Sales coaching and growing your sales team’s skillset is paramount to making your organization stronger. There are some powerful trends emerging lately, and each one has serious power. As a group, the 8 we’re going to discuss here are all but unstoppable. With these in your arsenal, your sales team will be incredible.
Speed of the Team
Today’s sales teams can get together in a wider number of ways than ever before. Plus, training materials can be created and delivered rapidly. If your training involves pulling everyone into a packed office for a lengthy presentation, you’re living in the dark ages.
Advanced Value Discussions
Needs based value offerings are the sales coaching of yesterday. Today, it isn’t just about filling needs — it’s about having legitimate conversations with potential customers about how you can add value to their lives. When your sales force focuses on making customers’ lives better, they can produce higher numbers on the front end, gain more organic referrals and will often have a much higher customer retention rate.
Use of Mobile Devices
Mobile devices are everywhere now, and not making use of what almost everyone has in their pockets would be ridiculous. This is the best way to transmit sales coaching materials bar none. As well, this is the best way to engage with your sales force and make sure they’re getting the message and are able to implement it.
Big Data and Relating it to the Field
There was a time when transferring data was a long and painful process, but those days are long over with. Nowadays, you can collect massive amounts of data from every individual transaction more quickly than you can grab a cup of coffee. Then you can collate that data and have it ready to send into the field with new instructions and modifications to your sales coaching methods faster than your team could catch a flight back to the home office. If you aren’t making use of the massive power that today’s data collection and processing can provide, you are leaving a fortune on the table.
Quicker Training Times With Faster Uptake
Training used to be a difficult and long process, but it no longer has to be. Since many of your newest sales people are probably millennials, you can use how tech savvy they are. This lets you get past that learning curve to get into the heart of the training, more effective sales. At the end of the day, training is all about making sales successfully.
Individualized Coaching Strategies
Not every person is alike, and sometimes those differences are like night and day. So why would you want to try and train everyone the same way? Since so much of the modern world is about individuality and customization, you can use this to your advantage and tailor your training methods to individual personalities and the strengths that each person brings to the table. Different modules and different approaches may bounce with some people, but with others they’re made of gold.
Making a Game of Learning
Learning is powerful stuff. But not when it’s a boring process. You can turn every sales skill your team needs into a game. This lets everyone get creative and leads to powerful engagement.
Less Lecturing, More Interaction
Why would anyone sit in a lecture room when you can record and distribute lectures electronically around the world? Provide lectures for later. This lets you use class time for discussions and real teacher and student interaction.
Today’s trends are moving quickly, but don’t ignore them. These trends make sales coaching more powerful than ever before.
