Simply put, sales coaching is a process that helps sales reps achieve a higher degree of performance. Sales Coaching is -
Personalized
It involves having one to one sessions helping the rep discover himself, what his strengths are, the gaps in his thinking, his weaknesses, his motivations and enable him to build and grow his relationships, etc.
Ongoing, Long term
It is not a one-time activity but when sustained over a period of time, it can truly transform the rep's performance.
Behavior focussed
Coaching focuses on replicable customer winning behavior, versus only closing single deals.
As a Manager, telling the sales rep what to do and how to do is NOT coaching. This only ensures you have solved their problem once. Because in this model, the sales reps keep coming back for hiccups, doubts, and glitches faced. Now the manager becomes a blocker for the Sales rep to grow. Sales coaching, on the other hand, aims to help sales reps achieve their goals by helping them figure out ways to move past the hiccups, doubts, and glitches by themselves, and not by trying to solve their every problem; in essence teaching the man how to fish independently.
Types of Sales Coaching Tools
Sales Coaching tools help managers to dive deeper into sales conversations and activities to identify coaching moments and improve sales performance.
Sales coaching tools broadly fit into 3 types
Coaching Based on Call Recordings
Sales coaching software records your sales calls and transcribes them. They also analyze the calls and score it on the desired parameters like tone, speed of talking, etc. Peers/managers can listen to the call recordings and give feedback on what worked and what needs improvement. They can also identify pivotal moments and upsell/cross-sell opportunities.
Coaching Based on Video Recordings
Sales coaching software analyzes your video recordings, role plays and scores them with respect to predefined parameters. They also allow your peers/managers to give feedback on these recordings. They can be used to create libraries of best practices of recordings from top reps that help ramp up sales reps faster. Added benefits include consistent messaging and sales processes across the team.
Coaching Based on Sales Activity
Some coaching tools track sales team activities across the pipeline. They are helpful to identify which deals to prioritize, what's working or not working, what engagement activities to increase etc.
Who uses Sales Coaching Software?
Sales Coaching software is mainly used by sales teams. The following stakeholders use this software for different applications.
Sales Leaders/Managers
Sales leaders are mainly concerned with their sales team performance and win rates. Coaching software gives them good visibility into deals related activities and sales conversations. This helps them identify winning behavior and practices and they can make them repeatable across the sales team. Having a consistent messaging, how the product is spoken about or positioned is critical to leaders. These software help review the sales calls and can help establish standardized sales processes and messaging across teams.
Sales Reps
Depending on the software, sales reps can focus on conversations and the software transcribes meetings for them and prompts them on the next steps. These tools also allow managers to review and give feedback to peer calls and videos which help them improve their performance.
Channels used by Sales Coaching software
Sales coaching tools are internal-facing tools (except the ones which record customer conversations). Hence they can be used across sales channels (phone, video, email, SMS, etc) reps use to reach the customer.
Phone Calls
Some coaching software is primarily designed to record the customer conversations, take notes and transcribe them. Some even give live coaching tips during the calls.
Video
Some coaching software allows for recording videos of sales employees to practice sales situations and role-plays (This software is not customer-facing). Both software allows for sales reps and managers to give feedback to sales reps on calls and videos.
Email and text are also used.
