5 Huge Problems Sales Coaching Helps Solve

By Steve Jensen

1. Failure to Meet Quota

According to CSO Insights, only 55% of sales reps met their quotas in 2016*. That’s down from 63% in 2012 and the percentage continues to fall. The harsh reality is that companies continue to increase sales goals but do so without expanded headcount. “Do more with less” is the mantra. In this environment, the sales leader must do more with what he or she has to be successful.

One of the best ways to approach this problem is with sales coaching. According to CEB, coaching can improve productivity by 88%, and CSO Insights says that a formal coaching process helped more sales people achieve their quota by 10%.* In fact, again according to CEB, coaching provides a 51% contribution to competency improvement, better than leadership development programs (28%), rotations (18%) and training itself (3%).**

Coaching is the ideal platform for mentoring and sharing best practices. Skills, activities or even individual opportunities can be targeted as opportunities to level up—all of which have a direct, positive impact on hitting quota.

2. Forecast Inaccuracy

The downfall of many a management team and the bane of Wall Street, erroneous forecasts can sink an organization. Forecast methodology must be more than a wet finger held up to sense the direction of the wind. Simply reviewing the numbers and making assumptions based on gut feel isn’t enough.

Forecasting should be predictive, based on aggregated data and factors like sales velocity, number of opportunities in each stage, and win rate. A good coaching session should afford both the manager and the rep with a deeper understanding of each opportunity and how it fits into the bigger picture.  The details of an opportunity can be discussed with attention paid to alignment with sales processes, stage qualifiers, realistic follow-up timetables and client/rep relationship to give a clearer picture of an opportunity’s chance of advancing or closing. Coaching helps sales leaders realize an increase in predictable and sustainable revenue attainment, allowing them to lead more efficiently and accurately.

3. Pipeline Mismanagement

A good coaching tool includes pipeline analysis so that a rep and their manager can focus on stages in which the rep is weak or slow and make adjustments to ensure that they stay on target. Coaching also helps reps to be proactive so they can correct course early if an opportunity is in trouble. In addition, coaching can help identify areas of weakness in the funnel like a low number of starts or not enough opportunities in a given stage so that the rep can direct their limited time to activities that will have the biggest impact. As a collaborative effort, coaching allows sales leaders and reps to work together to make the most of every opportunity.

4. Lack of Salesforce Utilization

Let’s face it: a good portion of salespeople only enter “wins” into Salesforce. It makes them look better on reports.  But by neglecting losses and pushes (and at what stage they occurred), salespeople and managers lose the insight provided by seeing where deals are slowing or falling apart and if they don’t know about it, they can’t attempt to fix it. This is made even worse when salespeople eschew Salesforce all together, claiming it slows them down or that it is just busywork.

Regular coaching can help alleviate this particular problem and drive Salesforce utilization. Using coaching, Sales Leaders and Reps can examine opportunities in various sales stages, look at sales velocity, discuss win/loss details, etc. Coaching sessions are the perfect opportunity for collaborative, tactical review.  They are the platform for helping a rep to level-up and using Salesforce aids in the creation of a roadmap for success. With the right tools (like Xvoyant, for instance—www.xvoyant.com), Salesforce data can actually be predictive and pinpoint exact opportunities for improvement as well as show the effect of changes and the impact of enhanced skills and activities on overall outcomes.

5. Training Scalability

One reason that training is hard to scale is that the knowledge gained is short-lived.  Studies, by Ebbinghouse and others, have shown that after 1 month, 87% of knowledge gained is forgotten.** That means the knowledge isn’t propagated within an organization beyond the original trainer/trainee interaction.  The way to overcome this “forgetting curve” is through repetition: spending time each day to remember learned information will greatly decrease the effects.

Coaching, in a regular cadence, keeps newly trained knowledge at the forefront of a rep’s mind, allowing ideas to be put into practice and feedback loops to drive improvement.  Since the repeated exposure internalizes the knowledge, it can be shared with other reps via mentoring and becomes highly scalable. As knowledge propagates through a team, the number of people it reaches increases exponentially and the original training is greatly magnified.

Conclusion

Coaching, in addition to improving productivity, win rate, engagement and retention, also solves some of the biggest problems in Sales.  A good coaching program will help reps meet and exceed quota, give detailed and accurate forecasts, manage their pipelines with purpose and focus, and use Salesforce to its fullest potential. Coaching also guarantees that sales training won’t be wasted and, in fact, like most sales activities, will be more valuable than ever.

*CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study

**CEB, How to Get Coaching Right, https://www.cebglobal.com/blogs/how-to-get-coaching-right/

*** Ebbinghouse Forgetting Curve, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

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Steve Jensen is the VP of Marketing at Xvoyant

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