Consistent Sales Coaching Boosts Rep Productivity

According to The Bridge Group sales quotas have increased an average of 6% year-over-year since 2015. As a result, sales reps will need to hit these ever-increasing targets as well. What can you do to help your team reach their goals? The key is increasing your reps’ productivity through consistent coaching.

Rep productivity is maximizing sales results while minimizing cost, effort, and time. Meanwhile, consistent coaching is about finding actionable solutions and strategies to drive revenue, helping your reps prioritize and effectively allocate their time and resources, and enabling your team to develop professionally. CSO Insights found that formalized coaching improves win rates a significant 5.3 percentage points above average for an actual improvement of 11.5%. Plus sales coaching can increase sales productivity by up to 88 percent.

Prioritizing sales coaching can help increases ramp rate, reinforces a structured sales process, promotes the sharing of best practices, and includes the tracking of metrics. Let’s take a look at these aspects.

Increases ramp rate – There are many facets of the sales onboarding process. They include all the stages of your sales process — identifying your target personas, understanding your products and services, evaluating the competitive landscape, learning policies and procedures, and much more. With an influx of new information, it’s critical that new hires receive reinforcement of information in small increments through consistent coaching. This practice helps reps recall and utilize information more readily so they apply it more easily and become productive more rapidly.

Reinforces a structured sales process — According to a study by Vantage Point Performance, companies with a formal sales process grow revenue 18% faster than those without one. A sales process should always be evolving to adjust for changes in market, products, and competitors. Always look for ways to strengthen and optimize your process. Make note of prospect objections and roadblocks. Determine the best way to work through these rough spots and modify steps accordingly to ensure efficiency. To accomplish this, gather important information during your consistent coaching sessions and listen to calls or call recordings.

Promotes the sharing of best practices for sales calls – Sharing of best practices help sales management coach more effectively and efficiently. Research by CSO Insights showed that on average 60.1% of a company’s revenue is generated by the top 20% of its sales people. Sharing best practices, as performed by these top reps is an excellent way to coach the rest of the team for better results and provides a scalable, self-sufficient coaching framework. In fact, according to Aberdeen Research, companies that adopt best practices across their sales teams had double the quota attainment of their peers. One easy way to share best practices is by developing a library of call recordings. Share them with team members during onboarding, to provide examples to those needing to improve certain skills, and for overall reference for your entire team. Not only will this sharing improve skills and understanding, it will promote teamwork.

Includes the tracking of metrics – Sales has become more focused on data. A study by Aberdeen Research shows that businesses who use analytics have 15% more team members attaining sales quota. The tracking of sales analytics offers valuable insights about efficiency and effectiveness of sales reps. Analytics help identify weaknesses in your sales process so you can fine tune it. They reveal areas of focus for coaching sessions ensuring continual performance improvement. A few metrics you may track are: outbound calls per day by rep, call connect rate with decision makers, and average calls per sale. If you really want to help your team reach their ever-rising goals and increase productivity, be sure to incorporate consistent coaching in your day-to-day sales operations.