The End of Traditional Sales Coaching: Why AI Role-Play is Taking Over

Joan Jenkins on August 30, 2024

Each seller on your team needs consistent, quality sales coaching to be successful. That includes your all-stars, your lowest performers, and everyone in between.

When done well, sales coaching contributes to better outcomes. Research tells us that effective sales coaching can boost key metrics, including win rates and quota attainment—not to mention engagement and retention.

A recent analysis found that top-performing sales reps receive four times more coaching than the average rep. That’s no coincidence.

Top-performing reps receive

more coaching than the average rep
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But traditional sales coaching methods are rapidly becoming obsolete in today’s sales environment.

Today, innovative sales leaders are turning to AI-driven coaching solutions to ensure each sales rep has what it takes to deliver outstanding experiences and close more deals. Read on as we explore why this shift is necessary – and how it’s transforming sales coaching dynamics.

The rise of AI feedback

Sales reps have always relied on manager feedback to improve performance and outcomes.

But traditionally, sellers were at the mercy of their manager’s schedule. When sellers wanted real-time feedback, they had no choice but to wait around for it.

The era of waiting around for manager feedback is over. Modern sales reps seek immediate, actionable insights they can leverage to hone their skills immediately. AI makes this possible with AI role-plays that facilitate on-demand simulated sales conversations in hyper-realistic sales scenarios and give immediate qualitative and quantitative feedback.

interactive role-play

Not surprisingly, generative AI role-play scenarios are becoming sellers’ preferred choice. These AI-powered role-plays provide real-time feedback on your sentiment, speech pace, objection handling, and much more, empowering sales reps to refine their techniques more efficiently than traditional coaching ever would. Sales reps can fine-tune their skills faster, which means they can accelerate and close more deals.

An AI-first coaching approach is favored by sales reps and managers

Both sales reps and managers are gravitating toward an AI-first approach to sales coaching. It’s easy to see why.

An AI approach enables sales managers to boost performance across their entire team by addressing each sales rep’s strengths and weaknesses. However, sales managers don’t have to waste time on ineffective, inefficient sales coaching practices.

On the other hand, reps appreciate the opportunity to practice role-playing with an AI buyer multiple times in a no-judgment environment. This repetitive practice—coupled with instant feedback and suggestions for improvement from AI—ensures that sales reps’ skills are significantly honed when they seek input from their manager.

The practice itself is the goal, not perfection. We see that our customers practice 4-6 times before they submit.

Mindtickle customers practice

times before submitting
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This practice with a dynamic AI buyer who throws out objections allows reps to get comfortable with their talk tracks and be ready to tackle any real customer’s objection.

Traditional coaching has limitations

The responsibility of sales coaching once rested solely on the shoulders of sales managers. But as the size of their teams and list of responsibilities grow, many sales managers simply don’t have enough time to spend on one-to-one development.

That means sales coaching often goes by the wayside. In 2023, the average number of monthly coaching sessions a rep receives decreased year over year.

Traditional coaching methods are slow and resource-intensive. Sales managers must listen to live or recorded sales calls or role-plays and then deliver meaningful feedback. Multiplying this across a team of reps quickly becomes a heavy burden for even the best sales managers.

AI can simulate a wide range of realistic sales scenarios, from discovery conversations to competitive differentiation conversations to price negotiation conversations. This allows reps to practice their skills and get meaningful feedback without taking valuable time from their managers.

The role of sales leaders in coaching is evolving

AI is transforming sales coaching, but that doesn’t mean sales managers will soon be uninvolved.

It will just change.

Direct interaction between a manager and a rep is key to building trust, strengthening interpersonal relationships, and improving performance. That will never change. However, sales managers’ role in coaching is evolving – arguably for the better.

Today, AI is equipped to handle the bulk of feedback and practice—the time-consuming, day-to-day elements of delivering a personalized sales coaching program.

For instance, say your reps struggle with discovery. Sales enablement can work with sales managers to set up a hyper-realistic scenario that maps to your industry and buyer persona that reps can use to practice their discovery chops. The more they practice, the better they will get at uncovering buyer pains and needs.

This role-play practice can lead to real and meaningful skill coaching rather than the tactical deal coaching that often tends to bring in revenue.

Thanks to AI, sales managers are no longer bogged down by the details of day-to-day coaching. Instead, they can focus on overarching goals and personalized team development plans.

Sales coaching will never be the same

Sales coaching will always be a key ingredient of sales success. But the landscape of sales coaching is fundamentally changing. And that’s a good thing.

Self-serve, contextual AI-driven role-plays and feedback in the flow of work won’t just enhance how sales reps practice their skills but will be the death of traditional sales coaching.

Combining AI efficiency with strategic oversight from sales leaders creates a more dynamic, effective coaching model.

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Video: How an AI-Driven Pitch Contest at Cisco Saved Managers 38 Weeks

Poornima Mohandas on August 5, 2024

What are interactive role plays?

Interactive role-plays are training simulations where reps can practice their pitches, objection handling, and other sales skills in a safe, controlled environment. These role-plays often involve AI-driven scenarios that mimic real-life conversations with buyers, allowing sellers to refine their skills without the pressure of a live sales situation.

Key aspects include:

  • Sellers can engage in simulated conversations that resemble real-world interactions with customers, allowing them to practice and improve their techniques.
  • These role-plays use AI to provide feedback on the seller’s performance, highlighting areas for improvement and helping them fine-tune their approach.
  • By incorporating AI, companies can scale role-play sessions across large teams without requiring significant time from managers.
  • Interactive role-plays can be used in various scenarios, including onboarding new reps, practicing for specific sales calls, and certifying sellers on new products or sales methodologies​

Key highlights

  • Cisco ran a sales pitch contest involving around 3,500 sellers. The winner received a lease for a Porsche. The contest was designed to drive adoption and engagement among the sellers.
  • They used Mindtickle Copilot to help sellers practice their pitches. The AI provided feedback, allowing sellers to refine their pitches in three parts before submitting a final version.
  • AI was crucial in reducing the burden on managers. Reviewing all pitches would have taken an estimated 38 weeks of manager time.
  • Analysis revealed that sellers who continued to practice and refine their pitches were more successful. These sellers moved up in the competition brackets and generated larger sales opportunities than those who practiced less.

Video transcription

[For our] “Sales Superstar” pitch contest – the winner actually won a lease of a Porsche. It was a big deal, you could say. That got a lot of attention. And there was a good way to drive adoption.

[There were] some good rewards. It was a little bit shocking for all of us. Obviously, there were other rewards for being nurturers for coaching. And I’ll explain a couple things.

With the pitch contest, we started by targeting our technical sellers. The goal was to have a 10-minute pitch that was decided by an EVP and targeted at a specific customer. The goal was really to make it focus on the customer. As we were rolling it out, we got a lot of other teams interested in participating as well, so we had to come up with different alternatives.

One of the things that Leah Madson, our senior PS consultant from Mindtickle, worked with Cameron to calculate, okay, how the heck are we going to get all this done? And it came out that it would take 38 weeks of manager time to do the reviews, because earlier, you talked about manager time and reduce. And that’s a real number. Part of the decision was how can we use AI to reduce that burden on the managers.

We did a couple of things. We used the traditional AI already built into Mindtickle, but then we also used Copilot. We allowed the sellers and technical sellers to do practice pitches and get feedback. Because the pitch has three different parts, they had three different options. They could practice each and finally submit a final pitch once they were done.

We’ve found some interesting behaviors by the sellers. In the data analysis, some of the interesting things we found were that those sellers who continued to practice would get better. If they moved up as far as moving in the brackets, we got on the outcome side that they created larger opportunities than those who were lower down. So it does show that practice does make perfect.

Interactive Role-Plays with Mindtickle

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Data-Driven Sales Coaching: How to Use Data to Drive Coaching Conversations

Helen Waite on July 18, 2024

As a revenue leader, you’re likely well aware of the potential impact of great sales coaching on team performance. In fact, the power of sales coaching is proven. A recent analysis found that top sellers receive significantly more sales coaching than average.

But generic, one-size-fits-all sales coaching doesn’t work. Furthermore, while deal coaching may improve the outcome of a single deal, it won’t have much of an impact on a rep’s long-term behaviors and sales performance.

Instead, sales managers must deliver tailored skill coaching that addresses the strengths and weaknesses of each of their sales reps. But first, they must have the right data to understand what those strengths and weaknesses are.

In this post, we’ll explore why your current approach to sales coaching isn’t working – and why data-driven sales coaching is the answer.

Why coaching conversations must change

Having conversations about performance can be hard, especially if a rep isn’t doing well. It can be especially difficult to call out areas for improvement when you don’t have the specifics to back it up. Relying on data makes these conversations easier.

For sales managers, being able to track and analyze seller performance all in one place using revenue enablement software provides concrete insight into every time you say “you’re doing a great job” or “there’s room for improvement.” Your feedback is rooted in actual performance metrics, rather than running the risk of being considered your opinion rather than fact.

Data also helps us to identify the exact ways each seller can improve. Perhaps one rep is weaker in their competitor knowledge while another may need more support when it comes to operating sales technology. By digging into the data, an effective sales coach can identify opportunities for improvement and, in turn, maximize each rep’s performance.

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What a data-driven approach looks like

In order to adopt a data-driven coaching approach, you should have a clear understanding of the key metrics you should be looking at. These will help you gauge the overall success of your sales force, but really allow you to dig into individual performance to fuel more impactful coaching conversations.

Below we’ve highlighted some key criteria you’ll want to evaluate—and how you can gather the data.

Product knowledge: Assess and certify sellers on their product knowledge with quizzes using different formats. You can create a proficiency threshold score for reps to show they’re knowledgeable experts on your product, which you can test through multiple-choice quizzes, checklists, and written tests.

Reps can also be assigned role-plays to see if they can demo the product, describe what it does and accurately express the value of the product. If you’re using sales readiness technology, all of this can be easily reviewed and scored through artificial intelligence (AI).

Selling behavior: Evaluate how articulate and enthusiastic a rep is on a call, voicemail or presentation as well as the tone. You can also keep track of how many filler words are used. This will gauge their overall confidence in selling your solution.

Selling skills: By tracking sellers’ progress in real-time, sales coaches can get data insights on each rep’s ability to demo, use a sales methodology (e.g. MEDDPIC) on a call, challenge competition, handle objection questions, and evaluate whether or not the correct terms are used to describe the product.

Message consistency: AI-powered keyword analysis is a great way for sales coaches to get better insight into individual competencies and needs based on live interactions during the selling process. When you analyze sales calls (and leave the hard work to AI), you can uncover key problems in deals that didn’t close and start training on common questions you’re finding reps are being asked in the field.

Technology skills: How well do your reps use sales tools? Assess sellers on their knowledge (and correct use) of sales stack tools like Outreach, Ring, Zoom, and Salesforce to see how effectively they’re being put into action.

Using a revenue enablement platform, reps can actually record themselves using the tools, which can then be evaluated and scored. This will give sales coaches visibility into any challenges with tech on the team.

Your new approach to coaching starts now

On top of using data to coach reps, this data-driven approach also empowers you to establish a “profile of excellence” on your sales team. This helps sales managers to identify their best performers and replicate their skillset amongst other reps through training and coaching.

While it certainly makes it easier to track and report on these metrics with revenue enablement technology in place, it’s not impossible to do without. However you gather the data, it’s important to start bringing it into coaching conversations in order to pinpoint areas for improvement, provide more specific feedback, and ultimately empower you as a sales coach to help your team succeed.

Start delivering effective, data-driven coaching at scale with Mindtickle

The impact of sales coaching can’t be denied. However, in order to be effective, sales coaching must be tailored to the needs of each sales rep.

With Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement platform, you can start delivering data-driven coaching that’ll improve reps’ behaviors and grow sales performance.

With Mindtickle, you can easily understand deal risk and buyer engagement. Then, you can use those insights to provide coaching to improve the outcome of deals.

Mindtickle also empowers you to go beyond deal coaching to deliver skill coaching that improves long-term results. With Mindtickle, you can understand how reps are performing in the field and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Then, you can use this intel to deliver coaching to improve lagging skills and long-term behaviors and performance.

Of course, delivering coaching and hoping for the best isn’t an effective approach. With Mindtickle, revenue leaders can actually understand the impact of their coaching efforts. Then, they can optimize their approach for even better results.

This post was originally published in June 2021 and updated in July 2024.

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Solution Selling: What is it and When is the Solution Selling Methodology Used?

Vivian Batman on May 9, 2024

In today’s world, B2B buyers do plenty of research independently. When buyers finally initiate contact with a sales rep, they expect that rep to understand their challenges and provide solutions. In fact, a recent survey found that 82% of B2B buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors.

A recent survey found that

of B2B buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors
0 %

But all too often, sales reps use generic sales presentations and spout off the features and benefits of their products or services – without considering whether or not these features and benefits are relevant to the customer. This one-size-fits-all sales approach is a sure way to send your prospects packing.

Today, some of the most successful sales teams have switched to solution selling. Sales reps who excel at solution selling demonstrate an understanding of their customers’ challenges and provide solutions for overcoming them. With this approach, sales reps can earn customers’ trust and ultimately close more deals.

Chances are, you have at least a basic understanding of solution selling. But in this post, we’re going to dig deeper on the topic to answer questions including:

  • What is solution selling?
  • What is the solution sales process?
  • When is solution selling used?
  • How is solution selling different from other sales approaches?
  • What are the pros and cons of transitioning to solution selling?

What is solution selling?

Solution selling isn’t exactly a new concept. The solution sales methodology was developed back in the 1970s. But it continues to grow in popularity.

As the name suggests, solution selling is a sales methodology in which sellers present solutions to prospective customers, rather than products. In the context of sales and business, “solutions” typically refer to products, services, or strategies that address specific challenges or problems faced by customers or clients.

To offer solutions, first, the seller must gain a deep understanding of the prospect’s unique needs, wants, and challenges. Then (and only then), the seller can recommend solutions to help the prospect overcome their challenges – and meet their goals.

What is the solution sales process?

In some ways, the process is similar to other selling methodologies. However, the solution sales process also differs from other selling approaches in some key ways. Let’s take a closer look at the key steps of the solution-selling process.

Step 1: Become a product expert

You can’t make a sale if you don’t have a solid understanding of what you’re selling. This is true for any sales approach – including this one. After all, you can’t identify a solution for your prospects if you don’t truly understand what you have to offer.

Solution sellers must be product experts. In addition to understanding the ins and outs of your own products and services, sellers must also be well versed in competitor offerings. That way, they’ll be prepared to overcome objections and clearly communicate what makes your solutions different.

Of course, a rep’s education should start at onboarding. But solution sales training shouldn’t stop at onboarding. Things are always changing. Ongoing sales training, coaching, and learning opportunities help ensure reps are always well-versed in what they’re selling.

Step 2: Qualify prospects

Sure, you may have great products and services. But the reality is, your offerings aren’t the right fit for every company out there.

There’s only so much time in the day. So don’t waste your time pitching your offerings to a company that isn’t the right fit – and will never make a purchase.

Instead, focus on good-fit prospects. Many companies have developed ideal customer profiles (ICPs) that outline the characteristics of a prospect that’s a good fit. If you have ICPs, make sure your reps know them inside out. In fact, ICPs should be a key component of your solution sales training program.

Step 3: Identify customer's unique needs and pain points

This stage is one that sets the solution-selling methodology apart from others.

At this point, the seller focuses on learning everything they can about the prospect, including their:

  • Needs
  • Opportunities
  • Pain points

Thanks to the internet, sellers can easily find some of this information on their own. However, sellers must ask thoughtful questions to gain a true understanding of a seller’s pain points. In fact, asking the right questions is a critical selling skill.

Active listening is another key selling skill. Be sure to stay engaged when your prospect is answering a question, and summarize their answers to ensure understanding. You may have to ask additional questions to gain clarity.

When you’re having a conversation with a prospect, it can be difficult to take notes while remaining present. Conversation intelligence software can record sales conversations and deliver insights, allowing you to remain present and engaged in the conversation as it happens.

Step 4: Determine the right solution

Once you have a clear understanding of your prospect’s challenges, it’s time to determine the solution to those challenges. This is another step in the solution sales process that makes it different from other sales methodologies.

Typically, the solution isn’t something straight “off the shelf.” Instead, it’s a combination of product and service offerings that address the buyer’s unique needs.

Consider building a “decision tree” of solutions to recommend in key scenarios your prospects and customers face.

 

#5. Present your solution

This is the point where you present the solution to your customer’s challenge. Remember: this isn’t about sharing a generic sales presentation that lists every single product feature. Instead, your goal is to communicate the solution – and help prospects understand why it’s the best solution for the challenges.

Content can help you convey the value of your solution. For example, a case study can help a prospect understand how your solution helped a company overcome challenges similar to theirs.

This is also where competitor knowledge comes into play, as you may need to communicate how your solution is a better choice than that of a competitor.

Step 6: Negotiation

You’ve taken the time to understand a prospect’s challenges and presented a solution to those challenges. But that doesn’t mean the work is done. Next up in the solution-selling methodology is the negotiation stage.

The goal of this stage is to come to an agreement that works for both the buyer and seller. During this stage, the buyer may come to the table with questions and objections, so it’s important to be prepared.

Step 7: Closing the deal

You’ve developed a solution to your customer’s pain points – and get them on board with the value of your solution. After the negotiation process is complete, the only thing left to do is close the deal.

When is solution selling used?

Solution-based selling can be an effective sales approach under the right circumstances. However, it’s not the right sales approach for all scenarios.

For example, many prospects do plenty of self-reflection and research before reaching out to a sales rep. They may come to the table with a clear picture of their challenges – as well as a solution. Let’s say the prospect is shopping for a new web hosting service. They know what their needs are – and which one of your “off the shelf” packages will meet those needs. They simply need advice on making a decision or understanding why your solution is better than a competitor’s.

In this case, solution-based selling may not be the right approach.

However, solution selling can be extremely powerful in situations when a prospect has unique needs that require a bespoke solution. In some cases, they may not be able to clearly articulate their needs – muchless know how to solve them.

For example, a consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand traditionally sold in brick-and-mortar stores is looking to sell directly to customers. They know they need an e-commerce platform, but they’re unsure what problems they’re trying to solve. They need your help defining their challenges and identifying a solution to solve them.

Solution selling is also a great fit when a customer needs a high level of support. For example, a customer deploying an enterprise-wide software solution may need a high level of support for implementation, training, and increasing adoption.

From the seller’s perspective, solution-based selling works best when you have many different products, services, or packages available. For example, you might offer multiple pre-packaged solutions – such as silver, gold, or platinum packages. You may also offer other add-on products and services. These can all be mixed and matched to create a custom solution that addresses your prospect’s challenges.

How is solution selling different from product and consultative selling?

How does solution selling differ from other popular sales methodologies like product selling and consultative selling? Let’s take a closer look.

Solution selling vs. product selling

Product selling is still extremely common. But what exactly is product selling – and how does it differ from solution selling?

Reps who practice product selling focus on communicating the features and benefits of a product or service – without considering the needs of the specific buyer. For example, consider walking into a car dealership. The sales rep starts to push the features and benefits of a newly released sports car. But in reality, you need a larger, family-friendly vehicle.

Product-based selling can be effective for smaller, transactional sales. But for larger, B2B sales, this sales methodology is ineffective.

When a seller engages in product-based selling, they’re often seen as pushy – and only focused on making a sale. The result is that prospective buyers disengage.

Today, a growing number of organizations are turning to solution selling.

Unlike product selling, solution-based selling is a consultative sales approach. Reps who practice solution selling don’t lead with features and benefits. Instead, they take the time to truly understand the prospect’s key challenges. Then, the rep can guide the buyer to a solution that solves those challenges.

Let’s say you walk into another car dealership. The sales rep sits down to understand your needs and frustrations with your current vehicle. Once they have a handle on your unique situation, they offer a customized solution.

Product selling

Consultative selling

  • Transactional
  • Focused on the sale at hand
  • One-size-fits-all approach
  • Seller-centric
  • Rep focuses on the features and benefits of the product
  • Rep doesn’t take the time to understand buyers’ needs and challenges
  • Relationship-building
  • Focused on the bigger picture
  • Personalized experiences
  • Buyer-centric
  • Reps focus on understanding the buyers’ pain points
  • Rep presents solutions to overcome these pain points

Consultative selling vs. solution selling

Solution selling overlaps in many ways with consultative selling. While the two terms are closely related, they’re not exactly the same.

As the name suggests, solution selling is focused on presenting the solution to a problem – rather than a product and its features. On the other hand, consultative selling is more focused on the consultation that comes before a seller presents a solution.

What are the key benefits and challenges of implementing solution selling?

There’s no perfect sales methodology. A sales methodology that’s a great fit for one organization may not be as effective for another.

If you’re considering adopting a new sales methodology, it’s important to understand the key benefits and challenges. Enterprise solution selling is no exception.

Pros of solution selling

There are countless benefits of solution-based selling. For starters, sellers who use this methodology are able to convey how a solution can solve a prospect’s problems – and the negative consequences of taking no action. This creates urgency that can move buyers to action.

In addition, solution selling helps ensure the seller’s offering is actually a good fit for the customer’s needs and challenges. Customers are more likely to be satisfied with their purchase decision – which will help boost retention.

Finally, solution selling allows sellers to build long-term relationships with customers. Customers can see that the seller truly understands their business. This fosters trust, which can help the seller close the deal. In addition, it can open up opportunities for upsell and cross-sell opportunities in the future – as well as referrals.

Cons of solution selling

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of solution selling is that it takes time. In order to be successful with solution selling, reps must take the time to become experts in their offerings. In addition, they must spend time learning everything they can about a given prospect so they can present a customized solution.

In addition, the solution-selling process can be difficult to plan. There’s no set script or sales presentation. Sellers must be able to think on the fly to address what matters most to their prospects.

Finally, change can be difficult. Solution selling requires a shift in perspective. This shift can be challenging for those accustomed to product selling. Organizations can leverage sales training software to get sellers up to speed on the ins and outs of solution selling.

Solution selling with Mindtickle

Modern buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors. Sales reps who are skilled at solution selling can deliver personalized experiences and solutions that meet B2B buyers’ needs and expectations.

Solution selling can help your sales reps build trust with prospects and close more deals. But making the transition to solution selling can be challenging, especially for reps who have never used this sales approach.

Sales reps must master a certain set of skills and behaviors to excel at solution selling. Revenue organizations must equip their teams with the tools, training, and support they need to master these key skills – and put them to work while interacting with buyers.

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This post was originally published in November 2023 and was updated in May 2024. 

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

See how Mindtickle can accelerate and scale an your sales coaching program.

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

The 3 Most Important Skills for Every Role On Your Sales Team

Vivian Batman on April 12, 2024

Today’s sellers face a ton of challenges. They need the right skills to overcome these challenges and emerge successful.

There’s a subset of top performers on every sales team. These are the folks who are adept at building relationships and closing deals—even in less-than-ideal circumstances. In a perfect world, you could clone these top sales reps.

Of course, this isn’t possible. But the most successful revenue organizations are doing the next best thing. They’re spending time figuring out what makes their top sellers so great and then working to replicate those skills and behaviors across the entire revenue organization.

Taking this approach, you can create an entire team of top performers. It starts with determining what skills are needed for each role on your sales team.

Defining what sales excellence looks like

Sellers have limited time, and it behooves them (and their organization) to focus their time on the prospects that best fit their offering. To help ensure that’s the case, most organizations identify and document their ideal customer profile (ICP).

Far fewer businesses take the time to identify and document their ideal rep profile (IRP), which is the list of skills, competencies, and behaviors a revenue team member needs to succeed in their role. However, the IRP continues to be a growing trend among sales productivity practitioners.

The growth of this trend makes sense. After all, how can a revenue organization drive excellence when it doesn’t even know what excellence looks like?

The IRP is essential to true sales productivity

The first step in driving org-wide excellence is to take the time to identify and document the skills needed for success. The most successful sales organizations define IRPs for their go-to-market (GTM) or customer-facing roles. The most common roles for which organizations define their IRP are:

  • Account executives (AEs)
  • Business development representatives (BDRs)
  • Channel sales specialists (CSSs)
  • Customer success managers (CSMs)
  • Sales engineers (SEs)

Team members should be continuously measured against this “gold standard” to identify each individual’s learning gaps. Then, organizations can deliver individualized learning and sales coaching that closes these gaps and creates more peak performers.

The top 3 skills for every member of the revenue team

Sure, it’s key to identify the skills each member of your revenue team needs to succeed. But what exactly are those skills?

Of course, these vary by role. The skills needed to be a successful BDR differ from those needed to excel as a sales engineer.

Recently, we analyzed activity from more than a million users at 400+ companies to understand how the best organizations are getting their sales teams ready to close more deals. We shared our key findings in our State of Revenue Productivity 2024 Report. Based on this analysis, we’ve identified the top three skills needed by five key revenue team members.

The 3 most important skills for account executives

Account executives work day in and day out to understand the needs and challenges of businesses — and then provide solutions to address them. The three most important skills for success in this role are:

Once an AE has determined the buyer’s needs, they must have the skills to articulate their solution’s value.

Our analysis found that over half (54%) of sales calls include more negative sentiment than positive. Objections are one example of negative sentiment. AEs should expect objections— and have the skills to address and overcome them.

Prospects often don’t accept an offer as-is. Instead, they want to negotiate. This is especially true in today’s economic climate. AEs must have the skills to navigate the negotiation stage of the sales cycle expertly.

The 3 most important skills for business development representatives

BDRs are often the first touchpoint a prospect has with your company. They need to master these three skills:

BDRs must know your ICPs inside and out — and be able to quickly and accurately determine if a prospect is a good fit for your company’s offerings.

Like AEs, BDRs must be prepared to expect resistance from prospects and equipped to handle it. The right enablement and coaching can ensure they’re ready to address any objection that comes their way.

Strong communication skills include both speaking and listening. BDRs must master active listening skills so they can understand what a prospect is saying and respond thoughtfully.

The 3 most important skills for channel sales specialists

Channel sales refers to the practice of a third party (also known as a partner) selling your company’s products. The top three skills needed for channel sales specialists are:

Channel sellers must know a product inside and out — and be equipped to handle any question. Continuous enablement and coaching ensure they always have current, accurate product knowledge.

Like AEs, channel sellers must be experts at conveying the value of a particular solution to the prospect.

Prospects are more likely to make a purchase from a sales rep who’s taken the time to get to know them and earn their trust. As such, relationship-building skills are essential for any channel sales specialist.

The 3 most important skills for customer success managers

Customer success managers spend most of their time meeting with current customers to address any issues and ensure the customer gets the most value from the product provided. As well, they’re often responsible for upsells and renewals. They must have a solid mastery of the following three skills to be successful in their roles:

CSMs spend a lot of time interacting with customers via phone and email. Often, they need to share feedback from customer interactions with other departments, including sales and product. Solid written and verbal communication skills are a must.

It’s less expensive to retain an existing customer than it is to obtain a new one. As such, CSMs must perfect their renewal skills. Renewal time can also be a great opportunity for upsells. CSMs should be skilled at identifying upsell opportunities and articulating the value of the upsell to the customer.

The CSM is typically their go-to if a customer runs into a problem. Customer success team members must have solid problem-solving skills to help resolve issues quickly and effectively.

The 3 most important skills for sales engineers

A sales engineer is a member of the B2B sales team whose specialty is selling complex technical products and services. They must have a mastery of these three skills:

Sales engineers must be well-versed in the myriad ways companies use a solution and can use this knowledge to articulate how the solution can work for a specific prospect.

Similar to other roles, sales engineers must be experts at articulating business knowledge to prospects.

Prospects often come to sales engineers with technical questions and objections. Sales engineers

Start building a winning revenue team

Today, many revenue leaders accept that great sellers are born, not made. They either have what it takes, or they don’t.

But that isn’t reality. Sales excellence can be taught.

First, organizations must identify the success-related skills for each revenue team role. Then, they can measure all revenue team members against their IRP to understand where they’re shining and falling short. Equipped with these insights, revenue teams can deliver personalized training, enablement, and coaching to ensure each master the skills that matter most in their role.

Mindtickle Readiness Index

In other words, you can build a team of top performers – no cloning machine required.

But not all enablement and productivity programs drive results. Instead, you need the right, data-driven strategy and technology to power your sales enablement and sales productivity programs.

Revenue Enablement in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in June 2022 and was updated in April 2024. 

3 Types of Coaching Sessions You Need to Have With Your Sales Reps 

Vivian Batman on March 21, 2024

Like the best athletes, the best sales reps always ask for and get more coaching from their managers. 

The best managers are coaching their reps a lot more too.

According to our 2024 State of Sales Productivity Report, top managers tripled the number of coaching sessions since 2022, completing 40 sessions per month. Top-performing reps also get four more coaching sessions per month. 

The result? 

More wins. More revenue. 

So where do you start? 

Key takeways

  • The best managers are doing something differently with their reps during coaching sessions.  
  • There are three common types of coaching between managers and reps. We break them down. 
  • Next steps for setting up an efficient, personalized, and scalable coaching program at your own org. 

Coaching must go beyond deal reviews

Creating a “coaching culture” is often identified as a priority for selling orgs. We define a coaching culture as ongoing, data-driven, and infused into every manager and seller interaction.

When done well, it works. 

According to research, companies with dynamic coaching programs achieve 28 percent higher win rates.

Companies with dynamic coaching programs achieve

higher win rates
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Unfortunately, many orgs struggle to create this coaching culture and instead take an ad hoc approach focused on short-term fixes. This approach is almost always primarily focused on deal reviews.

Of course, as-needed deal reviews are an important way to improve the outcome of a given sale. But on its own, deal coaching isn’t enough to improve long-term results.

The best sales orgs take a different approach to coaching. Rather than focusing solely on deal coaching, they deliver a blend of coaching types delivered at regular intervals to improve long-term success.

How the best sales managers are coaching their reps

Back to the best athletes: When they’re asking for coaching, it’s usually to address a specific issue with their game. 

The same can be said for sales reps.

However many orgs struggle to identify rep weaknesses, which makes effective coaching a struggle. 

According to our 2024 Chief Revenue Officer and Sales Leader Outlook Report, only 40% of C-level executives said they can identify rep strengths and weaknesses.

The first step to effective coaching is to understand rep strengths and weaknesses. To do this, you can take a look at your win/loss reports as well as call recordings to get a better understanding of where reps need improvement. From there, you can equip managers with what they need to “fix” those issues and get your reps back into the field with the skills they need to close more deals, 

Let’s take a closer look at the three types of coaching the best sales managers are delivering to reps — and how often they’re doing so.

#1 Opportunity sales coaching

When someone hears the phrase “sales coaching,” their mind might immediately go to opportunity coaching. That’s not surprising, as it’s the most common type of sales coaching. Our research found that 85% of sales reps report being coached on open deals.

Opportunity coaching is an important way to improve the outcome of a deal. For example, a sales manager might identify that something in a deal isn’t going as planned. This might be based on feedback from the rep during a pipeline review meeting. Or, they could get insight by leveraging a conversation intelligence solution that sheds light on how the rep is performing.

Salesforce- Coaching

In either circumstance, the manager can provide opportunity coaching to help the rep steer the deal back on course. And this will improve the chances of them ultimately closing the deal.

How often are the best managers delivering opportunity coaching? Sometimes, this coaching happens at a regular cadence — for example, during a weekly pipeline review. At these meetings, reps and managers discuss current opportunities — and how to move them forward.

Often, though, opportunity is delivered as needed — for example, when a rep raises a question or concern or meeting intelligence uncovers an issue.

#2 Skills sales coaching

In general, skills coaching is a lot less common. A mere 24% of reps report being coached on skills. 

While opportunity coaching improves the outcome of a single deal, skills coaching is required to ensure reps have the skills and behaviors needed to close deals consistently.

The best sales managers recognize the importance of skills coaching on long-term behavior. As such, they aim to deliver at least one skill-based coaching session per month per rep.

What skills do they focus on? The short answer is, it depends. The first step is for organizations to identify the knowledge, skills, and behaviors a rep needs for success by developing an ideal rep profile (IRP).

Ideal rep profile competencies

Then, each rep should be measured against this gold standard. This helps managers identify where there are skills gaps. Armed with this data, sales managers can deliver targeted, personalized skills coaching that addresses the needs of each individual rep.

#3 Targeted sales coaching

If there’s one thing sellers can count on, it’s that things are always changing. New products are released. Pricing or packaging is adjusted. A new competitor enters the marketplace. And those are just a few of the many changes faced by reps.

The best sales managers deliver coaching sessions to address changes and ensure reps are equipped to adapt. Typically, targeted coaching is a single session on a specific, targeted topic — often followed by enablement content such as content, training, or a role-play exercise.

When it comes to sales coaching, follow-up is key

Sales managers are busy. But the best ones know that coaching is worth the time and effort. On average, top managers complete 12 coaching sessions per month.

But coaching isn’t a one-time event. For example, a manager can’t simply deliver a skills coaching session focused on objection handling, check it off the list, and never think about it again — at least not if they expect actual improvement.

The best managers know that proper follow-up and ongoing reinforcement are key to effective coaching. Our analysis found that top managers are three times more likely to assign content, training or a role-play as a follow-up to a coaching session.

This follow-up is paying off. Reps who are assigned follow-up actions post-coaching see an average improvement of 13 points in Sales Readiness Index scores.

Mindtickle Sales Readiness Index

Start closing gaps and optimizing seller performance with coaching

Sales coaching, when done well, is proven to boost sales outcomes significantly. Deal coaching alone won’t cut it. The best sales leaders use a blend of deal, skills, and targeted coaching to ensure the entire sales team has what it takes to close deals.

Sales Coaching in Mindtickle

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8 Must-Try Sales Role-Plays That Will Prepare Your Team for Every Selling Situation

Helen Waite on October 31, 2023

Whether you’re taking up a new hobby or developing on-the-job skills in a sales role, it’s true what they say: Practice makes perfect. There’s only so much that a seller can digest through sales onboarding and training content — and in order for a rep to truly hone their skills, they must practice through sales role-plays.

Role-play sales training exercises have long been recognized as a powerful training tool for good reason — because they work. They’re a proven way to boost a seller’s confidence in new material, familiarize themselves with messaging, and learn how to handle objections in a risk-free environment.

The value of sales role-plays

Sales role-play scenarios are an especially valuable coaching technique right now. As many sales forces have shifted to remote work environments, it’s imperative that sales training role-plays become a part of every seller’s routine. Because sales is such a people-oriented profession, many of the skills learned on the job are developed through shadowing, coaching and mentorship.

When reps are on their own, and less likely to develop these skills organically as they’re not working alongside their peers in an office, it’s important to foster this skill set through designated training sessions. After all, role-playing helps sellers practice and prepare for real-world buyer interactions so they know how to handle every selling situation thrown their way.

That being said, role-play is traditionally considered a team sport. So you may be wondering how it can be approached effectively while everyone is working remotely. The key is to use a “smart” role-play tool that comes with AI. A tool like this allows you to use AI to analyze a transcript of your reps’ video recordings or presentation voiceovers, giving you insights (with the help of keyword analysis) into the presenter’s articulation, product knowledge, enthusiasm, confidence, and comprehensiveness of response.

 

Compared to a traditional role-play conducted in person, virtual role-plays give reps the opportunity to take multiple passes at a scenario at their own pace, while also equipping them with concrete feedback that they can put into practice immediately.

Top 8 sales role-play scenarios

If you’re a leader or manager looking for sales role-play ideas that will get your team thinking on their feet and mastering new scenarios, we’ve highlighted our eight tried-and-true favorites.

As you think about the different types of role-play scenarios to practice with your team, it’s a good idea to first identify the key areas where reps typically struggle or face challenges, and equip them with the tools they need to prepare for those scenarios in the field.

Below are the top role-play scenarios — along with some suggestions for how you can effectively execute them in a remote environment.

This is an essential exercise for any sales rep, but particularly BDRs who need support in identifying the buyers’ problems. With a smart role-play tool, you’ll be able to provide contextual, in-video comments on their role-play, so reps know exactly where they can refine their talk track or ask stronger probing questions

A good elevator pitch is everything to a sales rep. Reps can practice their elevator pitches on a call or in the form of a recorded practice, which can then be reviewed and evaluated by their manager and their peers.

This role-play sales training is especially valuable for those transitioning from field sales to inside sales. This type of role-play scenario allows reps to practice sales conversations remotely with other team members or their managers. This might include handling new sales software or adapting their talk track for a virtual meeting — both of which can be evaluated with the right technology in place.

Your reps’ messaging needs to be precise and their product knowledge evident during demos, so it’s always a good idea for reps to role-play a product demo with a more experienced colleague or sales manager. These can be analyzed for keywords, filler words and to gauge reps’ confidence in the material, especially when unexpected questions come their way.

Objection handling role-plays gives reps the chance to practice answering tough questions and combat objections from buyers. This can be done virtually with top-performing sales colleagues and helps give less experienced sellers the chance to hear firsthand the types of objections that a typical prospect would have, then use their training to try to answer their questions or mitigate their concerns.

Great sales reps are skilled negotiators. Develop this skill in your salesforce by creating role-plays simulating buyers asking for a lower price based on competitor pricing or budget. Using AI can be extremely helpful when evaluating negotiation role-plays because it identifies the number of filler words used, tone and confidence, which are typically more difficult to effectively provide feedback on without concrete data.

 

When competitors come up in sales conversations, you want your reps prepared and ready to handle those situations with ease. To do this, sellers can role-play conversations that mimic situations when a buyer mentions a competitor or asks about comparisons. You can also encourage reps to set competitive traps in their product positioning and scan their role-play transcripts to ensure they’re hitting the mark each time.

Buyers love seeing examples of how other customers use and benefit from your product. Customer storytelling role-plays allow reps to practice sharing their best customer use cases and stories. Using a smart role-play tool, you can leave comments at specific points in each recording where you think messaging could be refined or strengthened.

Role-plays coupled with expert coaching: a winning combination

When it comes to effective on-the-job learning, we know traditional training materials aren’t enough, but neither is sales coaching alone — no matter how good it is. To actually drive changes in seller behavior, reps must also have the opportunity to practice their skills in live situations.

By offering reps the opportunity to conduct virtual sales role-plays in a remote work environment, while also being able to provide accurate and timely feedback through some of the AI-powered tools on the market, you’ll be able to set your reps up for success whether they’re near or far.

 

Better role-plays = More productive sellers

Ready to see how Mindtickle can make your role-plays more effective? 

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This post was originally published in June 2021 and updated in October 2023. 

4 Objectives of Effective Sales Coaching

Rahul Mathew on October 12, 2023

B2B customers only spend 17 percent of their interactions with a salesperson. This means that every second of an interaction counts. Effective sales coaching can empower sales reps with the resources and skills they need to leave a lasting impression.

Amount of time B2B buyers spend with sellers
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Understanding the objectives of sales coaching and how to avoid the most common pitfalls won’t only strengthen your sales coaches’ influence — it will also improve the end performance of your sales reps..

What is sales coaching?

Sales coaching is the ongoing, one-on-one mentorship of each rep on a sales team. It is a conversation between the rep and a coach, where the rep does most of the talking while the coach listens, observes, and offers feedback.

Coaching is different from onboarding, where new information is presented to many reps at one time. It’s also unique from training, which can happen in many different forms, including virtual training and micro-learning.

Here are a few characteristics of coaching that make it different from training:

While a training event provides a baseline education or a foundation, coaching builds on this foundation with continual sessions. Many successful sales organizations make coaching a weekly practice, and some even establish daily coaching routines.

Unlike a training session that involves the whole sales team, each coaching session is tailored to the needs of an individual rep. The coach knows the rep, as well as their strengths, challenges, and areas needing improvement.

While training is designed to impart new information about products, customers, strategies, competitors, etc., coaching is behavior-based. It corrects a rep’s unfavorable behaviors and habits while reinforcing effective ones. In fact, quota attainment increases by 7% when coaches focus on sales rep behavior.

 

Why does effective sales coaching matter?

Having a strong coaching relationship is important to gain employee trust and work together to develop sales skills. But the secret sauce to coaching is making sure to build a program and approach where reps are coached the right way.

Apart from building an environment where growth is supported, sales coaching can also:

  • Optimize sales training information and skills to be incorporated into day-to-day practices.
  • Show sales reps you care about their personal development and growth in their role.
  • Create personalized KPIs and development plans that are tracked with employees.
  • Share, in a safe environment, valuable feedback for improvement.
  • Teach sales reps to leverage sales enablement tools to track and monitor their skill development progress.

 

The 4 key objectives of sales coaching

Research from our 2022 State of Sales Readiness found that 85% of reps report being coached on closing open deals but only 24% report being coached on long-term skills. The best sales managers make it a priority to deliver a mix of opportunity, skills, and targeted coaching to truly drive results.

Here’s how to build a coaching approach that focuses on developing long-term skills rather than just focusing on short-term deal remediation.

1. Ensure reps refine and improve their sales skills

Most sales reps forget 70% of their sales training, with 87% of sales reps forgetting that 70% within the first month of training. Sales coaching helps with this by reinforcing training concepts and applying them to the unique needs of each rep.

Coaching starts with analytics that pinpoint each rep’s strengths and weaknesses. For new hires, the sales coach might target foundational behaviors and best practices like empathetic listening and objection handling. Over time, the coach’s focus might transition to negotiation skills and effectively presenting value.

As the rep’s career progresses, they’ll flourish into a highly skilled advisor that buyers depend on.

2. Build confidence and encourage skill development

Many sales leaders incorrectly assume that coaching creates discouragement and a lack of confidence. Such leaders often come from organizations that only coach their reps after they’ve lost a deal. In that circumstance, coaching is viewed as a negative, as it is often read as a type of punishment.

Proper coaching, however, is an integral part of every sales rep’s daily or weekly routine. Effective coaches build confidence by praising their reps’ daily wins, along with helping them overcome their weaknesses.

3. Provide consistent practices and expectations across the sales team

It’s common for sales organizations to lack standard best practices for their teams to anchor themselves to. Without a standard set of guidelines and repeatable steps to take, it’s almost impossible to help reps correct their courses of action.

Successful sales organizations use onboarding sessions to teach reps about the organization’s best practices, and they reinforce these standards with coaching. These one-on-one sessions are a great opportunity to identify and correct behavior that doesn’t fit with the organization’s vision or standard process.

4. Increase revenue

Organizations that provide effective sales coaching enjoy 16.7% higher annual revenue growth than those that don’t. That’s why it’s important for sales leaders to resist the temptation to “be the hero” and take the reins of a lagging deal to score the big win. By taking over, sales leaders deprive their teams of the ability to refine their skills and improve.

Sales organizations that establish coaches rather than “heroes” are able to turn every member of their salesforce into competent deal closers. It’s more profitable to have 100 highly skilled closers than a handful of heroes.

The challenges of sales coaching

Most sales leaders understand the importance of coaching but struggle to find the time and support to implement an effective coaching program.

Here are the four most common challenges in sales coaching:

Some sales reps don’t feel they need sales coaching

Many reps want training and coaching because they understand that it boosts their career development. Others, particularly those who consistently hit their sales quota, are hesitant.

Reluctance to sales coaching can be solved by instituting a culture of coaching where everyone — including the coaches themselves — is mentored and coached.

Sales coaches and managers can lead by example by continuing to receive coaching and working to develop their own skills. It’s good practice to strike a balance between formal and informal coaching, as this will let your sales reps know they’re not being graded and evaluated but can use the coaching session as a tool for improvement. It’s especially important early in the sales coaching process — when reps are hesitant — to reinforce a culture of continuous improvement.

Leaders are unsure how to measure success

Many sales leaders want to make a business case for establishing a coaching process at their organization, but they have no idea how to measure success or ROI. Fortunately, the right sales coaching platform provides all the analytics capabilities and metrics needed for this

With the right sales enablement tool, you can set goals for the entire team as well as individual reps.

When you understand an individual rep’s strengths and weaknesses, you can set performance goals and coach toward these. Whether it’s contract value, win rate, time to productivity, or another sales KPI, you can track the individual’s performance on a given metric over time to evaluate the effectiveness of your coaching.

Teams don’t want to put forth the time and resources required

Time and resources are common challenges for organizations looking to expand their sales coaching. It takes time from both the sales rep who is being coached and the leader doing the coaching. It may involve implementing and learning new technology, adjusting schedules, and even changing the department’s culture.

This investment seems daunting, but the long-term value far outweighs the initial investment of time and effort. Organizations that spend time reinforcing skills and use coaching to reach set goals can raise sales rep productivity by 25% in as little as 18 months.

It’s a good idea to include a sales enablement platform that empowers both sales reps and coaches with insights, centralized content, and courses to help save time and track improvement. This shows sales reps insights into their improvement and encourages continuous development.

 

Lack of understanding of what makes a strong sales coaching program

What makes a good sales rep is often different from what makes a good sales coach. Unfortunately, many organizations promote high-performing reps without investing in training and ongoing development for the sales coach in their new role.

To create an effective coaching plan, it’s important to implement coach training in your organization. Have coaches complete their training before they begin coaching salespeople. And use one-on-one mentoring, virtual training, and other tools to ensure your coaches are well-equipped to develop sales skills in other reps.

The above challenges are temporary ones, and they are usually resolved as the coaching system progresses. Once all reps see the career advantages of coaching, and once top leadership understands the competitive benefits, you can encourage the entire department to embrace continuous development.

4 tips for measuring sales coaching effectiveness

Measuring the impact of sales coaching is important to help understand the ROI of time and other resources invested in coaching sales reps.

However, calculating sales coaching impact is a bit more tricky.

But don’t worry — we’ve got four simple tips that’ll help you measure your sales coaching effectiveness.

1. Keep track of sales performance

Forty-seven percent of companies look at the performance of the overall team to gauge the success of sales coaching. This will help you understand how behavioral change and skill development translate to higher win rates and improved performance.

To measure the impact of sales coaching, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the following sales metrics:

  • Sales cycle length
  • Quota attainment
  • Conversion by deal stage
  • Average revenue generation

Keep track of the skills developed through coaching sessions to see the influence they have on quota attainment. This will help you understand where your training has been the most useful and what skills need a little more improvement.

2. Assess sales reps’ skill development

With sales coaching, the goal is to identify weak sales traits and skills and then support sellers to grow their skills and knowledge.

Part of calculating the impact of sales coaching is to see how learned skills pass from theory into practice. You’ll want to ensure sales reps use their new skills in all their interactions and note the impact it has on closing rates.

Keep an eye on the following measurements to calculate the impact sales coaching has on sales reps’ skills:

  • Number of sales skills improved
  • Behavioral changes around selling approaches
  • Amount of new skills learned

 

You can use skill tests and quizzes to measure skill improvement. And sales enablement platforms can help automatically keep track of interactions and score each seller on their skill level.

3. Create anonymous surveys and feedback polls

Employee turnover is expensive, with the average cost of replacing a sales hire being 2.1-2.5 times their salary.

However, sales coaching and training can increase employee engagement by 10% and improve the overall employee experience. In fact, organizations that focus on personalized development increase retention rate by 34% on average.

Keep track of employee engagement through surveys and polls to understand the correlation between sales coaching and employee engagement.

Some good indicators to keep an eye on are:

  • Average employee engagement scores
  • Average employee turnover
  • Average employee satisfaction

Sales coaches are also at the front line to hear sales reps’ concerns and worries. This puts them in a position to proactively improve their employee experience and come up with solutions with the reps being coached.

Not only does this help with sales rep engagement, but it empowers employees to succeed in their roles while improving company profitability.

A sales coaching platform empowers your whole team

To coach effectively, you need a combination of data insights, content resources, and skill assessments. This requires content and course preparation and tracking abilities to measure sales reps’ improvement. This can be challenging if you don’t have a way to store and connect all the skills and sellers’ insights.

However, it doesn’t have to be.

A sales enablement platform like Mindtickle includes robust sales coaching features for your team to build on.

Moreover, Mindtickle offers bespoke competency maps to identify areas for coaching, micro-learning modules, insights to track improvement, and an ideal rep profile to inspire sales reps.

Sales Coaching in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in January 2020, updated in December 2022, and again in October 2023. 

Video: 3 Tips for Fostering a Coaching Culture

Helen Waite on September 20, 2023

 

Episode summary

In this video, Helen Waite shares some of the key takeaways from our Road to Readiness Roadshow stop in Chicago. This video focuses on fostering a coaching culture in sales orgs and offers some practical tips for how to create one at your own organization.

Key highlights

  • Leadership buy-in: To establish a coaching culture, it’s imperative that senior leaders, from the CRO to managers and reps, actively participate in coaching. Leadership buy-in sets the example for the entire team. Some organizations even tie coaching to sales manager compensation to incentivize regular coaching.
  • Coaching for coaches: Sales managers are often promoted from successful sales reps, but they may lack the necessary coaching skills. Providing coaching for coaches as part of onboarding and ongoing training is essential. Regular training sessions, whether quarterly or during annual kickoffs, help managers continually improve their coaching abilities.
  • Better together mindset: Encouraging collaboration among managers and reps fosters a coaching-friendly environment. When managers work together and reps collaborate, it creates a safe space for conversations, enabling continuous learning. This “better together” mindset ensures that coaching isn’t a competitive activity but rather a collective effort to help the entire team achieve their goals.

Transcription

Our second stop on our Road to Readiness Roadshow in Chicago brought together sales leaders from ChowNow, Couchbase, Cisco, SCI, and more. A lot of the conversation was around a coaching culture in your organization. So here we’ll share three tips for fostering a coaching culture.

The first tip is leadership buy-in.

You’re not going to get your entire team to adopt a coaching culture and coach on a regular basis unless your leaders are doing the same thing. So enablement can’t drive this function alone, you need to make sure that your senior sales leaders, your CRO down to your managers, and your reps are all bought into coaching on a regular basis, so everyone can get better.

We’ve seen success in organizations even building coaching and as part of a sales manager’s compensation, just to encourage and make sure that they’re doing that coaching on a regular basis.

The second tip is coaching your coaches.

We often see that sales managers are typically sales reps who did really well and were promoted. So it doesn’t always mean that they have the skills needed to learn how to coach their reps effectively once they do become a manager.

Make sure that you’re coaching your coaches as part of your onboarding and training for your new managers. And then making sure you’re doing that on a regular basis, whether it’s once a year, providing training to all of your managers on how to coach their reps effectively. It could be on a quarterly basis, or twice a year during your kickoffs, making sure that you’re not only doing a coach the coach as part of your onboarding but also including that on a regular basis for your managers to make sure that they’re always learning from each other, learning how to be better coaches for their reps.

And finally, the third tip is developing a better together mindset.

We heard as part of our sessions, that it’s really important that your managers work together and that your reps work together. And that really fosters a coaching environment where you can have a safe space to have conversations, whether it’s manager to rep, or rep to rep.

Your managers can learn from each other, and so can your reps, and that can help making sure you’re coaching on a regular basis. If they’re all learning from each other, better together. And that coaching can really help the team all hit their numbers together and it’s not kind of pitting team or region against each other. So having that better together mindset helps with that culture.

Create a Sales Coaching Culture

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