Sales Coach
The impact of coaching w/ Del Nakhi
Thu Jun 29 2023Description
The episode covers the importance of coaching in developing sales teams, aligning with the CRO, establishing competency maps, educating stakeholders, driving behavior change, measuring behavioral impact, dispelling misconceptions, and avoiding directive coaching. It also explores building a coaching culture, understanding sales reps' opportunities, developing a coaching framework, measuring strategic impact, connecting coaching efforts with revenue, tracking effectiveness, data cleanup, and using conversation intelligence tools. Additionally, it discusses effective communication, qualification frameworks, managing opportunities, prioritizing coaching, reinforcing results, and achieving a coaching culture.
Insights
Coaching is crucial for developing and energizing sales teams
Effective coaching involves aligning with the CRO, establishing competency maps, educating stakeholders, and driving behavior change.
Misconceptions about coaching can hinder its effectiveness
Coaching is not about being directive but rather asking questions and helping people find their own answers.
Building a coaching culture is important in sales organizations
Sales managers should focus on understanding team members, having open conversations, giving ownership, and measuring the strategic impact of coaching.
Measuring coaching effectiveness can be challenging
Tools that merge data and track leading indicators can help connect coaching efforts with revenue. Data cleanup is necessary for accurate analysis.
Effective communication and qualification are key in sales
Sales success relies on how you communicate with customers, manage opportunities, and use qualification frameworks like MedPIC.
Coaching should be prioritized without reminders
Experiencing coaching firsthand as a CRO and seeing its impact on revenue reinforces its importance.
A coaching culture is achieved when customer-facing teams seek out coaching
Leaders should also be observed and coached on their coaching skills to create a culture of continuous improvement.
Chapters
Coaching and its Importance
00:03 - 07:26
- Coaching is important for developing and energizing sales teams.
- Alignment with the CRO is crucial for effective coaching.
- Establishing competency maps and clear indicators helps evaluate coaching effectiveness.
- Educating stakeholders on the importance of coaching is essential.
- Change management and understanding roles are key in driving behavior change.
- Measuring behavioral impact includes looking at specific questions asked, customer engagement, and conversation intelligence tools.
- Not all leaders know how to coach effectively; listening and guiding are important skills.
- Misconceptions about coaching can hinder its effectiveness; it's about asking questions and helping people find their own answers.
- Being directive in coaching can cause team members to shut down and not benefit from the conversation.
Building a Coaching Culture
07:00 - 14:22
- Coaching leaders often think they are empowering their team, but in reality, being too directive can cause team members to shut down and not feel valued.
- Sales reps usually know where their opportunities are and just need the time and space to figure out how to approach them.
- Building a coaching culture in sales organizations is important, but many sales managers don't want to or don't know how to coach.
- Developing a coaching framework that focuses on understanding team members, having open conversations, and giving ownership can be effective.
- Measuring the strategic impact of coaching can be challenging due to disparate data sources, but tools that merge data and track leading indicators can help.
- Connecting coaching efforts with revenue requires analysis and potentially a business intelligence tool specifically for enablement.
- Tracking the effectiveness of coaching should be a joint effort between operations and enablement teams.
- Some sales leaders are data-oriented and create their own reports and dashboards if there isn't a centralized business intelligence tool.
- Data cleanup is necessary before measuring coaching effectiveness, ensuring accurate data points for analysis.
- Leading indicators such as conversation intelligence tools can provide insights into coaching best practices, while lagging indicators tie back to overall performance.
Effective Communication and Qualification
14:02 - 20:11
- Sales comes down to how you communicate with customers and provide value in conversations.
- To track effective coaching, look at conversation intelligence, including the questions asked, solution positioning, and discovery techniques used.
- Managing opportunities and having a mutual action plan with customers is crucial for success.
- Evaluate qualification frameworks like MedPIC to determine if there is a champion and measure their impact.
- Coaching should be prioritized without needing reminders by experiencing it firsthand as a CRO and seeing its impact on revenue.
- Reinforce effective coaching by showing tangible results tied to revenue and quota achievement.
- A coaching culture is achieved when customer-facing teams are open to coaching, seek it out, and act on it. Leaders should also be observed and coached on their coaching skills.