By investing in sales performance coaching, you will motivate your staff to perform better in their roles and achieve greater results. If you are seeking this kind of guidance, look no further than The Sales Coach Network.
Why is it important to motivate your staff? Team spirit goes a long way when it comes to making sales. Happier staff sell more effectively and the effect can rub off on other members of the team.
If you want your team to perform at their best, you must make sure they are in the right headspace. Giving your employees the tools and encouragement they need to be successful can help spur them on. A motivated team will result in an increase in your sales.
Sales Coaching isn't just effective for the individual. It can help pinpoint growth opportunities for the entire sales organisation.
Sales coaching provides a boost to the morale of staff by making them feel involved and valued, and it enables them to realise their potential. If you are still reading at this point and would like to learn more, you can download our brochure or book a call with us today.
Sales performance coaching is broken down into several constituent parts, tackling each aspect of your sales strategy from the opening conversation through to closing a deal. You will be guided on how to progress a conversation towards your intended goal.
The goal of a sales performance coach is to inspire sales staff. Even though internal coaching has its place, bringing in an expert from outside your business can help to provide a fresh perspective and is likely to be more revelatory.
It is necessary to implement sales performance coaching to maximise the potential of your business. We are talking about complex deals with huge financial implications, so you should see sales performance coaching as a wise investment rather than a sizeable cost.
How do you know if you need sales performance coaching? If you are selling, then coaching is something you’ll require, and the benefits are realised in time. We don’t guarantee overnight success, but allowing a coach to influence your team will lead to gains in the medium to long term.
If you want to see improvements in your sales team, then sales performance coaching is vital. It can help you to retain your top salespeople, rather than them having their heads turned by another employer. Make the most of what is already under your roof.
Lead with empathy, build trust with your team, and learn to cultivate your salespeople to keep them engaged and selling. This is what effective sales coaching looks like now.
Effective coaching can increase sales performance by 8%, according to a study by research firm Gartner.
Motivating Sales Staff
Here are nine ways that you can use sales performance coaching to motivate your staff:
1. Set goals and create a plan
Setting a goal is the first step in making your intentions a reality. Your sales performance coach will work closely with you to formulate a roadmap. It is helpful to plot the direction you are heading in and then take the necessary steps to move along this pathway. If you don’t know where you’d like to end up, it makes getting there all the more tricky.
A team member who identifies a tendency to be overly chatty in sales calls might set a goal to listen more. (Nine out of 10 salespeople say listening is more important than talking in sales today, according to a recent Salesforce survey.) They might want to set a clear metric like hitting a 60/40 listen to talk ratio over the next two months, for example.
2. Create a healthy environment
The environment that your salespeople occupy is critical to their success. A healthy environment will be free of unnecessary clutter, both mental and literal. In the first instance, it might be a case of removing excess items from their desk (and desktop) to free up some valuable space. The working environment also extends to the relationships the salesperson has with the people around them. Is there harmony in the office, or conflict? A sales coach will be able to pick up on this and act accordingly, so that all team members are on the same page. In the same way that you water plants to take good care of them, the sales team needs to be nurtured and cared for over time.
3. Offer positive feedback
This is not a case of randomly dishing out shallow compliments for a short term boost. Targeted praise can truly encourage a salesperson and inspire them to perform at their best. And when positive feedback is given out by an external sales performance coach, it lands differently. For sales coaching to be effective, work with the salesperson to improve one area at a time instead of multiple areas simultaneously. With the former, you see acute focus and measurable progress. With the latter, you end up with frustrated, fatigued salespeople pulled in too many directions. As each stage is completed, your sales coach can let the seller know how well they’re doing and how far they have come.
4. Encourage innovation
Salespeople should always be innovating. A sales performance coach can help you to stay abreast of the latest trends, of which there are many. A sales coach can also be inspiring and innovative themselves; every top salesperson and sales leader will tell you about a sales manager, a mentor or a coach that helped them on their journey. Treat your team like a muscle… you need to keep it in shape so that the company can quickly respond to disruption when it occurs. It is important to make good use of your sales performance coach without having an over reliance on them.
5. Provide challenging assignments
Talented salespeople will not stick around unless they are pushed to their limits and regularly tested. A sales performance coach can start to push the envelope in this regard. A coach can assign weekly and monthly goals in order to track progress, all the while setting ambitious assignments that will drive each member of the team. Some assignments will be short term while others will take more of a long term view. Combining assignments in this way will start to really pay dividends and will keep a salesperson onside – they won’t be looking about for other work if they are fulfilled and satisfied in their role.
6. Recognise and reward performance
This is an extension of the idea proposed in point 3. Happy staff are motivated staff and one of the best ways to motivate staff is to give out praise – where it’s due of course. This doesn’t always need to come from the sales performance coach however. It can be part of self-evaluation from salespeople. When doing post-call debriefs or skill assessments – or just coaching during one-on-ones – it’s critical to have the salesperson self-evaluate. Sales managers may only be with the seller one or two days a month. Given this disconnect, the goal is to encourage the team member to evaluate their own performance and build self-improvement goals around these observations.
7. Provide opportunities for growth and development
According to a study by LinkedIn, 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career. So why not invest now! You don’t want to lose your best people because their head has been turned by another opportunity. Growth and development takes place from within, and a sales performance coach can bring these skills to the party.
8. Share the success stories of your company or industry
Don’t be shy about shouting from the rooftops as the effects of sales coaching are felt by your business. LinkedIn is a good platform to keep updating your followers. It is a good idea to have sellers write a testimonial for their sales performance coach, evaluating what aspects of the business were improved by the sales coach’s influence.
9. Always lead by example
Actions speak louder than words, and this is especially true in sales. Your performance coach will look to lead by example, and so should both sales managers and salespeople. It is all about taking shared responsibility for the outcomes of sales coaching. It’s a team effort and all parties play a key role.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up with The Sales Coach Network today and start reaping the benefits of our acclaimed methodology.
The major benefit of hiring sales performance coaching is that it helps increase your employees' productivity by providing them with the right skills and training. This is something that our team can help you with right away. It all starts by booking a call and downloading our prospectus.
To arrange a call to discuss your needs and decide whether or not we might be a good fit, send us a short message or use the link to book directly and we'll have a quick conversation with no obligation.
There is no time like the present to take advantage of sales performance coaching to motivate your team.
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