Sales Reps: Are You Actually Coachable? 7 Signs You’re Ready to Improve

As a sales rep, even if you receive the greatest sales coaching from the best coach, you could still fail. That’s because coaching plans cannot control one quality: the salesperson’s coachability.

For this reason, Richard Harris states that sales coaching starts at the hiring process.

The strategy of sales coaching has become increasingly prevalent. If you have yet to experience sales coaching firsthand, perhaps you hope that your current sales manager will implement a plan or that you will have the opportunity to join an organization that follows a sales coaching philosophy.

Coaching increases individual rep goal attainment, improves sales team performance, and leads to happier and more fulfilled reps. As a sales rep, a proper sales coaching culture significantly contributes to your career growth, personal development, learning, achievement, and overall success.

Coachable sales reps are the key to an influential sales coaching culture. Without them, progress or consistent skill improvement is random at best. Team members must be ready, willing, and able to participate in real sales coaching. But not everyone is ready for coaching. A truly coachable rep must possess an insatiable curiosity, burning desire to learn and improve, as well as humble personality.

Sales Ramp Time

Hiring the right sales rep can be difficult. The selection process is costly and time-consuming. Selecting the wrong person to add to your team is even more expensive, by the time you consider the cost of compensation, recruitment costs, and training expenses. After you’ve invested 3-4 months to find the “right” candidate, sales ramp up time and coaching begins. And, if your new hire doesn’t work out, you end up starting the process all over again! According to CSO Insights, 47% of companies say it takes 10 or more months for new sales people to become fully productive and 67% said it took 7 months or more.

Discussing Sales Coaching

A few days ago, we were reading through some discussions on a popular sales forum and noticed a question about how to “appear coachable.” The author said they were an underperforming sales rep. They had an upcoming one-on-one sales coaching session and wanted to know what keywords their manager wanted to hear during the meeting. The assumption is that that rep hoped that by stating certain words or phrases, they could convince and even deceive the manager into believing that the coaching was working.

Unfortunately, this is the polar opposite approach that an underperforming rep should take. Coaching is about openness, honesty, development, and each party taking responsibility for actions and improvements. To be coachable, sales reps must be prepared for a different management experience.

Personal development, learning, and skill growth are not always comfortable and are often hard work. They don’t come naturally to most people, but if you put in the effort, the skills you develop will be very rewarding. Sales reps can coach themselves with the RevenueAI product package, making it easy to improve and evaluate your efforts and skills.

If you want to find true success through sales coaching, here are some basic qualities and traits you must instill within yourself:

Coachable sales reps are humble sales reps

Humility is defined as “a modest or low view of one’s own importance; humbleness.” In the context of sales coaching, it’s important to remain humble. You may find great success or feel outclassed, regardless, you must maintain a distance from arrogance or frustration. In time, anything can change and you may find yourself in the opposite position. When you are on top, take time to help others get there as well, when you are struggling, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Characteristics and behaviors of coachable reps

Truly open to feedback – Sales reps who don’t accept feedback are never going to reach their potential. Their stubbornness can hold back your entire team and negatively impact their performance.

Excellent listener – Your new team member needs to be able to listen carefully so they are able to understand and apply the coaching that they receive.

Possess a willingness to learn – If your new hire isn’t willing to learn, and they’re stuck in their old ways of doing things, then they won’t be teachable. So, make sure that they have the desire to learn and are able to adapt to suggested changes.

Committed to making time to improve their skills – It usually takes time and repetition to change and improve performance. If your new sales person isn’t willing to put in the time to learn and practice new skills they aren’t truly coachable.

Those who are coachable take responsibility

If you want to be coachable, it’s time to step up.

First and foremost, you need to take responsibility for yourself, your goals, and your improvement. You must wholeheartedly commit to change. You alone are the only one who can control of this crucial element, and every decision and feeling you have during the sales coaching process is yours alone.

Be willing to own and admit your shortcomings and losses, and do not blame others. You are the one in control, and if you want to be successful you must accept that there are factors to be improved and own the process of doing so.

The best sales learners are self-aware

You need to be able to objectively look at your sales behaviors, feelings, and actions. To be genuinely coachable, you should look at your actions impartially and be ready and willing to wholeheartedly adopt suggestions or criticisms from others without taking them personally. Realize you may use certain tactics or act in a manner that appears different that you think. Stand back to view yourself from an external viewpoint, what sociology and communication research calls the “looking glass self,” and be aware of your behaviors and how they impact other parties. Do not take criticisms or suggestions personally or reject them before giving them a legitimate shot at success.

The most successful seek input from others

In sales coaching, it’s not enough to do a single one-on-one every week or so. Additionally, it is easy for these meetings to devolve into a standard pipeline review, so it is up to you to help keep them on track. You need to find and utilize feedback on your own actively. Whether it’s feedback from peers, analyzed conversations through a recording platform, or input from AEs, SDRs, and your manager, the quest for advice and real improvement has to become part of your daily activities.

To win, be truly open to feedback

For many, it is extremely hard to openly and impartially receive feedback, absorb it, and integrate it to make improvements. To indeed be coachable, you must appreciate new perspectives and not be dismissive of ideas that are not your own. If someone suggests an outlandish new tactic or a method outside of your comfort zone, do not simply reject the idea. Give the idea the thought and time it deserves, and maybe even try it for yourself before throwing it out. You may be surprised at the results.

To make sales skill growth, you must embrace learning

To borrow from Glen Garry Glen Ross, coffee isn’t for closers; it’s for learners. In the modern day with fears of many sales functions being automated away, those who will come out on top will be the continuous learners. Coaching is all about learning. It is a fundamental structure in the sales learning process. In fact, personal development for each and every rep is part of every great sales coaching plan. To be as coachable as possible, you must be ambitious, have a desire to be successful, and be willing to utilize all of the tools and people at your disposal to achieve it.

The most coachable salespeople accept accountability

To improve sales performance, you must be prepared to own the outcomes, whatever those may be. Coaching is one of those exercises where you get out of it what you put in. If you do the work, target your goals, and accept your coach’s skill improvement plan, the results will come.

To be genuinely coachable, you should immediately apply directions and suggestions to your daily work, and make sure your coach can see that. Coaching will never work if you merely take suggestions but never implement them. Your managers and teammates will count on your to hold up your end of coaching. If they give legitimate suggestions, you should utilize them to the best of your ability. Your sales team will not be successful if each individual does not work to succeed.

How do you recognize a coachable candidate in an interview?

During the interview process, you can do certain things to determine if you have a coachable potential team member in front of you.

• Ask your prospective new hire:
  • To tell you about a recent example of feedback they were given and how they acted on the information.
  • To list their personal goals – you’ll want “continued improvement” to be one of them.
  • To discuss a challenge they tackled in their present or previous position. Ask them what they learned from the experience.
    • Don’t be quick to judge if a previous “coaching” experience they share seems to give you the impression that the candidate is uncoachable. It may be that they worked in an unhealthy or poor sales environment in the past where coaching was used against them.(Thanks to one of our commenters for this insight!)

Importantance of Role-Playing

• Have them do a role-playing exercise with you that simulates an actual selling situation. Set the scene, ask if they have any questions, and tell them to proceed when they are ready.
• After the role-play, ask your candidate to tell you how they think they did. This will allow you to evaluate their ability to self-diagnose. See how well they are able to review their own performance, including what they did well and what they could improve. The coachable person will self-reflect, diagnose, and propose improvements to their role-play.
• Once they have completed their self-evaluation, you should provide them with some coaching. Be sure to provide both positive feedback as well as areas for improvement and how to improve them. Pay special attention to if they are listening intently, possibly taking notes, and asking clarifying questions. If so, this is a good sign they are engaged in the coaching session.
• After you finish coaching your prospective new hire, confirm that the process you explained made sense. Ask that they redo the role-play with you, incorporating some of the coaching you just provided. At this point, the candidate may be distracted or nervous — they may even believe the job is on the line. But what you’re looking for in this second role-play is effort, not perfection or improvement.  When you see the candidate making an effort to do what you discussed during coaching, they are most likely coachable.

Looking for these attributes, and following this process, will increase the odds of selecting a coachable new hire. This can make a huge difference in how quickly they ramp to optimum performance, which can have a positive impact on your bottom line.

Learn more from our RevOps podcast with Sales Leader Ryan Vaillancourt.

Sales coaching is one of the most effective ways improve both sales team performance and help each individual rep achieve their goals. In fact, it provides just as many benefits to the reps themselves as it does the company. However, for it to truly succeed, each rep must be ready, willing, and able to commit.