Coaching

sales manager cadence

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Build Your Sales Manager Cadence (& Save Time and Stress)

Sales Management is the busiest, most overwhelming job in the world (right?!) And that was before most of us went remote.

It’s no wonder so many new managers hit a wall and ask themselves, “Did I make a mistake getting into management?” Trust me, you’re not alone.

But it doesn’t have to be this hard. One of the biggest game-changers for managers is building a cadence, or a system, for how and when you engage your team. Like sellers need a sales process, managers need a management process. This is how you take back control of your day, stop fighting fires, and get back to why you took this job in the first place: to develop and lead people.

Here are 5 things to help you take back control of your day (and learn to love being in management!) Let’s dig in.

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No More Whack-A-Mole

If your day feels like playing whack-a-mole with Slack pings, rep questions, and customer escalations, you’re not alone. These are what I call “jello days”, days that feel messy, unstructured, and impossible to control.

Picture trying to nail jello to a wall. That’s how sales managers often describe their days. No matter how hard you try to stick to your plan, something always slips, shifts, or melts away. It’s reactive chaos. You’re busy all day, but not moving anything forward. You’re putting out fires, answering questions, jumping into calls, but not doing the proactive work that actually drives results.

It’s exhausting. And it’s not why you got into leadership.

Most of us became managers because we love seeing others win. But when you’re stuck in jello days, that purpose gets buried under a pile of “got a sec?” interruptions and endless meetings.

So what’s the fix? A structured cadence. Organizing your week around proactive touchpoints like coaching, huddles, and strategy sessions helps you take back your time and lead with intention.

Here’s the difference between reactive and proactive tasks:

Reactive:

  • Reading your email
  • Tending to the line at your desk
  • Helping reps with questions and issues
  • Creating reports for the boss

Proactive:

  • Calling a morning huddle
  • Planning the team meeting
  • Pulling a rep into a strategy meeting
  • Coaching!

Want your life back? Prioritize the proactive.

READ: How to Run Successful Sales Rep 1:1 Meetings

Plan Ahead

I literally pull out a Post-it each day and write down the one thing I must do. I don’t leave until that’s done. It’s simple but powerful.

The magic formula:

  • Identify your top priorities
  • Build them into your calendar
  • Do your one thing first before opening your inbox

This discipline is what separates high-performing managers from the rest. The best don’t just exceed team goals. They get more of their team to quota, reduce attrition, and consistently coach. That doesn’t happen by accident.

READ: The Best Sales Coaching Questions Ever

Create a Cadence

Let’s break the myth. You don’t need to cover everything in one meeting. It doesn’t work. Instead, you need a sales manager cadence, a system of regular, focused meetings that make everything more efficient and effective.

Here’s the cadence I teach:

  1. 1:1 Meetings (Monthly) – Focus on performance. What happened last month? What’s the plan this month? How are we tracking? Then shift gears. This is also your chance to connect and coach.
  2. Call Coaching (2x/month) – Small groups (no more than 3). This is real coaching. Feedback on call execution, not just listening together.
  3. Sales Huddles (2x/week) – Stand-ups with energy. Talk goals, wins, contests, and questions. Keep it short.
  4. Pipeline Meetings (2x/month) – Stop doing these 1:1. Make them group sessions. It builds accountability and saves you hours.
  5. Sales Strategy Sessions (Ad hoc) – When someone’s behind, this is your chance to step in and help with deal, territory, or lead strategy.
  6. Team Meetings (1x/month) – Focus on culture, recognition, and updates. Make them worth showing up for.
  7. Quarterly Career Reviews (1x/quarter) – Go deep on development. Celebrate progress, talk about career goals, and lay the foundation for retention.
Calendar It or Forget It

Now, make it real. Start with a blank calendar and schedule your cadence:

  • Block quarterly reviews
  • Add monthly 1:1s and team meetings
  • Layer in weekly huddles and coaching
  • Leave half your day open for the inevitable reactive stuff

Don’t over-schedule. Try to keep your total meetings under four hours a day. The other half of your day will get eaten by the unexpected, so plan for it.

Once it’s on your calendar, protect it. This is your new system. If you move meetings around, your team will too. When your reps know when they’ll get your attention, the “drive-bys” stop, and they’ll start saving their questions for the right time.

Send out the invites. Include prep expectations and agendas so everyone shows up ready. And if they don’t? Don’t let it slide. Your calendar only works if your team respects it — and they’ll follow your lead.

DOWNLOAD: Successful Sales Manager Meetings

They Aren’t All Fires

You don’t have to answer every rep question in the moment. In fact, doing that all day is exactly what’s keeping you in firefighting mode. Start redirecting those interruptions into your existing cadence.

Try phrases like:

“I did hear your call. Nice job. Let’s break it down during coaching.”

 “Can we talk about that in tomorrow’s huddle?”

 “I’d love to help, but I only have three minutes right now. Can you bring this to our 1:1?”

Reps will always take the path of least resistance. If you make yourself available 24/7, they’ll keep coming. But if you push conversations into the right meetings, they’ll start to respect your time—and even come more prepared.

Lauren calls this “guarding your time.” The requests won’t stop, so you have to stop them.

This is where the Eisenhower Matrix comes in. It helps you quickly sort out what’s:

  • Urgent and important (you handle it)
  • Important but not urgent (you schedule it)
  • Urgent but not important (you delegate it)
  • Neither (you trash it)

Urgent usually means there’s a time-sensitive deadline. Important means it impacts results or revenue. Just because something feels urgent to someone else doesn’t mean it is.

Building the muscle to decide what gets your time is one of the most critical skills a manager can learn.

Eisenhower

Building your sales manager cadence will give you back your day and maybe even your life. It creates structure, accountability, and clarity for your team. And it lets you do the thing you wanted to do when you took this job: lead.

Try the cadence. Try it for one month. I’ve gotten hugs around the world for this structure, and I hope it helps you too.

And if you’re not sure where to start? We’ve got cheat sheets, templates, and a full class in The Sales Bar to help you Own Your Day and run every meeting like a pro.

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mastering call coaching

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Tips for Mastering Call Coaching

Call coaching is literally THE hardest new skill for sales managers. Yes, it’s a new skill even if you’re not a new manager. Why? Because as a seller – hell, as a HUMAN – our job is to take action to get results. We are “me” focused and “results” focused. Coaching flips this on its head as we’re told to be “rep” focused and skill improvement vs. deal focused. Let’s be clear, you guys…

THAT.

ISN’T.

NATURAL.

And the better you were as a seller, the harder it was as a manager. Great sellers are competitive, a little selfish and needy (c’mon, own that), and ruthlessly devoted to the “W.”

DOWNLOAD: Call Coaching Tips To COACHN Success

In fact, the very best skill coaching (aka call coaching aka just coaching) is NOT focused on the deal. It’s about the rep’s development first and foremost. Focusing on the deal over the rep is where we get in trouble and make common coaching mistakes like, “The Laundry List” and “Be Like Me.” Why? Because we’re impatient to get the win, to save the deal, to bank the commission. Let me summarize in caps, as that makes me feel like I’m really driving the point:

GOOD CALL COACHING IS NOT DEAL COACHING.

If you can enter into the meeting 100% not caring if they win or lose the revenue and only if they feel better about themselves and are excited to improve, then you get it.

You’re also some sort of superhero because that’s basically impossible.

OF COURSE, you care about the “W”. You’re in sales!!

So, herein lies the rub, folks. This is exactly why The Sales Executive Council ranked call coaching as sales managers’ #1 worst skill. Because…

CALL COACHING SIMPLY ISN’T NATURAL.

Over my years in sales leadership and training leadership, I’ve developed a lot of hacks to fix this situation. For example, I only use call recordings of past deals. This prevents my natural sales animal from emerging and ripping the headset off a sweet, well-meaning newbie and taking over the deal (and thereby completely deflating if not scaring my employee).

I also have a GREAT way to take notes during the call to help me vent my frustrations, but still appear supportive and encouraging to an underperformer (admit it, that’s hard).

There’s also a rule of thumb to NEVER break on what to coach, plus:

  • How many things to coach at once
  • How often to coach each rep
  • How to track it so improvement happens
  • How to make time to do more coaching

It’s a complex challenge we face in doing more and better coaching on the job. And going virtual didn’t help. Alas, it’s a worthy pursuit. Frankly, I feel a bit like the Captain Ahab of sales call coaching. I’ve evolved, improved, and added to my training solution pretty much every year for the past ten years. I keep searching for new and improved silver bullets to make the transition easier and faster. And we’re getting there, folks. We’ve created a comprehensive and effective program that changes behaviors and results (contact us if you’re interested in our sales call coaching training).

I would be remiss if I did not mention the call coaching framework we created here at Factor 8: The COACHN℠ Model. It ensures reps and managers have the most efficient and effective coaching sessions possible. Check out the image below (and save it to your desktop!).

COACHN

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increase sales coaching

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Tips for Enablement Leaders to Increase Sales Coaching Focus

This one is for the enablement folks. Truth: I’m an enablement leader in my heart and soul.

I was just talking to an enablement leader friend who was really frustrated that they spent so many months building a robust training program – rolled it out beautifully – and had to hand their baby over to the sales manager to keep those skills alive. Which did not work…

I’m here to tell you why it’s not their fault.

READ: Why You Need a Sales Training and Enablement Budget

I’ve been both an enablement leader and sales manager and can tell you that sales management is the busiest job in the world. We spend the bulk of our day fighting fires and there’s never been a learning emergency.

So if you’re an enablement or training leader and you’d like some tips to get sales managers to coach more often and keep rep skills alive, keep reading.

WATCH: Creating A Coaching Culture

I’ve got 20 tips to help you increase the sales coaching focus at work. Below are my top 3 (get the rest at the bottom of this article).

#1 – Don’t expect them to do more work. As I said previously, sales management is the busiest job in the world. If you want them to coach, you’ve got to fit coaching into their jam-packed schedule. What meetings do sales managers have often? Rep performance 1:1s, pipeline meetings, team meetings, and sales huddles. You’ve got to find ways for your managers to keep rep skills alive during their existing meetings. 

At Factor 8, we’ve built manager toolkits that have activities a sales manager can run during a sales huddle to keep skills alive after training.

#2 – Make it easy. If they need to build a deck, it’s not going to happen. If they need to create a process, it’s not going to happen. If they need to go on a scavenger hunt to find different information for the coaching session, it’s not going to happen. You’ve got to make it fast and easy for managers. 

At Factor 8, we’ve created coaching guides for various rep skills that managers can easily use for skill reinforcement. They combine a cheat sheet of what “good” looks like, which questions to ask during coaching, and a ready-to-use worksheet that coaches both the will and the skill with an easy grading form.

#3 – Most managers don’t know what “coaching” means. Sure, they understand the definition, but they don’t know what it means to actually coach a rep and they definitely don’t know what “good” coaching looks like. That means you get a lot of things like this…

“Hey rep, let’s work on this deal.” You’ve been coached. ✔

“Hey team, what’s the forecast?” You’ve been coached. ✔

“Let me get on this call and help you close it.” You’ve been coached. ✔

Folks, this isn’t coaching. As enablement leaders, we know that.

READ: How to Increase Sales Coaching Frequency

So, in training hundreds of sales managers over the last few years, I’ve learned that it’s a tough skill, it’s not natural for sales managers, and they’re too nervous to do it (though they’ll never admit that last one out loud).

Just put yourself in their shoes. Imagine going to a top player and saying “Let me listen to your call and give you feedback on how to do it better.” Sounds terribly nerve-wracking, right?

That’s why we’ve got to address it and build confidence in their sales coaching, call coaching, and rep skill coaching skills.

If you haven’t taught your managers how to coach to build up their own confidence, it’s probably no surprise that you think they can be doing more coaching.

If you’d like to talk about more specific strategies or a particular issue you’re dealing with in making that connection with sales leadership so they really get behind enablement, I’m here to talk. Email me at LB@factor8.com. 


Want more tips to increase the coaching focus at work?
Download our guide on “20 Ways To Increase Sales Coaching Focus At Work.”

Are you looking for sales training?

Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


sales training techniques

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Sales Training Techniques: Telling vs. Teaching

When I first started as a sales manager, I used to think that telling my team was enough.

I knew what to do, so I could tell them what to do.

Job done, right? Not quite.

The problem was I felt like I was telling them over and over again, and yet nothing changed…

“I’VE TOLD THEM 100 TIMES.” (sound familiar?)

Well, it wasn’t until I became an enablement professional that I learned various sales techniques, including that there’s a HUGE difference between telling vs. teaching.

READ: The Best Sales Coaching Questions Ever

At the heart of that is something called Adult Learning Theory, a framework that outlines the most effective ways adults learn, considering their distinct experiences, motivations, and learning preferences (NEIT).

Part of Adult Learning Theory explains that as grown-ups, our brains are organized like file folders.

You can tell a kid something new and they’ll buy it, believe it, and retain it better than an adult.

When you try to get ME to change a behavior or learn something new, you’ve got to relate it to the folders that are already in my brain

READ: Associative Learning: Why It’s the Best Sales Training Technique

The way we do that is by interacting with each other.

You ask me questions, you let me tell stories, and you let me pull files out of my brain and relate them to what you want me to do.

That’s using Adult Learning Theory to get me to retain new information.

Why’s it important? Because great facilitation = great results. 

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sales rep 1:1 meetings

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How to Run Successful Sales Rep 1:1 Meetings

Managers/Leaders: What does it take to run a successful sales rep 1:1 meeting?

Ten bucks say you and your rep have different definitions of “success” here.

As a Rep, we want:

  1. Some solid “atta-boys” – show me the love!
  2. To feel “seen” by management – time and access is a big deal
  3. To gain some insight into the team – department and company 
  4. An understanding of where we stand on the team
  5. Development on how to do even better
  6. Insight into career options and how to get there
  7. A clear understanding of our next goals and how to reach them
  8. To leave feeling important and pumped up to perform

As a Manager, we want:

  1. To be sure our Rep knows where they stand against goal
  2. To be sure our Rep knows how they’ll make their number this month
  3. Clear up any behavioral or skill issues
  4. Be sure they’re cool

Mostly, we need to be done with this meeting and get on with the next one right? Maybe during this time we could also look at the pipeline, the call coaching scores, review company announcements, and check off all vacation requests? Like really, can we just check them completely off the “to-do” list for at LEAST a month?

If I’m reading your mind right now, it’s because these are the questions I get when teaching managers the ropes. Things like…

“Why do I need a separate deal strategy, pipeline, and 1:1?”

“Do these need to be monthly or is quarterly OK?”

“I can do all this in less than 30 minutes, is that OK?”

And the fundamental difference here is that we have 8-15 of these to do a month and our reps have one. We need the team to perform and cause fewer issues, and they need to feel connected to their boss, their team, their career growth, and their company. And you guessed it, their 1:1 time is where it happens.

A recent Forbes article taught us that today’s hiring generations care most about 3 things:

  1. Career development
  2. Skill development
  3. Access to leadership (that’s you, baby!)

Ready for a perspective bomb? Imagine you have kids (if you do, imagine you have easier kids 😉). Yeah, you could probably keep them alive with 60 total minutes/day of feeding, maybe some basic hygiene and transport, but keeping them alive is very different than ensuring their happiness and development as human beings. We’re all trying to spend MORE than a few hours/day with our families right?

I know, your reps are not your children.

Or, are they?

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Sales Management Productivity Tips

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Top 8 Sales Management Productivity Hacks

Fact: Sales management is the busiest job in the world. Okay, maybe that’s not a real fact, but if you’re a sales manager, you probably feel like it is. Chances are, you’ve got a pretty tremendous and stressful workload. According to the American Institute of Stress, 39% of stress reported amongst employees in the US is caused by an overwhelming amount of work.

So, what happens when you can’t get it all done? For starters: you go home later, you feel less satisfied with your accomplishments, and you add an extra level of anxiety to your plate. Let’s get some of that time back in your day.

Here are our top 8 sales management productivity tips:

1. Make Proactivity the Goal

Start by leaving your reactive self in the past. How? First, we need to identify your priorities. I get it, you received 100 emails just in the time you are reading this blog. But you were not hired to write emails. So, let’s take a closer look at what you were hired to do and what your priority should be. Next, set your daily goal to hit that priority. Setting (and hitting) that goal will make you feel a lot more productive and will make it easier for you to stay on track. Finally, we need to learn how to recognize whether the new things that come our way each day are proactive versus reactive. This will help you say “no” at the right times and help you prioritize the things that you really NEED to get accomplished.

Hint: Reading emails = Reactive. Helping reps with questions that pop up = Reactive. Calling a strategy meeting to help a rep hit their goal = Proactive! Creating a new KPI report = Proactive!


2. Rethink Meetings

Your meeting cadence is the process that organizes your team’s regular interactions. When scheduled properly, the cadence will prevent you from handling a series of reactive “fires” every day. Create the cadence that works best for you and your team. We’ve taken a bit of time to dive into the 8 essential sales manager meetings. Check out this deep dive and learn which meetings are short, which are long, which are 1:1, and which should be done in a group. Read more here: 8 Essential Manager Meetings. While you’re working on your meeting cadence you can also perfect your 1:1 meetings.

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3. Live in the Matrix

Have you used the Eisenhower Matrix before? If not, it all starts by asking yourself 2 critical questions. Is it urgent? Is it important? From there we break things down into 4 groups.

  1. Is this a Fire Drill?
  2. An item to Schedule?
  3. An item to Delegate?
  4. Or an item to Trash?

Eisenhower

Let’s dive in a little deeper to see how these questions help us categorize each task. First are the urgent items. Urgent means time-sensitive and goal-related. Maybe the customer is on the phone and needs an answer to close the deal, or maybe the contract department is reviewing your deal in 1 hour and you need to tie up a few loose ends first.

Next are the important items. Important means it is critical to the mission but it is not time-sensitive. These important things can be scheduled out. This might be mapping out a strategy for a certain campaign, or reviewing the team\’s numbers to ensure they will hit goal.

Now, let’s see how the two questions help us categorize our tasks

  1. Important + Urgent = Fire Drill – do it ASAP
  2. Important + Not Urgent = Schedule – put some time on your calendar to complete the task
  3. Not Important + Urgent = Delegate – find the right member of your team to handle this task
  4. Not Important + Not Urgent = Trash – remove it from your plate

 

4. Start Saying “No.” A LOT

Spoiler alert: You’re about to find out that 3 out of 4 requests aren’t urgent OR important. Oftentimes, they’re actually something your rep can figure out on their own. So, we need to get REALLY good at pushing pop-up requests to meetings, delegating to others, and taking them off your plate!

Here’s how we’ll do it:

  1. Identify the proactive tasks
  2. Categorize tasks according to urgency and importance
  3. Properly respond to requests. It looks something like this…

“Hey, (Rep) this sounds AWESOME! But I’m late on a deadline right now, could you bring the story and the call recording to our call coaching session next week?”

OR

 “Whoa, (Rep), I need to stop you a moment. This sounds important and I want to give it the time it deserves. Please put it on the agenda for our 1:1 next week?”

If you’re on Slack, it could sound like this…

  • Manager: What’s up?
  • Rep: Got a minute?
  • Manager: I have 30 seconds right now, or 15 minutes at 2pm. Hit me back then if you still need help?
    • Here we are putting the action item back on them. You’re not saying you will call them at 2pm, you’re saying call me if you can’t figure out a solution to your problem.

OR

  • Rep: Got a minute?
  • Manager: Sorry, in a meeting. Can you reach out to Bob, please?
    • Here we are delegating to someone else to help the rep.

5. Get COACHN℠

I probably spent 3 hours preparing for my first team meeting. From the scheduling, to figuring out what to say, to deciding what I needed, to realizing I forgot really important things, it was draining, to say the least. What I realized is that if I streamlined the process and prepared for each meeting the same way, I could save myself HOURS of previously wasted time (I only say wasted because those hours were not helping my team reach goal).

Through that painful process, we developed the COACHN Model™. This acronym is about to make your meeting preparation SO MUCH EASIER!

COACHN℠ stands for:

C: Clarify Expectations – This sets the tone for the meeting. “Last time you decided to work on your intros and I know we have a few calls scored. Let’s see how you’re improving.” 

O: Observed Behavior – You start first, lay out facts, and list your observations before you…

A: Ask Questions – Great leaders talk in questions. Have them prepared before your meeting.

C: Commit to Actions – Your number of action items should be 0-1, their action items can be anywhere from 1-4

H: How Can I Help – This helps the rep learn to trust you. Growth is good, but we cannot grow unless we can admit that we need help!

N: Next Steps – We are agreeing at the end. “You own this, I own that, we’re going to meet again ______. Will you (rep) please send the invite!”

6. Have One Source of Truth Within the Organization

Use a standard coaching form. Define what “good” is across the company. If people move or shift, you don’t need to retrain or redefine these elements. If you need a place to start, you can grab our Call Coaching Activities here to help you prioritize and plan your coaching sessions.


7. Stop Proving, Start Delegating

It’s time to put your reps in charge. I get it, you want to help them. But you need to stop giving the fish away. Stop solving all of the problems and owning all of the actions. It’s time to teach those reps to fish instead!

Here are 6 easy things you can delegate TODAY:

  1. Grading their own call recordings and creating a list of skills to improve
  2. Sales huddles – Not all of them, but maybe 1 per week
  3. Notes from all meetings (actions, decisions, and deliverables)
  4. Their PIP actions and check-ins
  5. Scheduling follow-up meetings
  6. Team meeting training
    1. This one will require a bit more guidance, but instead of running every training session, let\’s open up a few for peer training. You will need to double-check their work beforehand (no one wants a 2-hour “look at me” session). But if you have a top rep that is CRUSHING prospecting or brush-offs, let them show the rest of the team how they do it.
8. You Cannot Control How Much Other People Care

This was a tough one for me to really wrap my head around in the beginning. But the truth is that there is a reason that you were promoted to manager. There is a reason that other people will remain as a rep. You cannot control how much other people care. When you care more about their job than they do, it will cause numerous problems.

Let me tell you a little story. Back at the beginning of my sales career, I had a rep, let’s call him “George.” Well, George just could not seem to get himself to work on time. I got one excuse after another. There was a part of me that felt guilty that I didn’t have car trouble and that I could afford a new alarm clock, etc. One Thursday during lunch I left work to go across the street to buy George a new alarm clock (I know, I know). That was when it hit me. What the hell was I doing? If George didn’t care enough to figure out how to get an alarm clock on his phone or borrow a buddy’s clock, or heck, go to Goodwill and buy a used one, then why did I care so much? That was my “ah-ha” moment. I was caring more than George and no amount of new alarm clocks was going to force him to care more.

You need to stay within your span of control. You can control your schedule, your reactions to things, and your time. You don’t control your team, you can’t control a pricing increase, you don’t control what the customer’s going to say, you just don’t. You can influence your team’s skill level, activity, and focus, but you can’t control it. There are a lot of things under your concern, but that you can’t control. There is very little you can actually control. So, stop spinning your wheels and stressing out about it. You can provide coaching and help when appropriate, but “George” is either going to make it or he’s not.

BONUS!
  1. Kill all of your notifications! All of those Instagram posts and text messages can wait until your lunch break. These notifications will only distract you and make completing your tasks take much longer.
  2. Time block goal actions on your calendar. Block out checking your email, your phone messages, etc.
  3. Keep tasks in the same place. Your meetings and your time-blocked tasks are on your calendar. But I’m betting you also have a bunch of other things to do. Compile all of those to-dos into one list. Whether it’s an app or a paper list, keep everything in the same place so nothing slips through the cracks.
  4. Set a time for similar actions and tasks. If you have 3 tasks on your to-do list that require emails, complete those tasks during your time block to check emails. If you need to go pick something up, do it at the same time you need to go to the post office. By grouping similar tasks together, your mind will be able to focus more efficiently and complete those tasks faster.

I know this was A LOT of information and your inbox has probably increased by 200 emails now, but if you take the time to start implementing at least some of these sales management productivity hacks that we talked about here, it will make a difference: in both your success and your happiness! You will feel and be more productive. It will just take a little practice!

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sales coaching

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How to Increase Sales Coaching Frequency

In all my years of sales leadership, there has never been a sales coaching emergency. You? Ever gotten a call after hours along the lines of:

“Panic! They don’t know how to…!! Help!?”

Exactly. And this is actually why, despite all our good intentions, there are precious few true coaching cultures in sales organizations. Even though we know the benefits – coaching skills that exceed expectations result in 94.8% of reps meeting quota and a top demand from the Millennials and Gen Zs you’re trying to hire (source: like every study published in the past five years).

Since there ARE sales emergencies, customer emergencies, product emergencies, and political emergencies every single day (and the non-emergent intentions), it’s no surprise that meetings get pushed to the bottom.

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of partnering with many organizations to establish or turn around their development cultures and we have lots of resources to help you after you finish this blog. Check out our top 20 actions download to help increase coaching frequency, our recent webinar on establishing a coaching culture, as well this fun quiz to determine whether or not your organization has a coaching culture.

If you’re a sales leader, the most important place you can start is by assessing your current culture of development and sales coaching importance. Here are a few questions to get you started:

  1. How often are my managers scheduled to call coach? How often do they really?
  2. What is coaching more important than? ($1M deal?) What is it not? (reporting request?)
  3. How eager are reps and managers for coaching sessions?
  4. Are we hiding or celebrating fails?
  5. Are reps getting built up or brought down?

The goal here is to determine if you have enough coaching, the right kind of coaching, and the kind of culture that supports it.

Starting with question 1, you may be surprised to learn that nearly 50% of reps disagree that they’re getting as much coaching as their managers state. Some of this is due to canceled or pushed coaching when fires happen (and let’s be honest, they happen daily in sales). I think the root of the problem here is how we define coaching. Most managers believe they’re coaching during a 1:1 meeting, a “how’s it going” chat, or a pipeline/deal conversation. Sorry…

“That’s NOT coaching!”

Our definition of best-in-class coaching is:

  1. Sales meeting is present (ride-along, recorded call, live video meeting)
  2. Manager asks questions about the reps’ skill
  3. Rep receives custom feedback on their execution
  4. Rep leaves feeling more confident than when they walked in

Sadly, this means that if you’re playing a call at a team meeting (great job by the way), this is sales training, not sales coaching. At most, you can provide custom feedback on a rep’s skills for about 3 people and 3 short call recordings in an hour. Yes, it also means that giving someone a laundry list of what to improve also doesn’t count as coaching. That’s just bullying. Inspect some sessions. You’ll be surprised – and you’ll be showing coaching’s importance with your presence. 

Sales Executive Council also tells us that call coaching (aka skill coaching) is sales managers’ #1 worst skill. I’ve been hiring and training sales managers for 20 years and I wholeheartedly agree. And the hardest skill to shift is the laundry list of improvement items. It’s so easy for us to hear the challenges, and so hard for us to resist giving just one more idea for improvement. 90% of sessions during role plays come off negative at first, and it takes us at LEAST three training and practice sessions to start to even this out. 

Like most leaders who came up through sales, I’m 100% guilty of the coaching bully myself. In fact, as we train sales managers how to coach at Factor 8, I modeled the curriculum after all my own personal atrocities. “Be like me…I do all the talking…Debbie Downer…” You get the picture. If you relate to this, you’ve probably also taken over a call or two you were meant to be silently observing. 

That’s why I only coach recordings now. I just can’t be trusted during a live call. It’s also led to my #1 tip for antsy sales coaches:

“Coach the rep, not the deal.”

When we approach coaching with the intent of building confidence and skill vs. saving the deal, everything changes. Imagine the deal already lost. Resist the temptation to even ask about the outcome. Focus instead on engaging this seller, and helping them love their job, love their company, love their manager, and love sales.

It changes everything.

A note on culture. Spend a minute Googling the concept of a “growth mindset.” It’s our ultimate goal for sales coaching cultures. It’s a magical land where everyone cares more about improvement than winning. Did you just laugh out loud, my sales leader friend? Before you dismiss it, realize it’s the calling card of nearly every great athlete, and imagine if all your “A” players just kept getting better. How do you get here? A few ideas:

  1. Weed out your problem leaders. Yeah, the person you pictured is exactly who I’m talking about. They probably have veteran reps and accounts and are a fixture in your org – like a barnacle on the underside of the boat, they aren’t uplifters. Just note: culture is formed not by your intent! It’s defined by the worst behavior you’re willing to tolerate. His name was Brian at my first sales management job, and his attitude led the whole division to a culture of hazing and sink or swim. NOT the coaching culture the new workforce is craving!
  2. Share your failures and encourage your managers to do the same. A coaching culture is one where we’re not afraid to fail. We willingly share bad calls. We welcome feedback and input. Sorry, but humans aren’t built to be vulnerable and they will need a lot of role modeling here until your people feel safe to do so.
  3. Reward improvement. If you want a growth mindset culture, you can’t just reward the winners. Find ways every month to celebrate improvement. Could be a metrics jump, a KPI improvement, skill gains, CSAT ratings…you get it.

A final word of advice: over-correct. My first Sales Director job came on the heels of me launching a training department. There was no other sales leader as dedicated to developing people as I was. It still took me 6 months in the new gig to start talking about and prioritizing training. So I get how hard it is and how busy everyone is and how many emergencies keep coaching at the bottom of the to-do list. So, if it’s your goal, you’ll need to triple down to shift the pendulum. Dedicate six months to overdoing it. Talk about it in every team meeting and all-hands. Drop into coaching sessions and coach the coaches. Reward top coaches and rep improvements. Add it to contests. Ask your manager for skill trends in every meeting. Spend money on sales manager training. Be sure it is OVER represented in your calendar, your budget, and your voice for long enough that your team knows it isn’t a flavor of the month.

Got a tip? Drop me a line and let me know what’s worked for you! lb@factor8.com.

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Coaching Culture

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Do I Have A Coaching Culture?

Last week, I got an email from an old friend and colleague. Together we launched the inside sales team in EMEA for SAP, and we’ve stayed in touch and had a few beers when I’m overseas – you know the drill. 

He emailed and asked, “How will I know when I have a true coaching culture?”

Love this question. Wish more leaders would ask it! Well, I instantly started forming a little “Cosmo quiz” in my head. Take it for me and let me know how you scored – even better, see if you can add a question!

If you’re not making the top half, click here to get a replay of my recent webinar with the Sales Management Association. 

Do I have a Coaching Culture? 
  1. I see managers prioritizing coaching sessions over other tasks and meetings
  2. I see reps asking for more coaching
  3. Managers can recite skills trends, like what newbies struggle with most 
  4. Training opportunities are offered abundantly at all levels
  5. I see new strategies being implemented smoothly and quickly (e.g. we all need to do XYZ on calls)
  6. We have libraries of different kinds of recorded calls available
  7. Reps feel comfortable having a third person in the room/call observing coaching 
  8. Everyone shares the same understanding of what “good” looks like on calls 
  9. Leaders regularly talk about coaching, rep development, and manager skills 
  10. Managers coach after the call, not during

Scoring
(you know I’m making this up, right?)

  • Yes = add 2 points 
  • Sometimes = add 1 point
  • Heck no = subtract 2 points

20 Points: Seriously impressive. If you don’t already have conversational intelligence tools like Chorus, Gong, or ExecVision, your team is worth the investment! You may even be ready to integrate sales skill and coaching scores into balanced scorecards, rep and manager reward & compensation. Chances are, you have more than 55% of your floor hitting quota. Advertise your coaching culture in job postings and keep nurturing it with your leaders and managers. 

12-19 Points: You, my friend, are middle of the pack. Chances are you come up average in floor quota attainment (about 55%), have some managers who are great at it, and plenty of reps who resist it. You may have great intent but be lacking in execution. There’s never really a coaching emergency, is there? Watch the webinar recording and pay special attention to strategy and process tips.

5-11 Points: In a sea of struggle, I’m sorry to say you’re rock bottom. I’m willing to bet there are more issues than coaching with the culture and you’re struggling with high turnover and “whack a mole” management. When we struggle to make the number, a focus on development never tops the priority list. Keep the resume updated, because it will be harder and harder to keep and attract talent.

So what IS a coaching culture? It’s hard to define, isn’t it?

Culture is how an organization feels when you visit it or are a part of it. It’s the company’s personality, right? I think culture is made up of pace (Factor 8 = super fast), formality (super informal), focus (results), attitude (an underdog with confidence) and language choice (you can probably guess, we’re not afraid of the F word at Factor 8).

Most leaders think culture is shaped by company values. To those leaders, I share the quote by Grunter and Whitaker:

“The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” 

Think of your top rep, your worst manager, the lazy guy in the next department. They show what is acceptable – it’s the bottom of the grading curve that shows where the curve really is. This is impactful.

Yes, the top of the curve matters too! But I can cite too many examples of top performers bending rules or operating in ethical gray areas. Can you? Is that tolerated where you are? Encouraged? Maybe even accidentally celebrated?

The thing about a coaching culture is that it implies all the feel-good areas of human performance, not necessarily hard numbers. To me, a coaching culture implies:

  1. A focus on skill development (is training provided?)
  2. Improvement over perfection (is failure celebrated?)
  3. An openness to give and receive feedback (does this happen at all levels?)
  4. A prioritization of people and their career development (are career paths defined?)

Implementing a conversational intelligence tool does not a culture create. In fact, I’ve seen it make cultures worse. Leaders used technology meant to aid development for compliance over coaching and “caught” reps who didn’t say required phrases. Ouch.

Right now, this is more important than ever. The generations we’re hiring have three top priorities:

  1. Opportunities for development
  2. Opportunities for advancement
  3. Access to leadership

Coaching helps check all three of these boxes, and if your team’s boxes aren’t being checked there are plenty of revenue jobs available right now. Attract and keep great talent with a coaching culture.

Want more tips on creating a coaching culture?

Fill out the form below to watch the recording from
our recent session on“Creating a Coaching Culture”

inside sales call coaching

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Why Is Inside Sales Call Coaching Failing?

Call coaching has been ranked as sales managers’ #1 worst skill, according to the Sales Executive Council. Surprised? Me neither. Harsh, but fair.

According to data from Objective Management Group, only 7% of sales managers are capable of coaching their team. This is especially disappointing when you keep in mind that coaching salespeople at least 3 hours a month yields an average of 7% over the goal.

I struggle with inside sales call coaching myself. Why? Because it’s just so much easier to take over the call myself. Are you with me?

Here are some quick tips to help former sellers who are struggling to transition to a coaching role.

Your Inside Sales Call Coaching Isn’t Working. Here’s Why:

Sales management is THE busiest job in the world.

The line at the desk, backlog of emails, and cacophony of instant messages are real. Our best-laid plans go by the wayside as we attack the latest fire, and we take a reluctant loss in the coaching arena.

That means missed sessions, rushed sessions, and I-never-bothered-to-schedule-it sessions. So before we even attempt to execute good coaching, we’re upside down because reps come into our sessions feeling neglected.

Don’t buy it? Check out the study by ExecVision and The Bridge Group that cited managers report nearly 2x the coaching time that reps do!

The majority of call coaching that is happening is informal.

Think about your company’s own processes for a minute.

  • Do you have a call coaching guide?
  • Do you have a call coaching framework that’s mapped to the customer’s journey?
  • Do you have set call coaching appointments, and keep those promises?
  • Do you have a trend analysis where you can see how people are improving their skills?
  • Do you have clear, firm expectations about reps showing up and showing improvement?

According to the trends we’ve seen in the call coaching sphere, most likely the answer is “no.” Don’t sweat it. I’ve literally NEVER seen a team that answers “Yes” to all of the above. And yet it’s this level of rigor that is required to get the big, silver-bullet-level lift of sales results.

A best-in-class inside sales call coaching program can lead to a 10-60 percent increase in quota attainment (CSO Insights). Quite a swing in the results there. I unpack these stats a little bit more in an article for Selling Power.

All of the items above are components of a more formal coaching process that uses best practices. Accomplishing this in the real world will require support from a high-level sales leader:

  • A strategy team
  • Input from multiple support departments, like Customer Success, Quality, Training, and Marketing
  • Process documentation
  • External training resources
  • Follow-up – lots of it!

We just never learned how to call coach.

Truth: Great sellers are crappy coaches. Unless you study coaching techniques, take some skills training, adopt a meeting methodology, and get regular feedback, you’re probably making at least one of the insanely common (but sadly soul-crushing) coaching boo-boos we see daily.

And because we’re not experts, most of us wind up DEAL coaching, not REP coaching.  The result is that reps leave call coaching sessions feeling like crap or confused. Instead, they should walk out feeling like a freaking superhero. (You and I know that confidence sells.)

So now that we’ve convinced you that call coaching is a losing battle, please step back from that ledge. We should still try.

New call-to-action

At Factor 8, we teach The COACHN℠ Model for sales coaching success.

Here’s what it looks like:

1. Clarify Expectations

This is as simple as starting the meeting by saying, “We’re going to start a formal call coaching program where we’ll listen to some calls and talk about it.” Or, kick-off meetings by recapping what you went over last time, and outlining what you want to get out of the session today.

2. Observe Behavior

This is the step where you actually give your opinion to the rep.

One simple formula to avoiding hurt feelings is saying, “I heard you did this on the call, and it seems like the outcome was this.” Keep it factual and nonpersonal.

3. Ask Questions

Ask at least five questions during the call coaching section.

The goal here is self-discovery for reps. The more they have time to answer questions the more the light bulb will go off and they’ll start learning things on their own. This doesn’t happen as readily when managers are simply telling reps what to do.

4. Commit

Wrap up the call with takeaways for your reps to work on before your next coaching session. Reference one of the questions they answered before, saying, “I really loved your suggestion; why don’t we work on that for next time?”

5. How Can I Help?

Offer your help! This can seem awkward at times, but there are some great ways to do it.

Try it by using one of these lines:

  • “Why don’t we role-play right now?”
  • “Do you want to give it a try?”
  • “Would you like me to review some more calls?”

This lets reps know that you care and are dedicated to their success.

6. Next Steps?

Assign tasks for your reps to practice before the next meeting.

Be sure to set them up for success by telling them exactly what you’d like to see. Here’s an example: “Send me three calls during which you think you put this into practice really well, and we’ll review next time.”

Stick With It!

Following The COACHN℠ Model reminds me to do all the important parts. Most important among those is asking questions and getting commitments.

Please note: Nowhere in this model did we say, “Here’s how I used to do it” or “Use this script!” Call coaching is tough. I hope these tips were fun and easy to implement. We’ll keep talking about this and how we can improve our techniques. Smart sales managers don’t give up on-call coaching.

Make a goal to get better at this each year. Buy some books or check out some on-site or online training like The Sales Bar to help you get there.

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How to Be a Good Virtual Sales Coach-01

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How to Be a Good Virtual Sales Coach

Coaching is a tough skill for most sales managers. But if you’re used to being in the office and are now managing a virtual sales team, you have some added hurdles. These tips are for you.

(Be sure to keep scrolling to hear my manager coaching tips at the bottom of this article)

#1 – Clearly Define Coaching.

In sales, we use the term coaching too often. We mean it for leaders who use a question-based or learning-based approach. The helpers and askers vs. the domineering tellers. Coaching as a style is different from dedicated rep, skill, or call coaching. When we clearly define when we’re doing sales coaching vs. our regular role of answering questions, running a huddle, or doing a 1:1, it’s easier to identify when to activate coaching skills.

#2 – Dedicate Time for Coaching.

When we were in the office, we could “drive-by coach” when we heard sales reps on the phone doing the good, the bad, and the ugly on calls. Now we need a dedicated hour with each rep one to four times per month. How often, exactly? Coach new reps and “B” reps at least twice a month. Prioritize your “A” and “C” reps next, with the “D” reps coming in last. Beware, focusing on the squeaky wheel!

#3 – Leverage Recordings.

If you don’t have call recording in place, prioritize it now. It will cut the time required for coaching by more than half. Have reps find their own recordings for coaching, mark them, and bring them to the call coaching session.

Listen to an example of a great call coaching session right here. 

#4 – Coach the Rep, Not the Deal.

If you reframe coaching into time to build your reps’ skills, their engagement, and your relationship with them instead of winning deals, you’ll be on the right side of call coaching and have higher-quality interactions and outcomes.

#5 – Use Video.

Zoom works best for playing call recordings. Listen to the call, then do the call coaching. Using video will allow you to connect with the rep, gauge their facial expressions, and have a “face-to-face” conversation where you’re building rapport, not just skills. 

#6 – Rinse and Repeat.

Schedule recurring meetings so you can keep the conversation going. We have a new BDR on the team who gets coached 2-3 times every week. We work on 1-2 skills at a time until we have it mastered and then we move on.

#7 – Use a Standard Model and/or Tool.

If you don’t have a great coaching tool like Ambition, ExecVision, Chorus, or Gong that keeps you aligned to a scorecard and standard of what “good” looks like, create your own scorecard and model. Go nuts and do it with a few managers, if you have access. For every rep skill we teach in The Sales Bar we include a mini Q&A scoring form and coaching questions. We also teach the COACHN℠ model – a standard approach to every coaching interaction that helps things become routine and easier.

DOWNLOAD: The COACHN℠ Model

#8 – Get Some Skill Training.

You know I sell training right?! Seriously, the number one most difficult skill to train sales managers is call coaching. So get some help deciding what to coach, how to coach, who to coach how often. Build some confidence in your ability to coach (remote or face-to-face) and you’ll look forward to it much more. Funny how it will get prioritized that way.

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