Are You a Babysitter, or a Sales Coach?

Are you a sales coach or a babysitter? Coaches identify areas for improvement and give reps the tools (both figurative and literal) to reach new goals. Coaches earn their team’s respect. They play the dual roles of team member and leader. And the best coaches make hard work seem fun.

Babysitters, on the other hand, spend the their time nagging reps about logging data in their CRM. Babysitters also routinely lack the insight to help reps reach their full potential. And, as a result, they rarely earn their team’s respect.

The worst part is that without the right tools, and the right data, managers that could be great sales coaches find themselves in the babysitting role.

How to Stop Babysitting and Start Coaching Your Team to Success

Have you ever found yourself in the babysitter role?  Here are three actionable steps that can help you spend less time babysitting reps and more time coaching them into all-stars.

Step 1: Automate Data Capture in Salesforce

I’ve yet to meet a sales rep who enjoys logging data in Salesforce. And yet, in order to be a good sales coach you need access to sales activity data in real time. The answer is to stop asking reps to log data and instead give them tools that captures that data for them. Revenue.io automatically logs calls, recording, call metrics, dispositions and notes to Salesforce. Best practices become part of reps workflow, so you can get the insight you need without nagging reps about logging CRM data.

Step 2: Look Beyond Activity Metrics

Sales activities such as dials and emails are important to track. But managers sometimes get so sidelined with activities themselves that they lose out on the efficiency of those activities. As an example, say you have two reps. One is emailing 100 leads a day, and the other is emailing 70. Managers with a “babysitter” mindset might think that the rep emailing 70 leads is lazy and needs to pick up the pace. But what if that rep is spending more time personalizing emails and, as a result, is getting better responses?

Remember, activities matter – but not as much as results.

So take a deep dive into your top performing reps’ activity and efficiency metrics and see what can be replicated. Some efficiency metrics I like include email response rate, dials-to-connection ratio and meetings-to-opportunity ratio.

Step 3: Use Call Recordings as a Coaching Tool

Another awesome way to coach your team to success is by using call recordings. Some of the best sales coaches I’ve encountered not only use call recordings to help reps improve but can make this process fun. You can give prizes for the best phone call. Enable reps to give each other feedback based on recordings. And set goals to help reps improve. Remember to not only focus on what reps are doing wrong, but also what they’re doing right. As with any sport, it’s just as important to nurture good habits as it is to improve bad ones.

Want some more sales management tips from 20 industry-leading experts? Check out our free eBook The 90-Day Inside Sales Success Plan.