5 x Sales Coaching Tips For Sales Managers
Sales coaching is an important and useful part of a Sales Managers role, because there is a large number of benefits that come from coaching and mentoring your staff.
Some useful benefits of sales coaching include building confidence, getting clarity on your goals among your obstacles, asking the right questions, prioritising goals and risks, and even employee retention.
So how can you be an effective sales coach?
In this article, we’ll look at five useful tips to help you with your sales coaching efforts, to ensure you do it in an effective and meaningful way.
5 x Sales Coaching Tips For Sales Managers
Sales Coaching Tip #1 – Know Your Desired Outcomes
The first step prior to executing your sales coaching activities and training sessions, is being crystal clear on your desired goals and outcomes.
For your sales coaching to have some grounding and a solid foundation, your sales staff will need to know exactly what their required outcomes and goals are.
This can be looked at in a number of ways. These include:
- Knowing your key metrics
- Having a strong marketing plan
- The utilisation of a sales strategy plan
When it is crystal clear and transparent on exactly what it is they need to achieve, it is easier to conduct your sales coaching because you and your team will know exactly what the goal post looks like, as well as how to get there.
Check out the related articles below to learn more about these plans.
Related article: Sales Targeting Strategy – Your Complete Guide
Related article: Marketing Strategy 101 – What You Need To Know
Sales Coaching Tip #2 – Sales Process
Once you’ve understood your buyer personas, where your ideal clients are hanging out and of course how to reach them, your sales coaching efforts as mentioned will be elaborating this information to your sales team.
The next step once this information has been taught, is to share how to get there in a consistent manner.
The way in which you can do this, is coaching your sales staff in the sales process.
One of the most important topics to focus on when sales coaching, is the sales process.
The sales process will educate your staff on how to:
- Build rapport
- How to ask excellent questions
- Uncovering pain and desires
- Handling objections
- Asking for the sale
Of course there is a lot more involved in the sales process, but more importantly – the sales process offers your sales team consistency.
Sales coaching should centre around the theme of achieving consistent, repeatable and positive results for both you and your clients. The sales process will help you achieve this.
To learn more about the sales process, visit the related article below.
Related article: The Sales Process – A Step By Step Guide
Tip #3 – The Right Training
The right sales training is imperative to your sales teams results and performance, as well as to your sales coaching effectiveness.
Sales training should be focused on each part of the sales process, as well as prospecting, qualifying, your dialogue and meeting clients, as well as asking for the sale and getting referrals.
The right sales training can help you achieve all these things in a consistent manner.
The 5% Sales Blueprint is our online sales training program, to help make it easy for your sales coaching activities and training sessions.
It covers each aspect of the required sales process and is available completely online; making it efficient and very cost effective.
You can learn more about The 5% Sales Blueprint by clicking the link here.
Sales Coaching Tip #4 – Role Play
Sales training and sales coaching are both very important exercises, however if you don’t do role play regularly, you’ll quickly lose the information you’ve learnt.
Role play is crucial because it allows your sales team to test out the new ideas and sales training they’ve learnt, and deal with any awkwardness or test out their new knowledge in a safe space, which won’t cost them the sale.
When sales coaching all parts of the sales process, ensure that you touch on every aspect of it; ranging from making initial contact, rapport, asking open-ended questions, and of course handling objections and asking for the sale.
Just like any sports team; the more role play, the better the results.
Role play can be done with individuals, in a team setting, or with the Sales Manager and Employee.
Tip #5 – Know Their Personal Goals
Knowing your sales team’s personal goals and aspirations, is a powerful ingredient to add to your sales coaching repertoire.
People don’t work in sales for sales sake; instead, they want to achieve things in their personal lives to enhance from where they’re currently at, to where they want to be.
Learning this is powerful for your sales coaching, because it allows you to lean on these goals and bring things into perspective.
When people are reminded as to why they’re in sales in the first place, they’ll be a lot more eager to follow through with their sales coaching.
When learning about their personal goals or by doing this exercise, they’ll need to:
- Work on their vision
- Put together SMART Goals
- Learn the importance of teamwork
To learn more about learning how to do this in more detail, check out the related article below.
Related article: 5 x Ingredients To Enhance Your Sales Motivation
Final Thoughts
Sales coaching is an excellent, and important part of any Sales Manager’s role, because it can mean the difference between a mediocre, and powerful sales team.
There is a direct correlation between coaching and high performance and results and should be something you endeavour to include into your business.
As mentioned, your sales coaching tips for high performance are:
- Knowing your desired outcomes
- Sales process
- The right training
- Role play
- Knowing their personal goals
By focusing on these key areas, you’ll be making leaps and bounds with your coaching activities.
If you have any other tips, feel free to share them in the comments below.
Want To Close Sales Easier?
Are you committed to closing sales a lot easier, and consistently?
If so, you should check out our self-paced and affordable online sales training program; The 5% Sales Blueprint.
It’ll give you everything you need to close sales consistently.
To learn more, simply click on the link below for more information.
Our Online Sales Training Program – The 5% Sales Blueprint.
