1. Coaching Techniques
Nail the basics
Regardless of the size of your sales team, it’s important to have the fundamentals down.
David Bentham, VP of Global Sales Development said:
“Roleplays, call reviews, and your standard classroom-type sessions. We’re not reinventing the wheel here, but these are important.”
This is all well and good but don’t assume all your reps will learn in the same way. If you take a one-size-fits-all approach to training them, it will make it more difficult for new reps to ramp up and experienced ones to progress.
Adopt a multi-dimensional approach by including a variety of methods and formats in your training sessions.
And remember to validate. The training you’re implementing - is it successful? If you’re not measuring the impact, you won’t know if the techniques are actually making a difference, and delivering success.
We run quick quizzes and longer form testing through our onboarding to make sure that the training has been digested using Lessonly by Seismic.
Targeted Coaching
Managers will try to fix all of a rep’s problems, all at once. And this can be overwhelming, especially if your rep is new to their role.
So, it's important to prioritise your sales reps' weaknesses, one at a time.
Instead of trying to train your rep on every single technique, pick their most important improvement area. Train them on that one specific thing, before proceeding onto the next one.
But how do you know which reps you should be prioritising?
Most sales leaders focus their coaching efforts on their highest and weakest performers.
Cognism’s methodology is to invest time in coaching the reps where the possible return is the highest. Ultimately you want to prioritise your time coaching the reps that are going to have the most positive impact on revenue.
We score our reps on where they are in relation to quota attainment against their potential, area for improvement and prioritise from there.
Encourage your team to self-reflect
A core part of Cognism’s coaching approach is a competency scoring system.
The Cognism 17 competency framework helps sales reps identify their areas of weakness, and at the same time allows managers to align with SDRs on priorities on areas for improvement.
Here's what the Cognism 17 Competency Framework looks like in practice:
2. The Culture of Feedback
Feedback loops between management and Individual Contributors are vital.
As leaders, it's your responsibility to go beyond performance metrics and proactively seek and give honest feedback to each member of your team, even when it's uncomfortable or difficult.
By doing so, we can give team members the opportunity to fix the problem allowing them to reach their full potential and achieve.
But it is also your responsibility to seek and receive the same feedback from your team too.
Dave explains why:
"The single best piece of feedback I’ve ever received that moved the needle for our entire organisation was from a member of our team who had been in the company for 2 months."
"The feedback session gave him the platform to openly discuss his thoughts after hearing others, and he spoke about something that had clearly been on his mind."
You can’t get complacent as a sales leader and you don’t want anything to be overlooked.
It’s all well and good thinking you have the best processes and frameworks in place, but if you aren’t seeking honest and constructive feedback from your team who are in the trenches every day, you’ll never get the opportunity to improve.
