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It’s no secret that high performance, low turnover rate, and consistently hitting goals are the ways in which many sales organizations measure success. But what happens when there is no visibility into the day-to-day activity and KPIs? Top executives in the company might not truly understand the ROI of winning sales teams.
This is why it’s important to understand the significance of sales coaching and how to improve sales performance and management. When you shift the focus from hitting one goal, to tracking and celebrating several goals and wins across the sales organization, you begin to fully realize the value and see direct impact to your bottom line.
In this blog, we break down the steps to create visibility into sales performance metrics and how investing in sales coaching is the most impactful initiative sales leaders can make to better their business.
What is sales performance management?
Sales performance management is a practice in which sales leaders seek to improve the effectiveness, performance, and operational processes of their sales team. Managers start by looking inward on how their team is structured, if their leadership style and communication is effective, and if there is a better way to save time and money. Sales leaders often learn that investing in their team and avoiding as much employee turnover as possible can lead to some serious growth. But where do they start?
How to increase sales performance
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Invest in your team
Many frontline sales managers can feel overwhelmed when managing a larger team. The time it takes to onboard, train, and prepare for 1:1s, can take up a manager’s entire schedule, leaving no time for stractically leading the team and working towards goals. That’s why implementing a successful sales coaching program or tool is crucial.
Providing your sales reps with the right tools and coaching necessary can mean the difference between a very engaged, successful employee who consistently hits goals and a disengaged, disgruntled employee who later churns, costing the company valuable time and money. When you set your individual hires up for success, you set your team and the business up for success. - Make data-driven decisions
A coaching program or tool encourages you to focus on the right sales performance metrics or KPIs for your team. By petitioning for a sales performance management tool, you’re showing the top executives that you want to invest in your current employees by tracking goals and scorecards, setting a weekly coaching agenda, and celebrating each win. Without clear reporting, it can be difficult for leaders to understand where growth opportunities exist—and where to course correct along the way.
When using scorecards, you can track rep engagement, set individual and team goals, and build a dashboard for stakeholders to create visibility into sales performance metrics. With workflows, you can celebrate your rep’s activity, meetings set, or deals closed from anywhere. Preset 1:1 coaching agendas can also help save, on average, 8 hours of prep time a week.
- Coach your team
Gaining valuable time back, sales leaders can focus not only on setting their sights on how to achieve goals, but also how to optimize rep and team behavior. This enables the leader to work 1:1 on behavioral changes and gives the rep a safe place to feel heard and prepared to crush their goals. Instead of leaving them to fend for themselves after onboarding, the rep stays engaged, encouraged, supported, and keeps the manager aware of where there should be improvement and at what level they are performing.
Developing trust with your reps can motivate the entire team and create a culture of excitement around hitting quota or going above and beyond. This also helps to create clear expectations and communication between the rep and manager.
- Use the right tools
Successful sales coaching is prescriptive, consistent, and documented chronologically over time to drive growth and accountability. It’s not a singular process. It’s programmatic and includes the following mainstays: culture, insights, process and tools, and actions.
Part of the reason employees today are feeling pessimistic about work is the lack of meaningful connection. In a recent productivity predictor, employees are 1.2x as likely to feel productive when they feel connected at work. Smart sales coaching programs solve for this, and with the right technology necessary actions can be automated and world-class managers can be bred keeping employees happy, fulfilled, and contributing at peak capacity.
Making the investment in a sales performance management tool
With the Great Resignation currently upon us, sales organizations cannot afford to keep supporting challenging team structures, disengaged reps, and unorganized goal tracking. The time is changing, and supporting and coaching your employees is expected, not an option.
Want to learn more about coaching with impact, sales performance management, and the Great Resignation? Tune into this on-demand webinar with our VP of Sales, Mark McWatters, and Research Director Peter Ostrow from Forrester.
