teams consistently exceed quota provide skills coaching monthly (or more frequently if they notice a drop in performance in a specific area.)

Depending on your preferences, you might run one specific session per month on skills coaching. Alternatively, you could incorporate skills coaching into your weekly 1:1s. Start each meeting by discussing any areas reps feel like they’ve been struggling with recently so you can help them improve by giving them relevant follow-up training exercises to work through. Then you can discuss their pipeline and specific deals where they may be facing obstacles. Aim for a 50/50 split, so you’re dedicating enough time to each part of the conversation.

7. Use real examples to make learning tangible

Your coaching will be much more accessible to your sellers if you can use real-life examples to illustrate the topic. Instead of using vague, abstract scenarios, you can discuss your sellers’ skills in the context of a real sales scenario. Sharing real examples from your reps will make it easier for them to understand where they’re doing well and where they can improve.

Using a conversation intelligence product that records and transcribes your sales calls gives you access to a wealth of recordings to use for coaching. Not only can you analyze where a seller may need to improve on certain skills, but you can also highlight what good looks like by showcasing snippets of top call moments in coaching sessions. Giving sellers concrete examples of skills in action helps them replicate and practice themselves.

8. Reinforce coaching with related training activities

Coaching is an ongoing process that helps sales professionals develop and strengthen their skills over time. You’ll need to continually reinforce the concepts and ideas you cover to help reps retain that information and gradually improve their skills.

Follow-ups are an important part of the coaching process. Assign training exercises after coaching conversations to keep reps thinking about their ongoing personal development.

Our research shows that top managers are 3X more likely to assign follow-up activities after their coaching sessions, such as sales training exercises or content to review. Work with your sales enablement team to identify suitable follow-up activities such as:

  • Knowledge checks
  • Virtual role plays
  • Training courses
  • Product content

These exercises should relate to the topics you covered in your coaching sessions to reinforce the ideas and help reps retain the information you shared.

9. Sales managers aren’t the only coaches in the sales team

Nearly a half — 47% — of sales managers say that lack of time is the biggest obstacle to providing sales coaching due to the number of reps they manage. If you’re running a big team, finding enough time in the week to provide coaching and guidance to all of your salespeople can be difficult.

Regular sales coaching shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of team leads or sales managers. Instead, empower your team to support and help each other so you don’t have to do all the coaching.

Manager-led coaching is just one type of sales coaching. There’s also peer-to-peer coaching, where reps coach and support each other. For example, if you have one seller who excels at negotiation conversations, they can share tips and best practices with the other reps on your team.

Additionally, your reps should complete self-coaching to understand their own skill levels, strengths, and weaknesses. They can do this by reviewing call recordings and completing virtual role plays to assess their performance and identify improvement areas.

10. Track performance over time instead of looking for quick wins

Sales coaching aims to help your sellers develop over time to build the skills and competencies needed to progress in their careers. While your deals coaching will immediately help your sellers, skills coaching offers longer-term benefits.

Compare your reps’ skill sets against your ideal rep profile and set target skill levels to work toward in the next three, six, and twelve months. That way, you can see where you expect your rep to be in a year, giving them a long-term view of their personal development.

Support your reps to create long-term goals, for example, by helping them understand the skills they’ll need in order to progress from a business development role to an account executive one or a sales leadership position.

Four benefits of sales coaching

Sales coaching helps your sellers develop the skills they need to be successful. It also offers several benefits to the wider business.

Increases employee retention

Effective coaching can affect employee retention in your sales team by reducing involuntary turnover. With dynamic, regular coaching, reps are likelier to hit their quota and achieve their performance targets. As a result, you’re less likely to have to let them go due to unsatisfactory performance.

Additionally, it can help reduce voluntary turnover, where reps leave because they’ve found a new role elsewhere. Gallup found that the relationship between managers and their team plays a crucial role in employee engagement and satisfaction. Managers “must be upskilled from boss to coach so that they can have honest, meaningful, developmental conversations with their team members.”

If reps feel like their managers are invested in their growth and personal development, they’re more likely to engage with their work and have higher satisfaction levels — and they’ll be less likely to look for other opportunities elsewhere.

Strengthens sales leadership

Coaching is a skill you develop over time. It requires different skills and knowledge from being a sales rep, so if your organization has a culture of promoting from within, you may have multiple sales leaders who struggle with these skills.

Training your sales leaders is essential for turning them into great sales coaches. By coaching the coaches, you help your sales managers acquire the skills they need to motivate, manage, and develop their teams. As a result, managers can deliver a more effective sales coaching program and make a bigger impact on their team’s performance.

Improves sales performance across the team

Effective sales coaching should help all your reps improve their skill set — not just your high performers. This is because you provide tailored, personalized coaching to all team members so that everyone can make improvements in their weakest areas.

As a result, you should see increased performance scores for all your reps, as they can all focus on strengthening their core skills. Rather than having the top 20% of your reps generate 80% of the revenue, expect to see the rest of your reps raise their performances to the standards set by your top sellers. With a strong coaching culture, sellers learn from each other and can make targeted improvements to enhance their overall skills and competencies.

Increases revenue growth

The most important benefit you’ll get from sales coaching is revenue growth. As we’ve seen, dynamic sales coaching makes reps more likely to hit their quota and improve close rates. Coaching makes your sellers better at their jobs and can help turn all your salespeople into top performers.

Put simply, sales coaching improves your sellers’ ability to close deals, which can deliver a tangible boost to your company’s bottom line.

A revenue productivity platform makes running effective coaching sessions for your sellers simple

Providing data-informed, strategic, dynamic sales coaching can be challenging, especially if you manage a large team. A revenue productivity platform can help by automating much of the manual work, like reviewing sales calls and training exercises. With the right platform in place, you can spend more time coaching and supporting your reps and less time on the admin work that goes with it.

Create a Sales Coaching Culture

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This post was originally published in August 2022, updated in July 2023, and again in April 2024. 

How to Achieve Sales Excellence Through Sales Management Training

Poornima Mohandas on April 23, 2024

In business, it’s often assumed that a person who excels as a sales rep will also be successful as a sales manager. As such, top sales reps are often promoted to sales managers and left to find their way into their new roles.

This approach simply doesn’t work.

Success as a sales rep doesn’t guarantee success as a sales manager, as each role requires different skills and qualities. Even the most seasoned sales reps need proper training to be effective sales managers.

When it comes to sales management training, you may have questions like:

  • What is it?
  • What are the benefits?
  • How can you build a more effective program?

Read on as we answer these and other key questions about the role of sales management training in driving sales excellence.

What is sales management training?

A sales manager is one of the most important roles in a company. After all, they are responsible for building, supporting, and leading a team of sellers so they have what it takes to close deals.

A sales manager’s job isn’t easy, especially as sales teams grow in size. According to Gartner, the average sales manager oversees 7.5 sellers.

The number of sellers the average manager oversees
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Sales managers must master a certain set of skills to be successful in their roles.

Of course, sales managers must be experts in the market and their company’s products and services. Typically, these are topics covered in sales rep training.

However, sales managers must also master key management and leadership skills like:

  • Hiring new sales reps
  • Setting sales goals
  • Tracking sales quotas
  • Motivating team members
  • Monitoring sales performance
  • Delivering personalized coaching to sellers at scale
  • Sales forecasting
  • Building sales plans

That’s where sales management training comes in.

It’s training that’s specifically focused on helping sales managers build the skills they need to be effective in their roles.

Common sales manager training topics

Effective sales management training covers various topics, which vary from organization to organization. However, some sales manager training topics are common across all organizations.

Sales coaching

According to research from the Sales Management Association, companies that provide effective sales coaching can see a 16.7% revenue increase. 

Companies that provide effective sales coaching can see a

increase in revenue
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Managing team performance

Sales managers must be trained on the many elements of managing sales rep performance. This includes setting goals, tracking metrics, and delivering feedback to improve sales rep and quota performance.

Leadership

Sales managers set the tone for the entire team. Therefore, sales manager training must include honing managers’ sales leadership capabilities.

Recruiting

Filling open positions isn’t enough. Instead, sales managers must be trained to fill the right roles with the right people.

Sales forecasting

Sales managers are responsible for predicting revenue and accuracy matters. Yet, recent research found that 34% of sales organizations cite inaccurate forecasts and limited predictability in the business as one of their top challenges. Sales management training must incorporate training that enables sales managers to create more accurate sales forecasts.

Communication

Effective communication skills are essential for any sales manager. These leaders must be skilled at communicating internally and with prospects and customers.

Sales management training formats

When you hear the phrase “sales management training,” you might picture a conference room with sales managers gathering to learn about a specific topic. You aren’t wrong. Some sales manager training takes place in person. However, there are other popular sales management training formats.

Training can be live but remote. Everyone participates simultaneously, but they do so from different locations. Many sales organizations also deliver on-demand, bite-sized learning and practice opportunities that sales managers can complete independently.

How does sales management training benefit organizations?

Sales leadership training benefits sales managers. With the right training, sales managers are better equipped to do their jobs well.

However, effective management training also benefits sales reps and the organization.

More effective manangers
Higher-performing reps
Improved retention

More effective sales managers

The most obvious benefit is that it helps create more effective sales managers. Sales managers learn the necessary skills, which means they can be successful in their roles.

In addition, ongoing training helps sales managers feel supported. When they feel supported, they’re more likely to stick around long-term.

Higher-performing sales reps

Sales managers play a key role in the performance of their sales reps – for better or worse.

Take, for example, sales coaching. As we mentioned earlier, effective sales coaching boosts seller performance. But sales managers can’t deliver generic, one-size-fits-all coaching to everyone on the team and expect to see great results. Instead, they need the right training and tools to deliver personalized coaching that addresses the needs of each seller. When a sales manager’s coaching skills improve, so too do their sellers’ performance.

On the flip side, a poor sales manager negatively impacts team performance. One study found that a poor-performing sales manager can cost a team a staggering $3.5M.

Improved sales rep retention

Sales reps leave for a variety of reasons. But often, the sales manager is at last partially to blame. Research tells us that 60% of sales reps are likelier to leave a position if their manager is a poor coach.

A great sales manager ensures employees feel supported and appreciated. When sales reps feel their sales manager is invested in their success, they’re likelier to stick around long-term. That means you don’t have to spend time and money recruiting for vacant roles constantly.

How to create an effective sales management training program

Effective sales management training helps ensure your sales managers have what it takes to build and lead a team of top-performing sales reps. But how can you create a great sales leadership training program? Explore some top tips for building an effective sales management training program.

Determine sales management training topics

Of course, your training program should incorporate training on timely topics, such as new product offerings or a shift in the marketplace. But you should also incorporate evergreen topics.

How should you decide on the right sales management training topics? First, you need to identify the skills and qualities of your most successful sales managers. Then, you can build training focused on helping all sales managers master these key sales management training skills and competencies.

Consider the format of your sales management training

What’s the best format for your sales management training? It depends on the topic and the needs of your organization. Some of the best sales organizations leverage real-time training with bite-sized learning that sales managers can complete independently.

Incorporate reinforcement

Delivering sales management training to those new to the company or the role is important. However, sales leadership training can’t be a one-time event. After all, Gartner research found that 70% of information covered during sales training is forgotten within a week.

Gartner found that

of sales training is forgotten within a week
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Be sure to provide ongoing learning and reinforcement opportunities to ensure your training sticks. For example, you can incorporate bite-sized learning modules to reinforce concepts covered during live training. You can also include quizzes and assessments to gauge mastery of key topics.

Provide opportunities for practice and feedback

A sales manager might complete an entire training series on a specific sales management training topic. But that doesn’t mean they know how to put this knowledge into practice.

Be sure to provide opportunities for your sales managers to practice their new skills. For example, managers might record themselves role-playing a coaching session. The sales manager can then watch the recording to observe their performance. They can also get real-time input via artificial intelligence (AI) on how they can improve. In addition, sales managers can share their role plays with sales leadership and their peers to get feedback on improving their skills.

Include sales certifications

Consider adding a sales certification at the end of some of your sales management programs. Earning a certification is a great way for sales managers to demonstrate that they’ve mastered the skills needed for success.

Coach the coach

The importance of coaching sales reps is well understood. But sales managers need coaching too!

Be sure to incorporate sales managers into your coaching program. Sales managers can be coached by their own manager, a more seasoned sales manager, or a combination of the two.

Leverage the right tools

A well-run sales management training program involves several moving parts. Ensuring you have the right technology to power your sales management training program is important.

There are many tools available today that can help you improve the effectiveness of your sales management program. However, many of these tools address just one aspect of sales management training. For example, a company might use sales training software to develop and deliver training. They may also use a sales content management system to house sales content related to sales management training. That company might use a completely different tool to power its sales coaching program.

Switching between several tools takes time and effort. Furthermore, this “tool switching” negatively impacts productivity.

Instead, consider adopting an integrated sales productivity platform. For example, Mindtickle’s integrated platform incorporates training, sales content, coaching, enablement, and conversation intelligence into one solution.

Measure and optimize accordingly

Once you’ve developed a sales management training program, you can’t put it on autopilot. Instead, you need to measure its effectiveness regularly.

Leverage key sales training and sales enablement analytics to understand performance. Then, you can use these insights to optimize your program for even better results.

manufacturing-powerful-analytics

Build a winning sales management training program with Mindtickle

Sales managers play a critical role in the success of their sales team. But often, they don’t receive the training needed to build and hone the skills they need to be effective in their roles.

Sales management training is key to ensuring sales managers have what it takes to build, lead, and motivate their teams. A strong sales management training strategy is essential, and it requires the right tools.

Today, some of the world’s best revenue organizations depend on Mindtickle to power their sales management training program. With Mindtickle’s integrated sales productivity platform, sales managers have the training, enablement, coaching, sales content, and call insights they need to be successful – all in one location.

Sales Excellence with Mindtickle

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Your Complete Guide to Sales Enablement vs. Sales Operations 

Poornima Mohandas on April 15, 2024

It’s no secret that sales reps are critical in driving revenue growth. But they’re not doing it alone.

Winning organizations understand that sales is a team effort, and sales teams need the right support to be successful. Of course, many teams support sellers throughout the sales cycle. However, two teams play particularly important roles: sales enablement and sales operations.

While sales enablement and sales operations aim to boost sales productivity, they’re not the same. Read on as we look at what sales enablement and sales operations are, how they differ, and why the two teams must align to drive sales success.

Sales enablement and sales operations explained

Before we dive into the key differences between sales enablement and sales operations, let’s take a step back to define each of these terms.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement (also referred to as revenue enablement) is the practice of equipping sellers with the information, content, and tools they need to be effective and efficient in their roles and achieve their sales quotas. Sales enablement aims to create an entire team of top performers who have what it takes to engage buyers throughout the sales process.

of organizations invest in a sales enablement department.
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In the business world, sales enablement is a relatively new concept, but it’s quickly caught on. Per the 2024-2025 Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, 84% of organizations invest in a sales enablement department. This isn’t surprising, as sales enablement can have a large, measurable impact on the sales metrics that matter most.

What is sales operations?

Behind every deal, there are a ton of moving pieces. Sales operations (also known as sales ops) is the term used to describe the “behind the scenes) activities and processes that support the revenue organization. The goal of the sales ops team is to ensure sellers can work faster and smarter.

Though sales operations teams were once the unsung heroes of the revenue organization, they’re now getting the recognition they deserve. Research from Salesforce found that more than eight in 10 sales professionals believe sales ops plays a “critical role in growing the business.”

of sales professionals say ops play a critical role in growing business
+ %

It’s important to note that while sales operations focus on supporting the sales team, revenue operations (or RevOps for short) examine how sales operations connect with other parts of the business that drive revenue.

What’s the difference between sales enablement and sales operations?

Sales enablement and sales operations are certainly related, as they are both responsible for supporting the sales team and increasing sales effectiveness. In addition, both teams typically report to the Chief Revenue Officer. However, sales enablement and operations are not the same, as each team supports the sales team differently.

B2B buyers have lofty expectations. Sellers must have the right skills and behaviors to meet those expectations and close more deals. Sales enablement supports the sales team by delivering training, information, and coaching to help sales reps build and hone their skills to succeed.

Sales enablement teams also collaborate with sales and marketing teams to ensure sales reps have the right sales content for any sales situation. This is an important way to support sellers, as B2B buyers rely on sales content to make informed buying decisions.

While the duties of the sales enablement team vary from organization to organization, some common sales enablement responsibilities include:

  • Sales onboarding
  • Creating and delivering continuous learning programs to ensure sales reps are always prepared
  • Support sales reps with training and enablement for product launches
  • Creating opportunities for sales reps to practice the skills they’ve learned
  • Establishing a sales coaching program and equipping sales managers with the tools, data, and best practices to deliver personalized coaching at scale
  • Collaborating with marketing and sales to develop sales content and deliver training and sales enablement to ensure sales reps know how and when to use key sales content
  • Continuously measuring the impact of various elements of sales enablement on seller performance and optimizing accordingly


Sales operations, on the other hand, supports the sales team by building and optimizing processes that ensure the revenue organization can run as a well-oiled machine.

Some examples of common sales operations responsibilities include:

  • Developing sales forecasts
  • Managing sales pipeline
  • Contributing to revenue strategies
  • Developing and evaluating sales reps’ compensation plans
  • Creating pricing structures for products and service offerings
  • Leveraging data to optimize sales processes
  • Measuring and analyzing sales metrics

Sales operations teams are also responsible for implementing and administering the tools and technologies sellers rely on to be successful. Some examples of such sales tools and technologies are customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, sales enablement platforms, revenue productivity tools, and sales content management systems.

How can sales enablement combined with sales operations drive sales success?

Sales enablement and sales operations aren’t the same. But both organizations help revenue organizations reach their sales goals and boost quota attainment.

As such, these two teams need to form a strong partnership. That way, there is alignment, which is especially important when the responsibilities of the two teams overlap – which they often do.

For example, imagine you’re rolling out a new CRM across the entire team. Typically, the sales operations team is responsible for setting up the new platform and ready for the sales team to use. This might include taking the lead on setting up accounts for each sales rep and building key dashboards for different roles to use.

But providing the sales team with a new tool and leaving them to their own devices isn’t effective. Instead, the sales enablement team must create and deliver sales training and sales enablement that ensures sales reps know how and when to use the new tool. This will increase adoption and ensure sellers use the tool as effectively as possible.

Power your sales enablement and sales ops with Mindtickle

Sales reps play a key role in growing revenue. However, sellers need the right support to be effective in their roles and achieve their sales quotas.

Sales enablement and sales operations are both key to a winning sales strategy. While the goal of both sales enablement and sales operations teams is to support the sales organization, the way they go about achieving this goal differs.

Sales operations teams evaluate and optimize processes that make sales reps more productive. Sales enablement teams create and deliver the training, enablement, coaching, and content sellers need to engage buyers and close more deals.

Copilot - Just in Time Enablement (2)

Both sales enablement and sales operations teams rely on the right tools and technology to accomplish their goals.Today, the world’s best enablement and revenue teams leverage Mindtickle’s integrated revenue productivity platform to drive team performance.

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The Complete Guide to AI in Sales Enablement and How it Can Help Your Team Close More Deals

Poornima Mohandas on April 2, 2024

While it’s still in its infancy, artificial intelligence already powers so many of our daily experiences – from getting product recommendations on Amazon to depositing a check via your mobile device to asking Siri to compose and send a message to a friend.

AI is also transforming the world of business – especially for revenue teams.

With AI, sellers can boost productivity and close more deals, and CROs are taking note by investing accordingly. Gartner predicts that by next year, 35% of chief revenue officers will add a centralized “GenAI Operations” team to their go-to-market organization.

By 2025,

of CROs will have a centralized AI operations team on their GTM org
0 %

The most innovative organizations also incorporate AI in sales enablement to ensure their sellers always have what it takes to close deals. But what does AI for sales enablement look like?

In this post, we’ll explore how AI can supercharge your sales enablement efforts and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your sales teams. We’ll also discuss some of the top sales enablement AI tools companies use to accomplish these goals.

What is AI in sales enablement?

First things first: what is artificial intelligence in sales enablement?

Let’s break it down.

IBM defines artificial intelligence (AI) as “technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities. Said another way, AI is computers and machines thinking and acting like humans.

There are several disciplines within AI, including:

  • Machine learning
  • Neural networks
  • Cognitive computer
  • Computer vision
  • Natural language processing (NLP)

Thanks to the explosive growth of ChatGPT, NLP is perhaps the most discussed discipline.

What is sales enablement?

If you’re reading this post, you probably already know what sales enablement is.

But in case you need a refresher, sales enablement provides sales teams with the information, sales content, and tools that enable reps to sell more effectively and efficiently. In other words, you’re working to create an entire team of top performers.

AI in sales enablement: where the magic happens

Sales enablement and AI are both powerful on their own. But the real magic happens when AI is incorporated into sales enablement.

AI in sales enablement is the practice of strategically leveraging AI to improve the effectiveness of your sales enablement program. Because your sales enablement platform is the foundation of your program, it’s the ideal place to leverage AI.

Incorporating AI into your program and software hugely benefits sales enablement teams. Today, sales enablement teams are often lean, Yet, they’re often expected to support large sales teams. With AI, sales enablement teams can support more sellers with fewer resources.

AI in sales enablement also benefits sales teams. When organizations use sales enablement AI, sellers can access the right training, tools, sales content, and resources to build the skills necessary for success. That means sellers will be equipped to close more deals, and your organization’s revenue will grow.

How can AI in sales enablement help sellers close more deals?

Let’s face it: it’s not an easy time to be a seller. In today’s environment, spending is under more scrutiny. At the same time, B2B buyers have high expectations for personalized experiences throughout the purchase journey.

Incorporating AI into your sales enablement program can be a powerful way to help sellers close more deals. Let’s take a closer look at some key ways AI in sales enablement can help improve seller performance.

#1 Recording and analyzing sales calls

Sales reps need to take notes during calls. But often, sellers are so focused on taking notes that they aren’t focused on the conversation that’s happening. After the call, sellers spend time deciphering notes and determining the next steps.

Businesses that incorporate conversation intelligence can automatically record and transcribe calls. This allows sellers to be fully present in the conversation that’s taking place. In addition, AI can analyze call recordings and provide call summaries and self-coaching tips. This helps sales reps craft follow-up communication and improves their likelihood of closing a deal.

Call intelligence also scores each sales call. That way, sales managers can quickly identify when to step in to provide coaching to improve outcomes.

Finally, AI can pull themes from all recorded calls to identify what top sellers are doing differently. Sales enablement teams can then use these insights to develop enablement to help all sellers become top performers

#2 Boosting sales reps’ skills

Sales reps need to master a certain set of skills and competencies to be successful. AI can help teams identify where there are gaps and how to close them.

For example, AI can analyze myriad sales activities to determine which region is struggling with a specific skill, such as objection handling. Sales managers and sales enablement teams can also use AI to determine what steps to take to close these gaps – for example, assigning a specific training or piece of enablement.

Copilot - Assessment

#3 Improving coaching effectiveness

Sales coaching is key to improving sales performance. But sales coaching can’t be “one-size-fits-all.” It needs to be personalized to be effective.

Delivering personalized coaching at scale can be a tall order for busy sales managers. But AI in sales enablement can help – a lot.

For starters, AI can analyze sales activities to determine what specific areas a sales rep might need coaching on. AI can also suggest steps to take to improve these skills.

In addition, AI for sales enablement can deliver real-time coaching.

As we already mentioned, AI can deliver coaching after a sales call has happened. In addition, sales reps can record practice pitches on their own time. Then, AI will analyze the pitch, score it, and provide improvement recommendations. Sales reps can then use these recommendations and record another practice pitch. Essentially, sales reps are getting personalized, data-based coaching – without the involvement of a sales manager or sales enablement team member.

#4 Delivering sales content that resonates with each buyer

Sales content is an important component of the B2B sales journey. Per the Demand Gen Report, 55% of B2B buyers rely on sales content to guide their purchase decisions more now than in the past.

However, generic sales content won’t do. Sales reps must be able to easily search for and deliver sales content that resonates with each buyer.

But it’s hard (and time-consuming) for reps to figure out what content will work – and then find it. Research tells us 65% of reps say they struggle to find the right content to send to prospective buyers.

Incorporating AI in sales enablement makes it a whole lot easier.

AI analyzes factors, including the buyer’s purchase signals. It also considers what content has worked for other reps in similar sales scenarios. It then uses this information to recommend content that’ll resonate with a specific buyer. That means reps can spend less time hunting down the right content – and more time delivering value and engaging with the buyer. That engaged prospect is a lot more likely to become a customer.

#5 Improving sales forecasting

Predicting revenue is important for every sales organization. But creating accurate sales forecasts can be downright hard.

According to the Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, 34% of sales orgs view inaccurate forecasts and limited predictability as one of their top challenges. Furthermore, according to Gartner, a mere 45% of sales leaders have high confidence in the accuracy of forecasts.

of CROs say accurate forecasting is one of their top challenges
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of sales leaders have high confidence in forecast accuracy
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This is another instance where AI in sales enablement can be huge.

AI can analyze sales activities and provide insights into the outlook of each deal. That means sales reps and managers have better insight into how many deals will likely close. These insights fuel better deal forecasting.

In addition, AI can help identify at-risk deals and provide recommendations for the next best action. For example, AI can suggest sales content that’ll resonate with the buyer. Or, the sales manager can deliver sales coaching to help the rep overcome the buyer’s objections.

What are the best sales enablement AI tools?

Today’s sellers depend on certain sales tools to be successful. Increasingly, these platforms are incorporating AI to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of sellers.

What are the best sales enablement AI tools? There’s no easy answer. The best sales enablement AI tools are those that fit the unique needs and goals of your organization.

However, there are some tools that stand out. Let’s take a closer look at a few.

Mindtickle

Recent research found that 84% of organizations invest in a sales enablement department. An integrated sales enablement platform like Mindtickle is a key component of sales enablement success.

Today, Mindtickle incorporates several AI features that help prepare sellers to conquer any deal that comes their way.

For starters, Mindtickle Copilot enables sales teams to analyze calls and reports to uncover key insights – and then understand what action they should take based on those insights. For example, a rep can ask, “Which competitors were mentioned during this call?” Mindtickle Copilot will then respond and recommend resources to address these objections.

In addition, Mindtickle incorporates features that allow enablement professionals to create enablement experiences – quickly. For example, sales enablement pros can use AI to create an assessment based on learning content. Or, they can create a sales simulation that allows sales reps to practice their skills before using them in the field. This is huge, as creating sales enablement content has traditionally taken time.

Sales reps can also use Mindtickle’s AI features to improve buyer engagement. For example, AI can help reps easily search for and find sales content that will resonate with each buyer. They can also use AI to draft personalized communications that speak to the specific buyer’s needs.

Gong

Gong captures all interactions a seller has with a buyer. Then, it leverages AI to holistically make sense of those interactions. Sales teams use these AI-powered insights to improve productivity and more accurately predict revenue.

Salesforce

Salesforce incorporates robust AI features that improve the effectiveness and efficiency of sellers. With Salesforce, sales teams can build and deploy AI experiences right within Salesforce that allow both customers and employees to work smarter.

Drift

Conversations have always been an important tool for sellers. Drift is a buyer engagement platform that enables businesses to engage in conversations at scale.

Drift is powered by AI. It listens to buyers and learns from them in order to create personalized experiences that resonate with them.

Supercharge your sales team with Mindtickle Copilot

Modern B2B buyers expect personalized, engaging experiences throughout the purchase journey. But sellers only have so many hours in the day to deliver.

Now’s the time to equip your sellers with AI-powered sales enablement so they’re always ready to engage and delight customers.

With Copilot from Mindtickle, your reps can work faster and smarter. Mindtickle combines the power of enablement and revenue opps data with AI, which allows your teams to focus more on what they do best: selling.

See AI and Mindtickle Copilot in Action

Ready to see firsthand why leading revenue teams choose Mindtickle?

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How Teradata Transforms Their Sales Enablement Strategy with Mindtickle

Poornima Mohandas on February 21, 2024

Not that long ago, it was rare for an organization to have a dedicated sales enablement team.

But today, a whopping 84% of organizations invest in a sales enablement function.

of organizations invest in sales enablement
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That’s not surprising. When it’s down well, sales enablement has a powerful impact on sales productivity, sales performance, and revenue growth.

But establishing a sales enablement function doesn’t guarantee great results. The most successful organizations are those with the right sales enablement strategy and sales enablement tools.

Teradata, a software company providing cloud database and analytics-related solutions, has experienced the powerful impact of adopting the right sales enablement tools. Recently, we sat down with Morgan Clawson, Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata, to learn more about how the company has transformed its B2B sales enablement strategy for the better with Mindtickle.

Establishing a capability framework for go-to-market roles

In any revenue organization, certain capabilities are needed for success. Those capabilities vary by role. For example, those on the commercial sales team at Teradata require different skills than those on the technical sales team. Yet, many revenue organizations don’t define the competencies needed for success.

With Mindtickle, Teradata has established its first-ever go-to-market capability model, which defines the skills and knowledge each team needs to succeed in the field. Mindtickle provides a place for Teradata’s account teams and their managers to reflect on their sales productivity and efficiency in terms of those key capabilities. The teams also pull data from Mindtickle by capability, which sheds light on the areas where additional enablement is needed.

“This gives us a data-driven approach, which is extremely effective in ensuring the enablement we’re putting out is relevant and meaningful. The more relevant and meaningful it is, the more account teams will consume that enablement.”
Morgan Clawson headshot
Megan Clawson
Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata

With Mindtickle, It’s easy for the Teradata sales enablement team to measure progress – both in terms of completion and in terms of skill development. “We can show the progression of the teams as they’re participating in enablement and how they’re moving through and mastering different capabilities,” Clawson said.

Transforming Teradata’s approach to sales enablement

Oftentimes, organizations take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to sales enablement. Taking a more personalized approach requires these organizations to understand what kind of sales training and support each seller needs. But often, organizations lack those insights.

In fact, per our Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, a mere 40% of C-level executives can identify strengths and weaknesses to develop customized sales training.

Only

of C-level execs can identify rep strengths + weaknesses
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Mindtickle enables Teradata to group sellers by proficiency level on their capability model. Then, they can provide targeted and relevant enablement to the people who actually need it.

“Mindtickle has transformed our ability to deliver enablement to those who actually need it,” explained Clawson. “Mindtickle allows us to maximize the seller’s time so they’re actually in the field participating and engaging with customers in the ways we’d like them to, as opposed to feeling like they’re chained to their computer taking enablement that doesn’t apply to them.

In addition, Mindtickle has empowered Teradata to take a more collaborative approach to learning and sales enablement. For example, the company uses a lot of coaching forms and missions – which are different module types in Mindtickle.

“With those modules, managers are really able to take a front seat in the enablement activities and exercises that directly impact the efficacy of their sellers,” said Clawson. “Also, they’re able to participate in these really robust feedback loops related to specific sales situations. That more structured feedback loop that Mindtickle facilitates for us is really crucial to helping uplevel our teams.”

Increasing mastery of knowledge and skills

Mindtickle has transformed the way Teradata trains sellers, provides practice opportunities, and reinforces learning. Mindtickle’s certification and badging features have been key to this transformation.

“With Mindtickle, we’re able to build learning paths and missions that demonstrate real-world mastery of concepts and selling motions that are critical to Teradata’s sales strategy,” explained Clawson. “This means our sales teams are actually going into the world with proven, advanced knowledge and skills. They’re equipped to have confident, knowledgeable conversations about the value our solution can bring to our customers. They’re able to get all that information, practice it, and prove they can do these things through the badging program that Mindtickle helps us to facilitate.”

Earning these badges and sharing them on LinkedIn boosts the confidence of sellers. It also boosts buyer confidence. “[Buyers] know when they’re interacting with us we have teams out there that are going out there prepared and ready to deliver value to their customers,” said Clawson.

Working with a partner that’s committed to innovation and customer success

The team at Mindtickle is committed to ensuring the platform meets the needs of its customers – both now and in the future. As Clawson put it, “Mindtickle’s product team is an absolutely phenomenal group of people who are actually working on the platform and making it something that’s actually relevant and meaningful to us enablement professionals.”

The product team regularly meets with customers – including Teradata – to understand their unique needs and challenges. This input informs future innovation. 

“Mindtickle has always been really proactive in seeking to understand what our unique challenges are at Teradata and also finding ways to elevate the platform so it works for us.”
Morgan Clawson headshot
Morgan Clawson
Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata

Clawson and her team have also found the support team at Mindtickle to be knowledgeable and extremely responsive. “It’s really helped to establish credibility and fidelity with our teams,” said Clawson. We’re seeing a huge uptick in adoption of the platform in our go-to-market teams. I think this is partially due to the quick responsiveness and how helpful Mindtickle is.”

Proving impact and elevating the sales enablement function within the organization

In the best of times, sales enablement teams are under pressure to demonstrate value. This is especially true in today’s economic environment.

Without the right tools, it can be difficult (or even impossible) to demonstrate how B2B sales enablement is impacting the metrics that matter most to businesses. Mindtickle makes it possible.

“If you’re an enablement professional looking for ways to highlight the value and impact of your team to the greater org, Mindtickle allows you to do that,” said Clawson. “We can see very specific correlation metrics to the enablement activities we are producing. I can show very clearly the value my team is bringing to Teradata as a whole, and it’s a great feeling as a supervisor to elevate my team.”

Better Sales Enablement with Mindtickle

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