BY C. Lee Smith
The pressure to increase revenue in organizations never lets up. As a sales manager, you may feel this pressure more than other department heads. You can increase team productivity by personalizing coaching and improving efficiency in sales team processes.
How to Personalize Coaching to Increase Team Productivity
A new Mindtickle report indicates that sales managers have stepped up the pace of coaching. They may have recognized that their reps face bigger challenges in guiding leads through the B2B sales funnel. And they may also realize that sales training only goes so far in generating higher success rates.
The average sales organization publishes continuous content updates to reinforce training. This information may overwhelm your sales team members who are trying to stay current. Interestingly, Mindtickle reports, around 80% of new training content sees only a 30% engagement rate.
While training content is important, some documents and videos may not be applicable to everyone on your team. Beyond that, the constant content wave is too overwhelming to be effective. With 84% of training information “being forgotten in three months,” your organization’s investment may be going to waste.
Regular coaching may deliver better outcomes. When the coaching content is personalized to a rep’s individual needs, they may pay attention.
You can start this process by linking your coaching techniques to the results of psychometric assessments. Reps will appreciate individualized manager attention. This is especially true when the coaching targets the sales, or soft skills, the rep would like to improve.
Addressing Common Sales Weaknesses
Every sales professional naturally possesses strengths and weaknesses. The person who possesses outstanding prospecting skills may struggle to close deals. In that case, you’ll want to coach them on how to improve their closing strategy.
They may benefit from listening in on a colleague's closing session. Additional practice sessions with you posing as the reluctant customer can help them change what isn’t working.
Personalizing Your Interactions
Every sales rep has a preferred way of interacting with their manager and a unique learning style. The psychometric assessment results will reveal whether asking challenging questions will motivate or demotivate your sales rep.
In your coaching sessions, some reps will welcome direct and task-oriented conversations. Other reps prefer to ease into these conversations by engaging in small talk first. To increase team productivity, plan ahead about how you’ll navigate each coaching session.
Coaching on Tech Tools
Sales organizations in the B2B vertical understand that buyers are reaching out later in the process. They spend less time in person with sales reps.
Some buyers are happy to conduct the entire process online, with minimal sales rep interaction.
This trend means your sales reps and your organization must be more visible online. To increase team productivity, more coaching on using technology to improve online visibility is a must.
In addition, reps who can quickly tap into data related to prospects and their vertical will gain an edge. Tools like this will help the 65% of Gen Z professionals who don’t check the prospect’s website before making contact.
AI-powered tools that optimize tasks such as writing outstanding email messages should be available to every team member. With buyers using teams of up to 3 people to make purchase decisions, emails from sales reps must be personalized.
Our research shows that 35% of buyers prefer their first seller contact to be accomplished through email. Your reps can stand out from the competition and increase team productivity by addressing the right topics via email. And an AI-based tool can generate the right tone for each email recipient.
Personalizing coaching for your team members may feel like an overwhelming task. If you employ the right tools, you can increase team productivity and watch revenue grow.
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