NEW $ALES HIRES

COACHING

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In this ebook you will learn

1. What is Sales coaching and how can it impact new rep performance

2. How should managers coach their new sales hires

3. Tell-tale signs that your coaching strategy is broken

4. Week-on-week sales coaching plan for new hires

What is MindTickle sales readiness software?

MindTickle helps increase productivity of sales in fast growing companies. The online and mobile platform combines readiness best practices such as byte sized learning, social, gamification, mobile etc with data driven approach and deep integration with CRM and other tools to make sales onboarding, field communication, product training and coaching highly effective.

Several $Bn valuation startups such as Cloudera, Couchbase, Ola Cabs, Appdynamics, RocketFuelare using to prepare their sales teams.

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Coaching is a structured and intentional process to guide your new sales rep to be sales ready, so they can achieve their potential. Great sales teams have great leaders who coach and motivate people!

During the course of new hire coaching, a sales manager: • Puts together safeguards in place to ensure the concepts learnt in training are retained.

• Facilitates discussions for uncovering areas of improvement.

• Maintains the discipline for holding people accountable for applying what has been

learned.

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Imagine showing up to play an important college basketball game on a fabled rival’s home court, only to find you’ve forgotten your shoes. Now consider what to expect from your coach, after losing the game. A royal chewing out for not having your head in the game? The cold shoulder? Worse?

Neither, according to NBA hall-of-famer Grant Hill, as he recalls the incident. His coach was Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, affectionately known as “Coach K,” and the winner of over 1,000 games, including the 1992 Olympic gold medal. Instead of a blistering by Coach K, there was an ice cream sundae party and another practice to help the team recover from the humiliation of the loss. Coach K’s focus was not on defeat, but on teambuilding and getting the heads of the young players ready for the next game. And recover they did, winning two national titles in 1991 and 1992.

Source: https://hbr.org/2015/02/millennials-want-to-be-coached-at-work

Coaching success story from HBR

Sales manager just don’t manage sales. Sales Managers should coach the new hires to do what it takes to win, instead of back-seat driving

SALES READY

Understands the customer needs

AND NOT JUST

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Is able to communicate the value proposition in context of customer need

Adopted from the book “The Accidental Sales Manager” by Chris Lytle

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MicroManagement

Activity

Pipeline

Results

Predictable performance

Consistent performance

Challengerperformance

StrategicCoaching

TacticalCoaching

Is your Sales rep coachingbroken?

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Sales managers give feedback instead of coaching

Sales Managers don’t focus on the middle 60%

Sales Managers aren’t Coaching by the Numbers

Its not about “showing how good you are”

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#2 Sales Managers Don’t Spend Enough Time Coaching

#1

#3

#4

#5

Sales managers give feedback instead of coaching

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#1

Before getting into the details of creating a structured coaching plan, it’s important to clarify exactly what coaching is. Many sales managers confuse coaching with giving feedback, but in reality they are two very different things.

Feedback is where the manager reviews the new hire’s performance and what they could do differently. On the other hand coaching is all about the sales rep; what do they want to develop, how they can perform better, and strengthening their skills.

Sales Managers Don’t Spend Enough Time Coaching

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#2

As a sales leader, are you spending at least 4-5 hours every week on new hire coaching? In most fast growing companies, this is seldom done. Sales coaching is looked at as a nice-to-have. Sales managers are often caught in team targets and lose sight of the big picture - strategy - i.e. how to enable the sales reps to sell better.

Sales Managers don’t focus on the middle 60%

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#3

Whom you coach is just as important as how you coach. Even world-class coaching — has a marginal impact on either the weakest or the strongest performers in the sales organization.

The bottom 20% are likely to be a poor fit for the role altogether. The real payoff from good coaching lies among the middle 60% — your core performers. For this group, the best-quality coaching can improve performance by up to 19%. even moderate improvement in coaching quality —simply from below to above average — can mean a six to eight percent increase in performance across 50% of your sales force.

Managers aren’t Coaching by the Numbers

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#4

Sales Managers fall back on gut-based coaching habits. Need to truly dig deep into the numbers and create tailored, metrics-backed coaching plans for every single rep on their team. Also, alignment models used are designed for periodic intervention and planning. But a sales coaching is most effective when it is naturally and consistently folded into a sales rep’s routine.

Its not about “showing how good you are”

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#5

In an attempt to show how skilled they are, many times managers get into the driver’s seat and curtail the learning process of the new sales rep.

Empathy with sales rep is critical for delivering the right coaching, and ensuring that the rep doesn’t feel slighted. In other words, it requires that the manager deliver coaching without denting the rep’s confidence and attitude.

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Recommended coaching plan for new hires

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Look at Coaching in the context of the entire onboarding process

TRAIN

ASSESSCOACH ANALYZE

REINFORCEThis can be a blend of

face-to-face and online training that covers

essentials from product information to prospecting

and then pitching

Being able to assess both the sales reps knowledge and skills is critical to the

onboarding process

1: 1 coaching providestailored attention that

addresses the skills and identifies knowledge gaps to bring the individual up to

speed quicker

Sales managers should analyze the information

available to them to identify skills gaps and knowledge adoption

Using tools to reinforce the information that has been imparted will ensure that

the rep retains the knowledge

Knows how to prioritize incoming leads and opportunities

Is able to handle objections and refer the relevant case studies while solving the exercises

Demonstrates the right skills during role play sessions with senior sales people

Is ready to engage in customer conversations, enable him with periodic reinforcements

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Week #1

Week #2

Week #3

Week #4/5

Week #6

Knows how to articulate the value proposition in customer conversations

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Week #1

The new hire should find 5 ideal customers through self research

Have the new hire explain how to handle incoming leads from marketing

Have the new hire prepare 30, 60 and 90 day milestones and metrics to track them

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Week #2

Have the new hire explain the buyer persona, their challenges, and a “With us – Without us” vision for the customer

Have the new hire explain critical product features and how it will impact the buyer’s problem

Did the sales rep achieve what they said they would achieve on a daily basis? Start doing weekly reviews with your new sales rep

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Week #3

Have the new hire prepare for top objection handling scenarios

Have the new hire support a senior sales rep in the daily activity

The new hire starts to shadow you and/or your best rep on customer calls and meetings

After each call / meeting, have the rep research and create pitches for communication with each of those prospects

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Week #4/5

Have the new hire go through multiple role-play exercise on prospecting, qualification, pitching and handling objections

Have the new hire co-pitch to low value deals and provide real-time feedback,

With the support of a senior sales rep, the new hire continues to starts to handle low value deals

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Week #6

Provide the new hire with cheat sheets and best practice documents

Be easily accessible to the new hire whenever he/she has clarifications

Create a coaching cadence going forward. The new hire is ready to start selling!

Develop a clear line of sight between sales actions, sales goals, and business outcomes.

Trade half of the numbers review discussions for early stage pipeline review discussions

Create a competitive atmosphere for new hires to grow in

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#1

#2

#3

#4

Coach by asking, not telling; Create a mentoring system for new hires

Ask the question – “What do you want from me to be a successful sales person”#5