Why Organizations Don’t Do Enough Sales Coaching?

  • June 12th, 2019
  • Blog

We know that when sales coaching is done well it brings improved sales metrics.

One of the key factors to a dynamic sales coaching process is to have your sales reps coached on a regular basis.

It is recommended that each rep have one to two hours of sales coaching per week. Yet the 4th annual Sales Enablement Study says two thirds of sales reps believe they receive less than 30 minutes per week. This is much briefer than what sales managers believe.

So why doesn’t sales coaching take place?

After 40 years of B to B selling (including working in a Sales Manager role) here is my opinion:

  • It is not because Managers don’t have the time. We always find time to do what is important to us.  The word “sales coaching “to some has a stigma attached to it.  In sales I noticed the reps most often being coached were the ones NOT performing. Who wants to go home and tell their spouse “I’m taking some coaching”?   Yet many of our top athletes and business performers today have at least one coach. All reps should have the opportunity to receive the benefits of sales coaching including your top performers.
  • Secondly, organizations may think their sales leaders are coaching however often they are not. Telling, directing and talking (about ourselves) isn’t sales coaching. The coaching reps want is new skill coaching or improvement on an existing skill.
  • Thirdly, sales leaders need to be more skilled in coaching…
  • Fourthly, many Sales Managers have not had formal sales coaching training.  Also, this has not been a behaviour assessed by their leader. When sales leaders are trained and recognized for their sales coaching skills they coach more often.
  • Lastly, many organizations believe all sales coaching needs to come from the immediate manager. Excellent sales coaching can also come from other sources.

I remember one of the best sales coaching sessions I had was from our corporate sales trainer. He travelled all over North America with various reps to client calls helping us apply skills we learned in a sales training course. He had no other agenda other than for me to successfully apply those skills.

I believe that more effective sales coaching will happen. Organizations will change as they understand that the data shows when sales coaching is done well it has an impressive impact on key sales metrics.