PLAYBOOKChoosing the Right Sales Coaching Solution

Sales coaching is like maintaining a healthy diet. Everyone knows they should be doing it, but most aren’t doing it effectively. A Forbes Insights study found that 74% of leading companies cited “coaching or mentoring” as sales leaders’ most important responsibility;1 however, only 15% of those polled say they have an adequate amount of sales coaching in place. 2

Much like leading a healthy lifestyle, your sales enablement and readiness process isn’t something you just set and forget. To ensure sales reps are prepared to have the types of conversations with buyers that power growth, completing a series of

random, “one-off” training sessions just won’t cut it. Organizations need a way to make

sure reps have truly mastered the skills and messages needed

to succeed.

Introduction

There are challenges, of course (Do managers know how to coach effectively? Do they have the time?), which is why many companies are turning to sales coaching technology to help simplify the process. But while coaching software can be a boon for sales productivity, it’s also a relatively new investment for a lot of organizations. So what does the right

coaching technology look like?

This eBook covers six key capabilities to consider

when looking for a sales coaching solution.

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That’s why sales coaching is such a valuable piece of the sales enablement puzzle. It allows organizations to continuously reinforce training and validate that salespeople are indeed “field-ready”.

SiriusDecisions

1

One of the biggest barriers to effective sales coaching is time; for many sales managers, face-to-face coaching of an entire team simply isn’t practical. This is especially true for large, distributed or partner sales forces where many (if not all) reps are in another location. It’s also why video is often at the core of sales coaching technology.

With a video-based coaching solution, for example, managers can issue challenges or assignments virtually and have reps submit their responses over video. This could include everything from a new product pitch to a sample cold call. This way, managers can view each video to see exactly which reps are (and aren’t) capable of demonstrating the expertise needed to succeed in conversations with prospects.

Video-Based Coaching

Key Consideration:

Of course, simply reviewing a video from a rep isn’t enough. The real power of coaching comes from the guidance you give them. Your technology should allow sales managers to provide custom feedback and ratings in order to fine-tune the performance of reps.

“Challenge reps to respond to a customer scenario via video with previously learned messaging or techniques.”3

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SALESREINFORCEMENT TECHNIQUES

Sales coaching is only a single piece of a larger sales readiness strategy, which also includes things like formal onboarding and continuous training. A lot of companies use on-demand eLearning software to reduce sales training time by allowing reps to learn on their own schedule. In this case, it only makes sense to have your training and coaching technologies work together.

It can be wise to look at solution providers who offer coaching as part of a larger system for sales enablement and readiness. This will allow you to more seamlessly incorporate standard coaching challenges and resources with other eLearning content, or as part of on-demand courses and curricula.

2

Integration with Sales Training Software

Key Consideration:

To keep learners engaged, sales enablement leaders can arm reps with on-demand resources and incorporate video-based coaching challenges or interactive quizzes to reinforce lessons. For example, say you’re getting ready to launch a new product feature and want to ensure your reps are ramped up in time for the release. If you require your reps to submit a 60-second elevator pitch on the new feature at the end of their training, they’ll not only pay more attention to the content, but also process it a lot faster.

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DID YOU KNOW:A recent study by Ventana Research found when training is reinforced by in-the-field coaching, companies see up to 4X the ROI from training programs alone.

ROI

4x

3

Access from Your CRM

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Salespeople should be enabled where they work, and at most B2B companies, that’s the CRM. To put it another way, for many successful sales organizations, the CRM is their one source of truth. So why not also make it the source for sales enablement and readiness?

Many sales enablement leaders already target solutions that allow reps to access the training and content they need right from CRM systems like Salesforce. By choosing a coaching technology that integrates as well, you’ll make it that much easier for your reps to access the resources they need to sell effectively while maximizing productivity.

Key Consideration:

Sales readiness never stops – but it can slow down if reps have to go searching other systems for the resources they need to stay prepared. Simple access to training, content and coaching resources from the same CRM reps are already using can be a real time-saver, and help ensure your team is better prepared for critical conversations with any of their leads, accounts or opportunities.

is one of 5 key areas driving CRM investments since 2016.4

Virtual Coaching

DestinationCRM

DID YOU KNOW:

4

Teamwide or Individual CoachingEvery sales organization should have a coaching plan for achieving team mastery and individual mastery – and your sales coaching solution should help develop both. Ideally, every rep should have their own personalized mastery plan to ensure they are working on their personal competency gaps, while teamwide mastery plans allow managers to coach their entire team at once.

The right sales coaching solution will allow you to serve up challenges to reps one-on-one, as a sub-group, or teamwide. This allows for individualized coaching as well as challenges that address the needs of the team as a whole (and drive consistency across the organization).

Key Consideration:

Sales coaching should not only be geared toward general product information or selling strategies, but also toward individual competency gaps or personal performance improvement plans. For example, if a rep is great at planning but needs to improve on his or her closing tactics, your coaching solution should not only help you identify this, but also then provide specific training and coaching in that area.

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THE WORD FROM THE EXPERTS:

"Coaching does matter. The impact on quota attainment is remarkable, and the impact on win rates is significant."

CSO Insights

5

Leaderboards and Competition-Based Learning

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Salespeople are goal-oriented individuals and tend to be competitive in nature. When it comes to sales coaching, a solution that allows you to create a healthy sense of competition across the team or within sub-groups can help.

For example, if you are onboarding a group of new hires, you can create fun challenges within the group with leaderboards that encourage reps to compete for the best submission. This also give reps an easy way to see examples of what a good challenge response sounds like, so they can to tweak their own submissions and improve their scores.

Key Consideration:

The gamification of learning allows sales teams to have a bit of fun with information that might sometimes seem like an arduous task. Employing challenges and leaderboards amongst team members is an easy way to help demonstrate what A+ answers sound like, while also incentivizing reps to practice more to get better.

of surveyed companies saw an increase in measured sales performance between 11% and 50% after implementing gamification.5

71%DID YOU KNOW:

Salesforce

You can’t expect the selling tactics of your ‘A players’ to be transferred over to the rest of your team by osmosis. Your top performers can be coaches as well. Through peer-to-peer learning and collaboration, reps can absorb critical knowledge and solutions to real-world scenarios they face every day in the field. So a coaching solution that allows for this type of peer interaction is another key consideration.

6

Peer-to-Peer Coaching

Key Consideration:

Salespeople are sometimes more open to listen to feedback from their fellow reps than a manager. The right sales coaching tool should foster those valuable peer-to-peer interactions, while still allowing managers to monitor and ensure that all responses are compliant and aligned with company values. For example, you’d never want your reps to teach their peers to respond to the scenario above with “We’ll give you the first month free” if that’s not something you want to offer!

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DID YOU KNOW:

of sales reps say that learning from peers helps them succeed.

91%ATD

For example, let’s say you are a software provider and a common objection your reps encounter is that your prices are higher than your competition’s. A more experienced salesperson may have a proven response to this, while a struggling rep continues to unsuccessfully pitch lines like, “Our customer support is built into the price.” With peer-to-peer coaching, reps can conclude from each other what the more effective response would be, and share those best practices across the organization.

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Want to learn more about sales enablement & readiness technology?

Brainshark sales readiness software equips businesses with the training, coaching and content authoring capabilities to achieve sales mastery and outsell the competition.

With Brainshark, companies can: prepare sales teams with on-demand training that accelerates onboarding and keeps reps up-to-speed; validate readiness with sales coaching that ensures reps master your message; and empower sales organizations with rich, dynamic content that can be created quickly and accessed anywhere.

Thousands of companies – including more than half of the Fortune 100 – rely on Brainshark to identify and close performance gaps, and get better results from their sales enablement initiatives. Learn more at: www.brainshark.com.

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Endnotes

1. Forbes Insights, The Power of Enablement: Bridging the Sales Productivity Gap, 2015.

2. The Sales Management Association, Webinar - Expert Panel: Enabling Better Sales Coaching, 2016.

3. SiriusDecisions, Sales Learning Solutions: Identifying Needs and Capabilities, 2017.

4. DestinationCRM, Sales Enablement Will Drive CRM Investment in 2016, 2016.

5. Salesforce, Gamification and Sales: Is it Working?, 2013.