Did you know that 58% of salespeople are likely to leave their companies if they don’t receive professional development? Failing to give your team opportunities to improve their sales techniques and grow as professionals will encourage them to seek companies that will.
Why Is Sales Coaching Important?
1. It Can Improve Your Team’s Productivity
Sales coaching is an effective method for outlining clear objectives and steps for your team. This enables your team to boost their focus and work from task to task efficiently.
2. Your Team Will Close Bigger Deals More Often
As your salespeople begin to understand their goals and objectives clearly and become more efficient as a result, their confidence will increase over time. This will enable them to achieve greater responsibilities, like closing sales and working with bigger clients.
Sales leaders can sharpen the selling skill set of a salesperson by giving them the best techniques for closing big deals. As they close more deals, sales coaching can continue to build on this, leading to a sustainable growth model for your team.
3. It Can Strengthen Your Organization
Although a good sales leader can unite teams across business units, the best leaders, through their coaches, will evolve teams.
A transformational leader won’t just give their sales team techniques or help clarify their goals, they will continue to provide their support to ensure their team is running optimally.
5 Ways To Improve Employee Retention With Sales Coaching
Besides the benefits above, sales training can improve employee retention and greatly reduce the turnover rate of your organization in these five ways.
1. Tailor Your Coaching To Fit the Needs of Your Team
Too often, sales training programs fail due to a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Sales coaches must adapt the training to match the needs of each team member.
Most teams have salespeople of varying experience and knowledge. This means if the training is broad, it won’t produce the desired results and will lead to untapped potential. The right training program that is customizable to fit your team’s needs is crucial for improving employee retention since it shows your commitment to each individual and willingness to invest in the specific knowledge and skills needed to grow their abilities.
2. Sales Coaching Improves Retention
In 2023 workers are wanting to learn more while on the job to feel more connected with their jobs, work their way up in their companies, develop as professionals, etc. To improve your employee retention, you can meet your team members' needs with a couple of steps.
Allow your employees to explore and learn about topics that motivate them. With your training program, consider adding in some smaller learning courses that appeal to the individual’s intrinsic motivators to maintain ambition.
You should also give your team the flexibility to absorb these micro lessons in a way that’s optimal for their learning style and speed. Don’t force these lessons on them throughout the entire work day; let them identify the most opportune times that meet their learning styles.
You should also make the entire training program available, including these smaller lessons, even after the initial training program has ended. That way, your team can go back and learn what they missed or brush up on sales coaching techniques/strategies they forgot.
3. Share Your Success Stories
Sharing with your sales team can help them learn from your experiences, including what to do or what not to do. This also leads to experiential learning, a vital model for improving employee retention. Experiential learning is a four-stage process that prioritizes learning through experiences and then reflecting on those hands-on experiences. Your success stories can help you implement an experiential learning model by providing experiences and hands-on techniques that your team can apply in the sales field.
The four stages of the experiential learning model are experiencing, reflecting, thinking and acting.
1. Experiencing
The first stage is designed to get students of the program directly involved in dynamic teaching methods — games, role-playing and various other tactics can be used here. This is the stage where they will learn the best sales coaching techniques and strategies.
2. Reflecting
The next stage is reflecting. Students should use this time to think of the new knowledge they’ve received and how it affects their tasks, their sales perspective and their approach to their job.
3. Thinking
This is the stage where students begin to take the sales coaching techniques and strategies they’ve reflected on and visualize how they can apply them to selling. It’s important here that all irrelevant information is left out since this stage is where students should refine what they’ve learned, not absorb new information that doesn’t apply to them.
4. Acting
During the acting stage, students will take what they’ve learned and use them in real sales situations. It’s important to have patience here, as some learn and apply techniques quicker than others. If the training was executed correctly and the program was relevant to your business goals, it will pay dividends, both now and in the future.
4. Post-Training Follow-Ups
A training program doesn’t end once the lessons have been taught — this is what many companies fail to understand and wonder why the program only produced early positive results.
Training needs to be a persistent implementation because industries and techniques change, as does the sales landscape. Ensure your training program includes reinforcement of techniques already learned and adds new training often to produce the best results.
5. Ensure Your Sales Coaching Is Engaging
Too often, sales coaches try to implement what they would like into their training program. This is similar to the “one-size-fits-all” mistake since the coach should be just as adaptable as the program. When figuring out how to improve retention, finding the right coach is a significant step for evolving your team.
Additionally, the content they teach should also be relevant and up-to-date for your industry. Some questions to ask when seeking the right coach is:
- What are the most relevant ongoing trends in your industry right now?
- What sales coaching techniques have proven successful?
- What are your competitors doing that has worked for them?
Build a Powerful Sales Team With Our Sales Coaching Toolkit
At XINNIX®, The Academy of Excellence, we offer the top sales training resources to elevate your sales team into top performers for your company. With our Sales Coaching Toolkit, you can access all of these resources in one location. Learn more about our toolkit and begin transforming your team as soon as today!
