There are a lot of hierarchies in the world.
There is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the hierarchy of taxonomy. You have the food chain and organizational structure within your business.
It might sound base, but the simple fact of the matter is that you do have a hierarchy in your company. You have sales reps, and then you have sales managers. Your managers fill the role of sales coaches for your reps. And the hierarchy continues.
But where do your sales managers fall on the food chain? Are they at the top, as sharks or hawks? Do they land somewhere in the middle, as some huge tuna or fox? Or do they tend to sink close to the bottom, as carp or a sort of plant?
Everyone is important in your organizational structure. But you need the best of the best for your sales team managers. Who is their sales coach? Do they have one to hold them accountable to push the rest of your team to the top of their selling game?
You need sales management coaching, and we are here today to tell you why.
How Do You Coach Sales Managers?
How Do You Coach Sales Managers?You may think we mean a loose touch-base with your managers when we talk about sales management coaching. That is far from the case. And it is not 100 percent the same as sales coaching for your reps, either.
Sure, it is still the same idea that you will be coaching for sales performance. Like how you might with your general approach to coaching salespeople. It is a specialized form of training. One that first highlights the areas where your reps need sales performance coaching. One that then teaches your reps’ sales manager how to address each rep’s individual areas for improvement.
In short, your sales managers need sales management coaching. A professional sales coach will come in and provide them with the tools to be the best leader they can be. To roll with the punches and adapt to the world of sales for the profit and benefit of your company.
Later on, we will get into the reasons you need sales management coaching in particular. There, you will get a closer look at how the best sales coaches can train your managers, so keep reading for more.
Why is Coaching for Managers Critical in Sales?
You know that sales in your business move and evolve quickly. You may find yourself having to hire reps at a faster pace to keep up with those evolutions and changes. If your business has been growing quicker than ever before, you have a high volume of sales to account for and perhaps not enough reps to deal with them.
Unfortunately, that often means you are hiring a large quantity of salespeople. They do not always have a whole lot of quality in their experience or skill set.
You need to then onboard them and teach them the ropes. There is a lot they have to learn about your industry, your business, and its values, and the methodologies you abide by to uphold those values. That’s not to mention your company-specific processes and the techniques and sales knowledge they have to figure out.
And under whom do those responsibilities to teach new and existing reps fall? They fall into the lap of your sales managers. All the time. Over and over again. They have to initially train your reps to learn this in no time flat, then turn inevitable mishaps into valuable teaching experiences. All this while they ensure their team is meeting quotas and more.
Sales coaching training with a top sales coach for your managers is the only way you can make sure they bring their all every day. And, in the meantime, teach your reps to do the same.
Top Reasons Your Company Needs Coaching Training for Managers
You need professional sales coaching. It will boost productivity, individual performance effectiveness and funnel revenue into your organization. Yet it goes much further than that.
Take a look at the following five reasons your company needs sales management coaching for your hard-working managers.
1. You Need to Develop a Framework
You need a blueprint before you build your dream home, your forever home. You need a roadmap before you hit the pavement to get where you need to go. Likewise, you need a framework before you make any sort of business decision.
The same goes for a sales performance coach before they start improving your team and implementing the necessary changes.
The best sales coach has plenty of experience in training managers and their teams. But they also know that the people who comprise your business are unique. They have to get to know your team. So you have to build a framework with key information before anything else.
A sign of a coach who cares about your success is one who will look for relevant team information before they start. Ask your reps and managers what they need in a training program. What are your company goals for them? What are their own individual goals?
Here are some of the areas you will want to see if your team needs help within your framework:
- Overarching sales knowledge
- Messaging
- Specific selling techniques and skills
- Understanding of processes
- Discipline
- Ease of sales execution
Then, whatever coach or program you choose should be able to provide your managers with the coaching sales techniques to:
- Build their knowledge on the areas that they need to improve
- Learn the skills they need to teach the rest of your team
- Access the tools to set the right tone for everyone
- Discipline themselves for consistent execution of your framework
2. To Provide the Necessary Training for Your Team
Now you will have the framework that lays the foundation for what your salespeople need to better their performance. But do your managers themselves have the right skills? Have they gone through the appropriate training?
Your sales coach will analyze that and get them on the same page. They will teach your manager the same sales coaching models that they use for your reps. Then, you will know that everyone is starting their training journey from the same place and can progress as such.
With this approach to sales management coaching, your manager can now provide that same training for the rest of your team in the future.
3. To Learn About and Optimize Sales Tools
We assume that your sales managers have access to the right tools to analyze sales performance among the rest of your department. They can look at numbers and data galore to see if their reps are measuring up.
But say that they are not. Say that your team is falling behind, whether as a group or because of a handful of individual reps. Then what? Do they know how to optimize those tools to fix the problem?
Choose the right people for sales management coaching. They will have the right sales coaching tools to help your managers. Your coach or program can teach your managers what to use, how to use it, and how to optimize for sales department success.
4. To Provide Regular Feedback
There are three different sources your managers can go to for feedback to help them with coaching sales. First is the usual suspect: Your sales coach. They will give them other resources to use for real-time feedback.
They can reach out to their peers. This may be other sales managers they work within your company or fellow managers from another company. They can ask their peers any questions they may have and go over their current process for anything they are working on internally. They can also share their knowledge with those peers to brainstorm on best practices together.
The goal of the best sales coaching strategies out there is to turn your manager into their own kind of coach. Meta, we know: The coach teaches the coach, then the coach becomes a better coach by collaborating with other coaches.
Finally, your managers can look to higher-up sales leadership for coaching advice. A lot of high-up execs from other companies like to sit back and watch the fruit of their labors develop. But the best executives will take a hands-on approach and offer feedback of their own.
5. To Earn Recognition and Incentivization
Quality sales coaching techniques include incentivizing your sales managers. Even though they have climbed the ranks to a management position, they still want you to recognize them. And specialists in sales management coaching should have incentives at the ready for their success.
Do you encourage them after they meet their quotas or have a great quarter? With a great coaching program, you will be able to.
Conclusion
Unsure of where to start looking for sales management coaching? Maybe you don’t know yet where to look for sales team coaching as a whole? Here at Selling Revolution, we’ve got you covered.
We focus on building selling systems for home services companies. You know all about inconsistent and low-quality leads, how hard it is to recruit and train top talent in sales, and shoddy sales training programs. But you don’t have to anymore.
Book a call with Selling Revolution today for all the sales solutions you need in your business.