Four Ways To Coach Your Sales Coaches for Higher Team Performance

Sales coaching is a critical function of a sales team, yet it’s often treated like an afterthought. Coaches are expected to act like they were born knowing how to coach (which they were not). And, they’re expected to do so within an environment that is constantly changing and often largely remote.

“Frequently, out of sight is out of mind,” says Gretchen Gordon, owner of Braveheart Sales Performance and author of The Happy Sales Manager. “When you’re in an office with your reports, it’s easier to be an on-the-spot coach. But when you’re remote, people won’t often pick up the phone to ask you a question. So as a manager, you have to be very in their face and proactive with coaching.”

Gordon is a popular keynote speaker, an award-winning sales management blogger, and a self-professed “sales nerd.” We caught up with her recently to ask her about sales coaching and, specifically, how sales organizations should be helping coaches do their job better. Here’s what she had to say.

One: Coach the Team Mindset

“There’s a lot of subtle psychology that goes on in coaching, that can be damaging if it’s done poorly,” says Gordon.

This speaks to the different mindset that is required for sales management versus direct sales.

“Frequently salespeople are promoted into sales management because it’s their only choice to go up the ladder,” says Gordon. “But just because they were the best at sales doesn’t mean they’re the best at coaching or managing.”

The shift to managing rather than individual performance can be tough, and it doesn’t come naturally for a lot of sales managers. So the job of the coach’s coach is to help them learn to commit to being focused on the team rather than their individual success. And they have to come to understand that in order to be successful, they have to have the most successful team rather than simply be an elevated “superstar with minions”.

Gordon’s company helps organizations change the game by changing how they hire and promote managers. Instead of promoting the highest individual performers, they offer a tool that helps identify candidates that have at least 50% of the necessary coaching mindset and skill already, and are willing to learn the rest.

Two: Coach Coaches to Understand Their People

Gordon says that sales managers often achieve their positions because they’re highly motivated and skilled, and they may not understand that not everyone is like them. “Not everyone on their team may be as precise about how many calls they make a week, they may be complacent, and they may not be as committed to growth.”

When managers don’t understand this, they make assumptions and leave a lot of coaching undone because they don’t realize it’s needed.

“It has a huge impact on the effectiveness of a coach if they underestimate what motivates the individual or misunderstand where they need to improve.”

Coaches may assume that everyone is motivated by money like they are, or that they are driven to win for the same reasons. This assumption means they fail to dig in and find out what actually motivates their people, and what they need in order to succeed.

Three: Coach Coaches in Tactical Management Skills

Sales managers absolutely must develop the mindset and skills to care about and understand their sales teams, but they also need the tactical abilities to do their coaching job.

“What is the cadence, what’s the routine, how many scheduled meetings should we have and when?”

These are questions Gordon says managers may not already know the answers to. Then, she says, if they’re managing remotely, they need to know how to reproduce the impromptu nature of on-site coaching, the kind of thing that happens around the “water cooler.” They need to make a point to call their people randomly and regularly to check in and see how they’re doing and answer questions that crop up in the course of the week.

“Managers need to get comfortable with their rhythm and random coaching,” says Gordon. “Which means following a process, getting comfortable with role playing, mastering the skill of asking questions.”

These are all skills that managers need coaching in, just as much as the salespeople need coaching in sales.

Four: Provide the Framework for the Coaches

When salespeople have a framework for their process, and guided workflows through it, they are able to be more self-sufficient, which enables coaching to be more precise. Likewise, coaches need the same thing.

Braveheart offers a well-developed sales process and scorecard within the Membrain platform that provides salespeople with the guidance they need, and coaches with the insights they need. Additionally, Membrain is launching a new coaching cockpit that provides detailed views of each salesperson’s goals, timelines, pipelines, coaching notes, progress analysis, and more to help coaches see what they need to see in order to do their jobs well.

“Membrain gives sales managers a platform from which to drill down and ask the right questions,” says Gordon. “This means even a less experienced manager can hone in on the important things in a conversation, which in turn makes them a better coach. It’s like having a coach on your shoulder to coach you in coaching.”

Sales coaching is a critical multiplier, and it goes all the way up the company chain. The most effective sales organizations are those that invest at the highest levels in ensuring that leaders are focusing on helping their teams to succeed. Membrain and our partners like Braveheart Sales Performance help companies achieve a fully realized coaching system to achieve outstanding performance.