Sales Coaching Methodology and Platform

1 on 1 coaching is the most powerful sales rep development process available to sales leaders. Period.

Sales leaders blow it consistently. Tragic.

Jason Jordan nailed it this week in his blog the power of coaching. PLEASE take the time to read this. Don’t read any further until you do.

There is no doubt that 1:1 coaching is THE critical step in developing individual members of the sales team. However, many sales leaders often confuse ‘Management’ (activity based reviews) for ‘Coaching’ (development based plans). The tragedy is that the reps are thirsting for skills and competency development from their leaders. It is a sizeable chasm that separates them; a chasm that MUST be spanned.

This begs the question:

Why the chasm?

The 2 part answer is simple and straight forward:

1. Most sales leaders don’t know how to coach. Their entire careers have been all about managing sales rep activity and not focused on 1 on 1 development. They simply don’t have this critical skill. They don’t know how to diagnose a skill or competency gap, lead a rep to that understanding, create a SMART development plan and build an engagement cadence around it. Without a sales coaching methodology it’s hard to make coaching an organizational habit.
2. Most sales leaders don’t have a platform that helps them coach their reps in a repeatable way. They don’t have ‘game film’ and a set of goals they can work with a rep to build, repair or identify improper behavior. They don’t have a tool to help them consistently drive the behavior, score the reps and be able to repeatedly apply this across their team.

Sales leaders can’t ignore this problem. When people ask me, “How can we afford to develop our sales reps” my answer is, “With the cost of recruiting, onboarding and turnover, how can you afford NOT to develop your sales reps?”

By building a sales coaching culture on these, sales leaders are transformed into Sales Coaching Machines. Can your sales leaders properly diagnose and develop skills in their reps and drive the behavior with them using call annotations and detailed scorecarding?

The ‘before’ and ‘after’ for our clients is dramatic. It’s like being in a dark room and then, suddenly, the curtains are opened, flooding the room with summer sun. Yep, it’s that different.
Randy Riemersma is the founder of Span the Chasm, a sales consulting, development and coaching firm that helps companies drive sustainable sales growth. It’s all we do.