Since sales is a complex process of reaching out to prospective customers, it is advisable for companies to provide their sales employees with sales coaching.
What is Sales Coaching?
Sales coaching refers to the formal process of ongoing training and instruction from sales managers to their subordinates in order to enhance the performance of sales representatives. The process of sales coaching includes:
- Onboarding and providing guidance to sales reps on how to achieve their objectives
- Modifying behaviors that do not yield any results in sales
- Reinforcing sales practices that ensure success
- Enhancing the overall skills of the entire sales team instead of just working on sales numbers
Benefits of Sales Coaching
Here are some clear benefits of sales coaching:
- Sales coaches add to the company culture and help boost morale within the sales team
- Sales coaches can help optimize the potential of a sales team leading to enhanced team focus and engagement providing better results.
- You can build a highly motivated sales team with the right type and amount of sales training for the team.
- Enhance seller performance significantly by helping sellers meet and even exceed sales targets each quarter
- Another significant advantage of sales coaching is reduced employee turnover with the additional guidance and attention that will boost employee morale
Does your organization require Sales Coaching?
To determine whether your company needs sales coaching you need to consider a few factors such as:
- When sales employees are transitioning into a new role such as a sales manager.
- When the organization is offering a new product to its consumers.
- When there are performance reviews within the team and the department.
- Whenever the sales team is consistently lagging behind their targets.
3 Different ways to automate sales coaching -
There are three distinct ways to automate sales coaching including based on video recordings, call recordings, and sales activity. We will cover them briefly here:
1) Coaching Based on Video Recordings
Ideal for: Customer focused teams looking to deep dive into real customer conversations happening over zoom/google-meet/teams
Your video recordings and role plays are analysed and scored using predetermined parameters by sales coaching software. They also enable your coworkers or managers to provide feedback on your recordings. They can be used to build libraries of best practises and recordings from top sales reps to help sales reps ramp up more quickly.
Top 5 tools that coach based on video recording
1. MeetRecord
MeetRecord is one of the most efficient sales coaching applications out there for your sales teams. Here are some of the best features of this application:
- Coach on actual customer calls
- Comment and give feedback on exact conversations points
- Create custom initiatives and track employee's growth
Pricing : Starting $9 per user per month
2. SmartWinnr
SmartWinnr Is a holistic software application that is geared towards progressive product knowledge training, productivity through gamification, and sales motivation.
3. SalesHood
Saleshood Is a comprehensive turnkey solution for sales enablement that is used for organizations that are looking to boost sales performance.
4. ExecVision
This is a conversation intelligence application that is built on a premise that insights can be mined from customer interactions and are exponentially more useful when they can be transformed into performance improvements.
Pricing : Starting $75+ per user per month
5. Gong
Gong is a remote sales tool and revenue intelligence platform with call recording and transcription features. This works with most web conferencing platforms CRM or VoIP.
Pricing : Base price $5000 + Starting $150 per user per month
2) Coaching Based on Call Recordings
Call recordings are another great way to introduce sales training to newly appointed managers. We will now cover the tools that can be used for call recording.
Top 5 tools which coach based on call recording
As discussed earlier Meetrecord is an advanced sales coaching tool that comes with a call recording feature.
2. RingCentral
This is a cloud-based communication and collaboration platform for phone, video, and message. It includes automatic call recording for all inbound and outbound call.
3. Twilio
This is a communication API platform that is built specifically for sales service and operation that is focused on video, voice, and SMS. It comes with a programmable voice feature
4. Gong
As mentioned earlier going is a remote sales tool and revenue intelligence application that comes with a robust call recording and transcription feature.
5. Jiminny
And another revenue intelligence platform just like gong, this application has been designed for remote sales team and includes automated call and meeting recording transcription analytics that is powered by AI.
3) Coaching Based on Sales Activity
Coaching based on sales activity can be carried out by reviewing recorded calls or video interactions. This process involves learning from what works and what doesn't and improving on the strengths while eliminating faulty sales practices.
Top 5 tools that coach based on sales activity
The same tools that have been mentioned in the past two sections can be used to train sales representatives based on previous sales activity. The tools include:
1. Meetrecord
2. Gong
3. Twilio
4. SaleHood
5. ExecVision
How to choose a tool suitable for your organization?
There are various factors to consider while selecting the right sales enablement tool for your company.
Simple user interface - This will enable your sales representatives to navigate easily and locate the right content at right time.
Efficient tools for content creation - as your sales team through the sales process content creation will have to be done on the fly to meet with other process requirements.
Interdepartmental collaboration - sales tools should enable smooth collaboration and coordination between various departments in the company such as human resources and marketing.
Customer relationship management (CRM) Integration - Sales tool should also have the option of integrating with your company's CRM.
Training Facility - It will be helpful for the tool to be equipped with Learning and development options to help train salespeople.
Analytics - Any sales tool that is efficient should come equipped with an analytics dashboard that will help sales representatives in actionable insights from sales data that is collected.
In the end, you will need to choose a sales coaching software that suits the needs of your organization best. For this, you will need to research what is out in the market and what matches your requirements. Best of luck!