Research shows that effective sales coaching can dramatically improve the performance of sales teams—in some cases driving up revenues by 20% or more. But not every sales organization is able to produce these type of results.

While the role best positioned to do sales coaching is the frontline sales managers, not every sales manager is an effective sales coach and not every sales organization has a coaching-friendly culture.

Sales coaching was a widely discussed topic at a Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. This conference focused on building and maintaining a winning sales organization and featured numerous speakers and experts discussing sales management strategies and tactics for improving sales performance.

At this conference, Sales Readiness Group hosted a breakout session on sales coaching where we gathered a cross section of key stakeholders of sales coaching programs, including sales managers, salespeople, sales trainers, sales leaders, and sales operations/enablement professionals to discuss key sales coaching issues.

We divided participants into two teams: (1) the first team discussed the attributes of a great sales coach, while (2) the second team considered how to create a coaching culture in a sales organization.

During our session both teams had lively, spirited discussions and I wanted to share with you some of each team’s insights.

Attributes of a Great Sales Coach

This group agreed that while most sales managers are not naturally great coaches, coaching is a skill that can be learned. Here are five key attributes they identified in great sales coaches:

1. Commits to salesperson’s success

One attribute that seemed to be high on all lists was that a great sales coach has a sincere desire to help the individuals on their team and is committed to the salesperson’s success. This manifests itself in the time they spend coaching and how well prepared they are for each coaching session. A great sales coach will know which specific behaviors he or she wants to coach and provides role plays or other practice opportunities for the salesperson.

2. Leads salesperson in self-discovery

A great sales coach understands that the best coaching occurs when the salesperson comes up with the solution on their own. The coach’s job is to lead the salesperson in self-discovery, not tell them what to do. The primary method of doing this is by asking the salesperson questions. For example:

“How did the call go?”

“What was good about it?”  “Why?”

“What would you do differently next time?”  “What is your next opportunity to try that?”

3. Uses failure constructively

No salesperson likes to lose a deal, but our participants agreed that a great sales coach can turn failure into a teaching moment. Doing this effectively, our participants emphasized, involves starting out the sales coaching conversation by pointing out what the salesperson did well, not just focusing on the failure.

4. Coaches to strengths

One common trap average sales coaches fall into is spending too much time coaching chronically weak salespeople or trying to make salespeople into something they are not. Not every problem is fixable; great sales coaches spend the majority of their time trying to make the good better. In other words, move the middle. Weak performers typically are not worth coaching time investment on the part of the sales manager.

5. Creates a coaching safe zone

Sales coaching won’t work if the salesperson feels threatened. So, a great sales coach creates a coaching safe zone where the salesperson perceives it is OK to make mistakes and that the coaching is not a backdoor performance review. Our participants agreed that the first critical step in creating a coaching environment is for the sales manager to focus on behaviors and avoid making judgments when coaching.

Creating a Sales Coaching Culture             

Peter Drucker famously remarked that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The participants in our second group believe this applies to sales coaching as well. Even if your sales organizations has great individual sales coaches, sometimes their efforts may not yield results unless there is a sales coaching culture. Five key factors our second group discussed that contribute to this type of culture are:

1. Coaching starts at the top

Of all the ideas discussed during our session on sales coaching, this was one with unanimous agreement. And by “top” our participants meant at the C-Level. When senior leaders believe in coaching they model great coaching behavior, hire people who believe in coaching, and make coaching a core competency of the organization. In fact, one participant noted that part of a sales manager’s promotion path to more senior sales leadership positions is demonstrated coaching skills.

2. Coach the coaches

Most sales managers are promoted from the field and typically have little if any management or coaching experience. It’s unrealistic to expect the average sales manager to know how to coach. Our participants agreed that if you want your sales managers to coach, it’s imperative that they learn how to coach. Participants from one healthcare company noted that they have had a lot of success capturing and reviewing videos of each sales manager in the coaching role during training sessions.

3. Make it easy to coach

Great sales coaches need organizational support to be effective. Our participants provided numerous examples of this: adopting a common coaching model, providing training on how to implement the model, giving the managers coaching tools to support the implementation of the coaching model, and sharing best practices.

4. Create accountability

Group participants felt that sales managers needed to be incentivized to coach. If sales coaching behaviors become part of a sales manager’s compensation plan, then you have created a level of visibility and measurement that leads to accountability.

The participants in our breakout session came from a variety of different industries and had different levels of experience with sales coaching. A common theme that emerged from our discussions was the in order to have high performance sales coaching program your sales organizations needs both great sales coaches and a coaching culture.