What is a sales coach? Today, I’m going to answer every question you have about sales coaching.
The Complete Guide to Sales Coaching
Sales is the driving force behind every single business.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know what I’m about to say:
Nothing happens until a sale is made.
Sales keeps the doors open
Sales keeps the team paid.
Sales funds the marketing campaigns that bring in leads and in turn generate even more sales.
Sales is the backbone of your entire organization. Without sales, you don’t have a business.
When productivity has reached a plateau (or worse, dropped), smart business owners hire a sales coach to come in and re-energize sales teams and get them back on track, so that the business can keep generating revenue.
But, what is a sales coach? What does a sales coach do? How can you find one? How do you know if you’re hiring a GOOD sales coach? And, how can YOU become the sales coach for your internal team?
Today, we’re going to talk about everything you need to know about sales coaching.
What is a Sales Coach?
A sales coach is someone who comes into an organization to reinvigorate the company’s sales team. A sales coach digs deep to figure out what it takes to get your team up on the right trajectory, work effectively, and generate more revenue for the company.
A sales coach is not typically hired on as a full time employee, although many high-stakes companies make an investment in a sales coach on a long-term basis. A sales coach works in conjunction with the VP of sales, sales managers, sales team leads, and other C-level executives to transform the energy and efficiency of the sales team.
Sales coaches may also work in tandem with the marketing department to ensure that the two teams are working currently, that there is consistency in goals, and make sure that the leads the marketing team is generating are being processed correctly so that the sales team can step in at the right time.
Although they’re typically in the background of a sales organization, sales coaches are the driving force between success and stagnation of your company.
What Does a Sales Coach Do?
So, you’re thinking about hiring a sales coach (or becoming a sales coach for your team), but what does a sales coach actually do?
A sales coach comes into your organization, breaks down the current state of your sales team piece-by-piece, reconstructs it, and creates success pathways for the entire team. A sales coach helps your company navigate the waters between when you are and where you want to be.
Let’s break down some of the most significant responsibilities of a sales coach:
Create Accountability Systems
Your sales coach will create and implement the systems and processes that keep your team accountable. This could look like the implementation of score cards and progress tracking, creating a pathway to success, and implementing routine training with sales team leads and reps.
Determined the Core Motivations of the Team
Above anything else, your sales team is made of people. Your organization needs to recognize that the people on your sales team aren’t just simply another cog in the wheel, but human beings with motivations and desires.
A sales coach helps determine what drives your team individually and collectively.
Some team members will say that they’re driven by money.
Some team members will be driven by the desire to be successful in their career.
Some will say that they don’t particularly love their job, but that they’re drive by stability.
No matter what they say their surface desires are, it always goes deeper.
For example, the team members that say that they’re driven by money have the core desire of providing for their family, retiring their spouse, paying off their old debts, or living in their dream home.
A sales coach goes deep, helping figure out what motivates each team member and how to use that motivation as the daily driver for navigating challenging leads and closing deals (and yes, this works even for team members who don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about their careers).
Develops and Sets Expectations
Sales teams are a microcosm of society as a whole. There are leaders and there are followers There are people who prefer to stay inside the lines and there are people who innovate. There are people who need guidance and there are self-reliant people.
You likely have someone in each of these categories on your team.
But, no matter what each member of your team brings to the table, there needs to be a set of standards and expectations that apply to everyone on the team. There needs to be an order of command. People, by nature, thrive with some kind of structure and knowing what they can expect next.
Hiring a sales coach means bringing someone in to reset the organization, help you develop those expectations, and helps you navigate implementing them.
And sometimes, your sales coach will help you arrive at uncomfortable conclusions. Not every member of your sales team may be a fit for the type of culture you want to promote. This can be difficult, especially for smaller sales teams. But, the health of your company sometimes depends on having hard conversations and rebuilding your sales team with people who align with your mission.
Helps Train & Refine Your Team’s Skills
A sales coach will dig into the disconnect between the expectations of the company and your training regimen, filling any gaps and clearing up confusion. Sales coaches help your team strengthen their skills so that they perform their best in the field.
Sets Your Team Up For Continuous Growth
A good sales coach is hands-on with your team and not only takes advantage of teachable moments, but teaches the strongest members of your team how to do the same. This way, your team learns to rely on one another, work in cohesion, and empower each other to motivate, inspire, and push each other to perform.
Sales Coach vs. Sales Consultant
Sales coaches and sales consultants are both integral to an organization, but there are key differences.
A sales consultant is hired to grow sales and drive the outcomes desired by the client. In other words they’re there to produce results that are dictated by the client.
For example, the client needs to increase sales by 10% this year. The sales consultant will devise a plan of action and give prescriptive measures to the sales organization to accomplish those goals. A sales consultant essentially is a “fixer” brought in as a part of the team.
On the other hand, a sales coach is somebody who comes into an organization and helps uncover problems through deep discovery (with what I call soul-piercing, jaw-dropping, head-spinning questions). Sales coaching is almost “sales therapy” where the coach empowers leadership and sales organization to come to the conclusions on their own and take the action required.
In short, sales consultants fix immediate problems and sales coaches empower the team to fix and prevent problems in the future, empowering the organization in the long term.
Sales Coaching: A Case Study
Let’s dissect a sales coaching engagement and identify the problem, the approach, and the solution involved. This will give you a deeper understanding of how sales coaching works and can impact your organization.
For the sake of privacy, we will call the client Client X.
The Problem
Client X had been a fairly successful solar organization for a number of years. However, they had recently experienced sales leadership that was more laid-back; didn’t enforce accountability and as a result their results started to slow precipitously.
Their sales culture was suffering and revenue was experiencing a rapid decline. Client X opted to bring in a third-party sales coach to revolutionize their sales culture and create a pathway back to success.
The Approach.
As with any coaching, the first thing we needed to do was listen. We listened intently to what was working and what wasn’t, as well as what they think they need help with.
To do this, we used our deep dive discovery engagement, which is a strategy that includes interviewing each of the leaders — the CEO and the VP of Sales. During this deep dive discovery engagement, we used tools like self-evaluation, the automate delegate, and the illuminate exercise to help them see, in black and white, the opportunities they have to improve sales, revolutionize sales culture, and produce better results.
We also used the Eisenhower Matrix, also known as the Urgent-Important Matrix, to help them decide on and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance. With this matrix, we sort out the less urgent and less important tasks, which should be delegated or not done at all.
This is named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was routinely tasked with making tough decisions about which tasks to focus on each day. Over time, he invented the now world-famous Eisenhower principle, which we use to prioritize tasks by urgency and importance.
The AJC Group also implemented hands-on coaching and training programs for team members from the C-Level to the sales leads. This ensures cohesion in goal-setting and methodology to achieve them across the organization.
Individual Coaching Sessions
One-on-one sessions with individual sales reps, including coaching on deals and presentations, analysis of live sales interactions, and assessments to develop areas for improvement.
This includes:
- Learning rules of influence
- Taking ownership
- Setting goals, not deadlines
- Minimizing stress factors
- Maintaining a positive mental attitude
- Developing self-confidence and motivation
- Cultivating proactive motivational techniques and strategies
- Developing oneself
Individual coaching is good for new salespeople, sales reps struggling to hit their numbers, and sales reps who go out on calls on their own
Group Coaching Sessions
Group sales coaching sessions create a culture of sales success and an environment in which every rep can learn from each other.
This includes:
- Planning the sale
- Preparing proven sales strategies for product demos
- Creating a sales action plan
- Performing detailed studies of prospects and clients
- Learning to get the customers attention, interest, desire, and action
- Creating trust and rapport
- Learning to ask the right questions
- Expanding the dialogue
- Learning how to ask for referrals
- Selling value, not price
- Cross-selling and upselling
- Overcoming objections and stalls
C-Level Training
Designed for key executives, this coaching helps your organization take sales performance to the next level.
This includes:
- Developing leadership traits
- Improving the sales team
- Streamlining performance of the reps
- Hiring and recognizing the key players
- Setting priorities and executing them
- Focusing on the right customers
- Understanding and tracking key metrics
- Engaging in deep conversations about sales vision and strategy with an expert in sales practices
- Delivering lasting sales results
- Understanding the key components of creating a supportive sales culture
The Resolution
As of this writing, results that have increased leadership are more focused on instilling accountability and helping their sales leaders to spend time on more revenue producing activities and things that they’re good at.
We’ve also implemented a continuous coaching engagement with their VP of sales which continues to reap rewards to this day
Individual Sales Coaching vs. Group Sales Coaching
Benefits of Sales Coaching for Individuals
A recent study showed that sales pros who participate in individual or one-on-one coaching will improve their performance by 19.5%. In private, one-on-one sessions, sales reps are able to share their concerns, pain points, and struggles in a comfortable environment to facilitate more individual guidance and recommendations from the coach.
Individually, sales reps are able to improve their communication skills to learn how to close the deal, improving their overall productivity and engagement. During a one-on-one session, they gain personal awareness, improve specific skills, and gain perspective and a deeper level of learning.
Benefits of Group Sales Coaching
Coaching in a group environment reinforces the positive sales culture across the entire organization. When a robust, organization-wide sales culture is built, every team member understands their role in the larger goal and can work together toward improving sales and building long-term customer relationships.
This doesn’t mean the approach isn’t individualized, however. Sales reps will have an opportunity to work on their weaknesses and grow and learn together, supporting each other as a team. It also establishes best practices and processes to hold everyone accountable and help each other continue learning and developing once the sessions are completed.
Why Hire a Sales Coach?
Clarity and Focus
We find especially in the solar industry that anyone with a pulse or who can find a mirror is your ideal client. And that just isn’t so. Getting clear on your offer and getting focused on who your ideal client is is the first step in putting off Guard rails to help you execute.
Create a Cohesive Team
Sales can be a competitive environment, and while competition breeds success, it can also hurt the bottom line if things become too cutthroat. Working together with sales coaching, both individual and group, builds a strong, supportive sales culture organization-wide to ensure success for everyone. In addition, new and inexperienced reps can learn from the trials and tribulations of more experienced sales reps, and conversely, those experienced reps gain a fresh perspective and new approaches.
Different Personality Types are Empowered
Every solar sales organization has a mixture of personality types and experience. Some are extroverted, some are introverts, and some are in the middle. Getting all personality types together as a cohesive unit helps move the needle forward in closing more deals.
Improved Morale
When left to their own devices, sales teams are not capable of producing the outcomes that leadership defines for them. They don’t achieve results, and their morale takes a hit.
So, how do you improve morale? Get teams working together and completing tasks that they are good at and enjoy doing. Employees need to feel like they’re contributing to the overall business goals and like they’re valued within an organization to be committed to success, and that boosts morale.
You’ve heard the phrase “happy wife, happy life?” Well, happy sales professionals produce better results than unhappy ones. If you want to succeed, and you want your team to succeed, you must improve morale.
Increased Sales
If all roads lead to Rome, all activities lead to increased sales. When you make yourself accountable as a leader, and your team accountable to their work, you can get the results you seek. This will increase sales, and in turn, profitability.
Measurable Results
Measurable results come from defining the activities required to get to that outcome. Otherwise, you have no idea if the changes and initiatives you’ve implemented are working, or what you can do to improve them. Every strategy starts with a goal and it needs to be clear and measurable.
We’ll go over setting goals in detail in the next section, but generally, it’s not enough to have vague and undefined goals like “make more money” or “increase sales.” How much more money? How many sales? In what timeframe? Relative to what benchmark?
As you can see, goals need to be more targeted to see if you’re achieving them and what you can do to boost your performance.
Sales Coaching & Goal Setting
You can’t accomplish a goal unless you understand what the goal is.
For some, it’s “revolutionizing sales culture,“ “attracting more leads,” “booking more appointments,” or “closing more deals.”
This is where measurable goals come into play. If your goal is to close one residential deal a week or even one commercial deal a month how does a coach come in and help that happen? You start from the end and work back. How many appointments? How many door knobs? How many follow-ups?
All of these questions will help you understand what it takes to accomplish the goal stated above.
Goals should always be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound). So, closing more deals isn’t enough.
Your goal is to sell four residential solar deals a week. It’s specific and measurable(four residential solar deals), attainable (you can manage four deals in a week!), relevant (it’s related to sales goals), and time bound (you chose a week as your timeframe).
See how that works? Now, you have a clear goal in mind. If you see that on Wednesday you haven’t closed a single deal, you know you’re not on track to meet your goal. If you close four deals by Tuesday, you’ve now met your goal with three days to spare, so perhaps you didn’t choose a goal that’s enough of a challenge.
Setting goals like this can help you determine and define what you’re setting out to achieve and creates a pattern for you to follow in the future. As mentioned, if your goal comes too easily, you know that you need to raise the bar a bit in the future. If it’s not going to happen, you know that you need to choose more realistic and achievable goals moving forward.
But back to your goal: four residential solar deals in a week’s time. Knowing your goal shapes your strategy. What activities do you need to execute to accomplish this goal?
For example, if you have a 40% closing rate, you need to pitch 10 prospects to close four deals for that month.
Let’s say you were a door-knocker and you want to set up a certain number of appointments in a day. How many doors do you need to knock on and how many conversations do you need to have? If your door knocker’s “sit” rate is 10%, and the average door-knocker will knock on doors for four hours a day, say 80 doors, that’s eight sits for your time.
As you can see, you can work from a goal forward, or start from your current performance and work backwards to determine realistic goals and timeframes. You have this benchmark, and from there, you can choose to challenge yourself more or keep goals more achievable until you learn what works for you.
No matter what, you need to have goals. There’s no other way to track, measure, and improve your performance without a goal to start.
How to Become a Sales Coach & Coach Your Team
So you’re a sales leader and you want to coach your team to be more efficient, confident, and productive. Great! Every sales organization needs coaching–even those teams who are already high-performing can increase their productivity even further.
Let’s talk about how you can coach your team in a measurable and effective way.
I Want to Coach My Team on Sales. Where Do I Start?
Before you start coaching your team on sales, start by asking yourself this question:
If I were looking for a coach what would I look for?
You would likely choose someone who has a proven track record, is self-starting, determined, and someone you could rely on as a trusted advisor.
Be this person for your team.
Start By Getting Your Own Coach
Every coach needs a coach. We miss the forest for the trees, and a sales coach can help you see your blind spots and improve your own skill set, so you can lead and coach your team more effectively.
You can hire a sales coach to help you navigate your own challenges, ask for advice for managing your team, and for a third-party perspective on your team’s strengths and weaknesses.
You can hire a sales coach that can then, in turn, better prepare you to coach your own team. We’re never done learning, especially as leaders, and we all benefit from an outside perspective.
Determine Your Goals
To coach your sales team, you have to understand what you want to get out of coaching as their coach, what your team wants out of coaching, and what the organization needs.
For many sales reps, their goals with sales coaching is to increase confidence to produce better outcomes. This could mean increased confidence in their ability to close the deal, or confidence that their leadership will help provide them with the tools they need to succeed.
For VPs of Sales, sales managers, or team lead, goals are often more specific, such as closing a higher percentage of deals, hitting bigger revenue targets, or deals becoming a better leader.
Determine the goals of each member of your team, and the overall goal of the company. Then, you can construct a coaching plan to help achieve them