The American job market is tighter than it’s been in
years, and the sales industry is no exception. Great sales reps are at a
premium -- especially those with experience. As a result, sales managers have
been turning to reps with far less experience. According to research from The
BridgeGroup, even a requirement of 1-2 years of experience is giving way to
hiring reps straight out of college. This utter lack of expertise in
early-career sales roles, and the need for rapid improvement after initial
training, has put sales coaching is on the tip of nearly every sales leader’s
tongue as they look for new ways to help inexperienced reps outperform
competitors.
Silicon Valley has responded accordingly with a slew
of sales coaching technologies. Due to strong demand, I expect such solutions
to become a staple in sales technology stacks for businesses of all sizes in
the coming years.
Sales coaching vs. sales training
One question I often hear asked is, “What’s the
difference between sales training and sales coaching?” Sales training refers to
an event or a series of events that occur as baseline education. Sales
coaching, on the other hand, implies an ongoing relationship between reps and
managers, with continued optimization and improvement. The scope of coaching ranges
from process enforcement to the improvement of the sales conversation itself.
Why coaching?
Sales training programs often assume that reps can
undergo some boot camp that lasts weeks or even months before reps are up and
running. But the reality is that most companies don’t want to wait that long to
see if reps have what it takes to be successful. Coaching focuses on building
incremental improvements over time rather than trying to cram a bunch of
knowledge in at once, which will usually be quickly forgotten.
Read more
on... Why More Sales Leaders Are
Focusing on Sales Coaching
Author: Howard
Brown
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