The Biggest Weapon that you Probably Don’t Have on your Sales Team Part 2

Previously I wrote about how effective it can be to have a commercially minded legal team in the post: The Biggest Weapon that you Probably Don’t Have on your Sales Team, which we still reap the benefits of today.

Recently, we made a unique hire that has had an incredible impact: a Sales Coach. So in part 2 of the “The Biggest Weapon You Probably Don’t Have on Your Sales Team,” I’d like to share why, if you invest in this and do it right, a Sales Coach can make a huge difference to your company.

What is a Sales Coach?

“Sales Enablement” is a fancy term that means something different to every company. If you google “What is Sales Enablement,” there are hundreds of articles with different definitions. I found this one to be the best: Demystifying Sales Enablement: What It Is, Why It Matters, And How To Do It Right by Rodderick Jefferson as it breaks down potential functions and KPIs very clearly. 

When we initially built out this initiative, we knew how important it was to invest in our people and make them more effective, but we didn’t really have a true scope of exactly what we were looking for. After several internal conversations, we decided to take the approach of breaking out the initiative into two different functions:

• First, your traditional Product Marketing, which includes product training (both on-boarding and new features), sales collateral and messaging. This part of Enablement sits under marketing. 
• Second, sales training, which includes hard core coaching of reps on how to continually sell better. This includes everything from rapport building, discovery, presentation skills, negotiating, etc., and this sits under sales and customer success.

My guess is that most companies with strong marketing teams understand the first category, but mainly rely on sales managers for sales training. While sales managers are generally great sellers, they have a ton on their plate with driving revenue, managing their team, recruiting, etc. and it is very difficult for them to consistently prioritize pure sales training. Sure, many companies will invest in a Sales Methodology, which can be incredibly effective and work well in conjunction with a Sales Coach or Enablement team, but that alone isn’t enough.

Why did we need one?

Our sales collateral and product training was great, but reps' skill levels were all over the map. There were a myriad of gaps in how reps understood our sales process ranging from not knowing the pain we were solving, lack of enforcing next steps, uncertainty in the buying process, etc. This led to a huge variance in ramp time and close rates and we knew we needed more consistency and standardization in order to scale and drive more revenue.

There’s a common saying you hear all the time which demonstrates why we were so committed to developing our reps:

What does a Sales Coach do and what makes them effective?

Unlike a traditional enablement person who is holistically equipping the team with the resources they need, a Sales Coach is training sellers on the specific gaps that they need to improve on.

 In the interview process with our (now) Sales Coach Charles Muhlbauer, he talked about how he was going to do weekly one hour coaching sessions with every SDR and AE for four straight weeks during his first 3 months. We thought he was crazy, given that we have an SDR and AE org of over 70 people, but Charles proved us to be very wrong.

What we learned is that a great sales coach is passionate about teaching sales, knows his or her stuff and is not afraid to get in the weeds. The majority of their time should be spent in 1:1 sessions with individual contributors, providing tactical, granular coaching. They need to be strong at identifying gaps specific to the individual, have the ability to teach reps how to improve on those areas by reviewing real calls, and align with the managers to ensure feedback consistency. 

Beyond the 1:1 coaching, they need to be able to identify common challenges across the team and lead group training sessions.

Charles has gone above and beyond by adding things like “Think Tanks” which are basically open office hours where SDRs and AEs can come with ideas and challenges, a “Sales Coaching” Slack Channel where he posts tactics daily that has turned into very interactive conversations, as well as proactively scoring calls on Gong to help keep everyone accountable. In addition, we're finding that other departments outside of our sales org (such as our events team) are working with Charles as a resource to help with their sales efforts as well.

As you can see from his strong LinkedIn presence, he is very passionate about sales. Here’s one example from his hundreds of posts on sales:

Because we found the right person who has developed such strong credibility across the team and truly a sales expert and effective teacher, the reps all look forward to their weekly coaching session.

While we have only had him 4 months, we can’t imagine a world without him adding consistent value to the team.

Some examples:

• One SDR had trouble understanding how to smoothly transition on phone calls from one topic to the next. Charles helped the SDR develop a menu of transition phrases that specifically made sense for her, in her own voice, allowing for better conversational flow and a more natural transition to set up another call. The SDR learned that even the smallest of changes to a call can be very impactful.
• Another SDR felt a big fear of asking too many questions, resulting in not getting the information that she needed. Charles shared that she can simply ask for permission throughout the call to ask questions, and even ask for permission to share about how we work with other clients. She found herself being much more comfortable asking the questions she needed to, as well as speaking in a more inviting tone toward her prospect, empowering her prospects to be more comfortable answering questions and sharing more.
• An AE was struggling with how to identify the right opportunities to ask deeper, more thoughtful questions during any stage of discovery. Most of the time, the AE would simply accept surface level answers and move on, unaware that she was missing critical opportunities to dig deeper in order to progress the deal. They reviewed six identifiers, two of which she actually came up with herself live during the session. This has allowed for deep self-awareness to be internalized by the AE in knowing how to better back peel the onion, a crucial ingredient to consistently execute best practices.
• Another AE had a fair understanding of identifying the right opportunities on the call to take advantage of, but was struggling with how to best ask deeper level questions while coming across as thoughtful yet also direct. Charles taught him exactly how to ask questions that would help the prospect think about the problems that they never previously thought about. This empowers the AE to come across as knowledgeable to the prospect, resulting in the client ultimately sharing more with the AE.

How do you know if it's working?

One common question is how do we measure success in this role. With so many factors contributing to the success of a rep’s performance trying to “measure” attribution to the Sales Coach is almost impossible. So we need to measure in a different way. 

First, we come up with quarterly OKRs to set the goals for the quarter based on business needs and we don’t move the goal post. These include # of hours coaching and other specific deliverables to ensure production is happening. There will always be things that come up that people will think are perfect for the Sales Coach to do, but for him or her to be effective you have to keep the focus on the task at hand.

Next, we look at specific metrics for each of the Sales Coach’s “clients”, in this case the SDRs and AEs:

• For SDRs, we look at things like conversion rates from Discovery Calls to Sales Qualified Opportunities as well as overall performance. We also do surveys to get feedback on how effective the training was to ensure the team is receiving value. We don’t just ask how much they liked the training, but things like “how much more confident are you in cold calling and discovery calls after the training”. We also review the number of cold calls SDRs are making now that they are more confident in cold calling. Interestingly, we have become more of a 'call-first' culture, now that SDRs are more confident in cold calling. Their average numbers of dials per day have gone up, which has been helpful in building relationships with our prospects and getting to decisions faster.
• For AEs, we look at things like conversion rates by stage as well as overall close rates. These metrics take longer to improve and are more difficult to assign attribution, but can still demonstrate the impact the coach is having . We also do surveys and we are ensuring that there are tactical coaching plans being created for each rep.

How do we make it stick?

As our org continues to grow, it can’t be on the Sales Coach alone to ensure the reps are executing on everything they are taught. Especially since 80% of what is taught in sales training is forgotten within 90 days (credit: David Brock), we need to constantly be reinforcing good behaviors and fixing the bad ones.

That is why we have built out a plan where our managers sync with our Sales coach, both before (to give context) and after the sessions are done to make sure they are enforcing the things that are taught in the sessions. Our sales coach is delivering notes, action items and takeaways to the reps and to their manager after each session. Coming out of the 4 training sessions, Charles delivers all his notes to the manager so that the rep and manager can work on a tactical coaching guide which includes specific metrics (i.e. talk time on Gong) to show improvement.

Summary

If you want to elevate your team, make sure that a sales coach is a specific part of your sales enablement investment. Take the time though to make sure that you hire the right one and work with your managers to ensure the learnings are adopted. A trained sales org with a coaching culture is one key difference between good and great organizations.