Build a top-performing sales team FAST. Get the skills, tools, and training strategies to grow top reps and future leaders.
Building a Top-Performing Sales Team [Webinar]
April 10th, 2025
DEVELOP A SUPERSTAR SALES TEAM
What separates your best reps from the rest? And more importantly, how do you develop more of them?
Join us on April 10th at 1 pm EST to find out what it takes to build a top-performing sales team.
You’ll hear firsthand from Factor 8 Founder, Lauren Bailey, and Sr. AE at Allego, Devyn Blume, as they share the skills, tools, and strategies that drive reps to become top performers. Together, they’ll share the key skills revenue and enablement leaders need to develop high-achieving reps and future sales managers.
You’ll learn the critical skills to:
Develop top-performing sales reps
Equip your team with the right tools and training
Train reps on the must-have skills for long-term success
Prepare top reps to become great sales managers
This session is for Revenue & Enablement Leaders who strive to build a high-performing sales team.
Register below!
DEVELOP A SUPERSTAR SALES TEAM
What separates your best reps from the rest? And more importantly, how do you develop more of them?
Join us on April 10th at 1 pm EST to find out what it takes to build a top-performing sales team.
You’ll hear firsthand from Factor 8 Founder, Lauren Bailey, and Sr. AE at Allego, Devyn Blume, as they share the skills, tools, and strategies that drive reps to become top performers. Together, they’ll share the key skills revenue and enablement leaders need to develop high-achieving reps and future sales managers.
You’ll learn the critical skills to:
Develop top-performing sales reps
Equip your team with the right tools and training
Train reps on the must-have skills for long-term success
Prepare top reps to become great sales managers
This session is for Revenue & Enablement Leaders who strive to build a high-performing sales team.
Lauren Bailey, known to many as “LB”, is a sales leader, enablement leader, and entrepreneur and founder of 3 successful brands: Factor 8, providing front-line job training for inside sellers and managers, The Sales Bar, a subscription-based virtual sales training platform, and #GirlsClub, a community and development program helping more women earn leadership positions in sales.
Her mission is to change lives by supercharging people’s careers and helping them love coming to work. When we feel confident and successful at work, everything is better, right? Known on the speaker circuit for her “No B.S.” style and spunk, look for LB to make you laugh, keep things moving quickly, and help you take immediate action with her tactical tips and insights.
Devyn is a Sr. Account Executive at Allego with 8 years of experience in sales, specializing in consultative selling and client relationship management. Throughout her career she has excelled in driving revenue growth, building strong customer partnerships, and leveraging sales technologies to streamline processes.
At Allego, Devyn focuses on delivering innovative sales enablement solutions, helping teams optimize training, onboarding, and content sharing. With expertise spanning multiple industries, she is a trusted advisor to clients seeking to enhance sales performance through technology-driven solutions.
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View our live Sales Shot webinar schedule and register for upcoming events below.
Sales Manager Fears, Fails, and Fixes: Fast Actions to Prevent Burnout & Failure!
[Video Recording]
Fast Ways to Help Sales Managers Thrive
Each year we work with hundreds of front-line revenue warriors, and they tell us their secrets (😱). Come learn the 3 Fs of your sales management team:
FEARS they have you probably don’t know.
FAILS they’re making right now and how to prevent them.
FIXES they want from you but aren’t asking for.
Tiny fixes, easy questions, and small investments that will lead to better team performance quickly and PREVENT BURNOUT (LinkedIn recently reported nearly 50% of Sales managers are burnout!)
This session is JAM-PACKED with insights, low-cost/no-cost tips you can enact TODAY, and tactics for helping your sales managers survive the grind, thrive on the job, and get better results!
MUST-WATCH for all Sales Leaders – Sales Directors, Enablement Leaders, and Sales Managers!
Watch the video replay!
Fast Ways to Help Sales Managers Thrive
Each year we work with hundreds of front-line revenue warriors, and they tell us their secrets (😱). Come learn the 3 Fs of your sales management team:
FEARS they have you probably don’t know.
FAILS they’re making right now and how to prevent them.
FIXES they want from you but aren’t asking for.
Tiny fixes, easy questions, and small investments that will lead to better team performance quickly and PREVENT BURNOUT (LinkedIn recently reported nearly 50% of Sales managers are burnout!)
This session is JAM-PACKED with insights, low-cost/no-cost tips you can enact TODAY, and tactics for helping your sales managers survive the grind, thrive on the job, and get better results!
MUST-WATCH for all Sales Leaders – Sales Directors, Enablement Leaders, and Sales Managers!
10 Tips to Prevent Sales Manager Burnout [Checklist]
Top Tips to Save Your Sales Managers
Sales management is one of the most stressful roles in sales (if not the most stressful). To make matters worse, many managers are promoted without leadership training, leaving them unprepared for the demands of the job. This leads to a lack of confidence, increased stress, and, all too often, burnout. In fact, 60% of new managers fail within their first two years.
If you’re noticing burnout among your managers, download our checklist for 10 actionable ways to better support them and help them succeed in their roles!
Download Cheat Sheet
Top Tips to Save Your Sales Managers
Sales management is one of the most stressful roles in sales (if not the most stressful). To make matters worse, many managers are promoted without leadership training, leaving them unprepared for the demands of the job. This leads to a lack of confidence, increased stress, and, all too often, burnout. In fact, 60% of new managers fail within their first two years.
If you’re noticing burnout among your managers, download our checklist for 10 actionable ways to better support them and help them succeed in their roles!
Sales Management is a tough gig. Virtual sales management is tougher. Like our sales teams struggle to sell “with an arm and leg tied behind their back” with the exclusion of visual cues, difficulty reaching customers/prospects, and having drastically limited selling time, these same challenges (and more) affect managers. Especially newer leaders.
In my first few years of sales management, I relied heavily on the visual cues of how my colleagues managed their teams. I saw huddles happening (“Oh, I should do that.”) I overheard team meetings and coaching sessions (“Wow, I need to give that kind of advice”) and I picked up deal strategy and day management skills.
Until we’re tenured leaders of sales teams, we don’t have our management cadence locked in. The cadence is our management process – the series of meetings, touchpoints, and actions we take in a day, month, and quarter to keep our business on track. In fact, I dare say most sales managers spend their first year or two bouncing between requests, fires, and demands.
It’s natural to be reactive in our high-demand, fast-paced environment. There’s a line at our desk, in our email inbox, and in our assignments from above. Without these, we’d wander a bit aimlessly trying to figure out our jobs as we transition from individual contributor/seller to leader. It’s why so many leaders struggle to give up the deal, the customer base, the live sales calls – we know this world! We RULE this world!
And herein lies the rub. Now that we’re managing virtually, we need a proactive approach. We need to shortcut the learning curve and have a plan – one that includes the challenge of not seeing who’s in their seat, overhearing the calls, and picking up on the team dynamic. Rough.
To speed this process, and alleviate some stress along the way, let me share a few key tips:
1. Establish (and edit) your proactive management cadence immediately. We teach this in “Essential Manager Meetings” (a course in The Sales Bar) and it’s one of our first courses for all new managers. At a minimum, your cadence needs to include:
Multiple weekly sales huddles to provide focus, inspiration, energy, and insight
Monthly private 1:1 performance meetings with each team member
Multiple 1:1 to 3:1 call/skill coaching sessions with each team member monthly
Multiple team forecast meetings (frequency depending on sales cycle)
Monthly team meetings for updates, development, communication, connection
Where do you find the time for all these meetings? By pushing the daily incoming demand to one of these meetings. Rep Slacking you with a “great call update?” Push it to your morning huddle or your next call coaching. Rep forecasting below goal? Schedule an ad-hoc sales strategy meeting to review deals. Getting lots of emails with company questions? Move forward the team meeting and address them together.
We set the process and then we daily teach our reps to operate within it by delegating, pushing, and scheduling “official” meeting time vs. reacting all day. That makes time management a critical management skill…
2. Own Your Day (another course in The Sales Bar). Especially now that we’re at home, it’s way too easy to work 12 hour days (or the opposite for some). The line at your desk is now your chat. Email is center screen all day. It’s harder than ever to stay proactive and protect our rep-focused parts of the day. We have to schedule it, and then protect it. Our top priorities also get calendar time and we protect them like our most important meetings of the day.
We love the Eisenhower Matrix (everyone’s favorite part of this course) to help managers decide when to fire drill, when to delegate, when to schedule, and when to trash a request. When you’re in charge of your own day, you can help reps be in charge of theirs – so critical for virtual selling.
3. Call Coaching. When we’re virtual, the tendency is to count heavily on the numbers. If we can’t hear the calls and watch the behavior, we watch what we can – the metrics. This is a mistake. Especially now that your reps are selling a new way, focus on quality over quantity. That means it’s time to get visibility. If you don’t have call recording capabilities, start lobbying for it now. ExecVision, Chorus, and Gong make it easy to be legal and to get the insight you need into rep conversations + the tools to coach them.
Scheduled call coaching using recordings or ride-along meetings are critical. It’s going to be tougher than ever to make it happen (hence the first two points), so give this to your reps. When your calendar is up to date, they know when you are free and it’s on them to invite you to 1-2 calls/week.
Sales skill feedback also has some new priorities right now. Field sellers gone virtual will need some help and focus on phone detective skills – working phone systems, making multiple attempts, capturing new contacts, qualifying accounts – honestly some of the basic skills covered for new BDRs. They may not LOVE the idea of getting entry-level phone skills training, but these are tools they need in their belt today – and tomorrow.
Phone sellers now struggle with video. They need your feedback on the basics like backgrounds, lighting, proper attire, and etiquette. We’ve all seen the fails – those are on us as their managers. Check out our course Running a Virtual Sales Meeting in The Sales Bar for basics on virtual meeting agendas, engagement, and online tools use.
The key is that they get the coaching and support regularly and you build it into a regularly scheduled meeting as part of your cadence.
My entire team – including the sales team – has been virtual since inception. Our BDR is new and gets call coaching every Tuesday and Thursday for 45 minutes at 9 a.m. She brings the call recording to support what we coached last time and before it’s over there’s a commitment to what we’re coaching next time. The coaching is done over video so we can see faces and reactions and expressions – this is a personal development moment, and it helps us connect.
Remember, a connection to the boss is critical for every employee. Call coaching is about helping develop reps skills (not close deals) as much as it is about increasing our team’s engagement with us and with the company – and there is nothing more important for retention. Coaching is bonding 1:1 time and your team needs this attention from you, even more, when we’re virtual.
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I’m writing this blog at 9 am tucked into bed with the flu. I started to write it at 7:15 am, but decided on OJ and an episode of American Housewife instead.
In the 45 minutes I procrastinated, I received 74 emails. WHAT?!
Please be clear that I counted the new emails, scanned briefly, and then shut Outlook. Why? Because if I didn’t this article wouldn’t get written this morning – probably not even by end of day. And because if someone really needed me there are at least 3 faster ways they can get a hold of me.
Email is the new snail mail. It’s where un-urgent requests, FYIs, and sales pitches belong, and if you aren’t treating it that way you and your organization could be wasting precious time. Yes, you get enough emails to keep you busy 4-6 hours/day, and if you ignore them all the time they will pile up (you make good points my dear sweet email lover). Alternatively, answering other people’s requests is probably not the most important part of your job, is it?
Our completely normal instinct to deal with something simple that’s in our line of sight is prioritizing other people’s to-do lists over our own.
Here are a few best practices and time-saving tips to take back your day:
Get rid of email alerts. Immediately. If we can agree that email is NOT where urgent items live (read: it has an imminent deadline), then quit interrupting your current screen with them. Every time the pop-up happens, a part of your brain goes down the rabbit hole until it finally just can’t resist a quick alt-tab to email to take care of it. It only takes a minute, right? Sure! Until you see the next one and the next one…it’s like trying to eat just one handful of popcorn at the movies. Impossible. If we could resist we wouldn’t be in our inbox right now. Kill the alerts. Be present in your current task instead.
Designate a time for email. There, that may feel better to my GMail addicted friends. 🙂 I do email once a day at the end of the day. True, my assistant cleans it out for me in the morning, so I’m cheating just a little bit. Carve out two hours/day, put it on your calendar, and be strong. It only hurts for a couple of days. You’re not ignoring. You’re prioritizing. You were hired to coach, strategize, lead…not to type.
Set communication expectations with your team. Have a conversation about what you consider urgent and important tasks and requests. Agree on what task/topic requires an instant message, text, phone, call, drop by, or email. Help team members know when you want to be CC’ed and when you don’t (there’s 50 less per day for you) and help them understand that if they email, they can expect a reply in 2-3 business days. If you choose to reprimand them for “bumping their email to the top” and sending you emails about their emails, that one is up to you. It may also be a great time to let them know when you’ll be doing meetings, coaching, and other activities that may not be interrupted with a minor customer issue or system question.
Assess in a week. Getting more done? Finding times where you wonder what you should be doing? Getting more rep coaching done? These are good signs. If you find you’ve chewed off your nails and you’re staying at work late to do all the email, your addiction is more serious and I’m sorry for recommending this cold turkey. Try some of these gentler adjustments instead:
Start the day by cleaning out emails – just book your first meeting within an hour so it doesn’t go long
Try an email cleaner like Unroll.me that will aggregate your junk mail
Consider delegating – if you’re on email alerts, groups, etc. for leads or training, perhaps someone on your team could monitor these and bring hot topics to a team meeting
Eat lunch at your desk once or twice a week and take the extra hour to respond during that time
Find one email/day your can unsubscribe or junk
I cordially invite you to try several of these time-saving tips and join me in the sweet, sweet freedom of being released from email jail. Looking for more ways to get sales management tasks done in less time? This was one of over twenty hacks in our top-rated sales manager course “Own Your Day”, which is now available on-demand at The Sales Bar.
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I get it – you don’t want to come off as the “used car” sales rep and hound someone to get your deal finalized. Or maybe you’re just nervous and don’t have the full confidence to take that last step.
Let me help you out here – take a look at the graphic below of the buying funnel. Most prospects are stuck up in the top half – they’re in research mode!
When you lack the confidence to ask for the close, you’re letting them stay in an endless loop of research and evaluation without clear next steps. The reality is you should be offering clear steps on the VERY FIRST CALL to lead them into the evaluation phase.
Think about it like this: when you go to buy coffee in the morning or stop to pick up lunch, do you walk up and order? Or do you wait for someone to ask you what you want? You probably stared at the menu figuring out what to get and then someone asked if they could take your order, right? They prompted you out of your research and evaluation mode into the bottom half of the funnel!
Helping lead them into those next phases is the core of being a sales rep! It’s not pushy, and not doing it shows a lack of confidence. This is where you decide if you are a true salesperson or not.
Remember: Closing. Helps. The Buyer.
You Don’t Know How To Ask
If you’re worried it sounds too good to be true – it’s not! You can literally just ASK them questions to inch closer to the close. Okay, so the reality is that a lot of those go-to closes rely on cheesy or crappy tactics. Here are a couple good questions and statements for closing sales to steal:
Ask a Question:Did we solve the problem? Did we meet your needs? Ready to move onto the next step?
Make an Assumption:We’ll get this nailed down and start next week. When do you want to take delivery? (You’re acting like you’re already involved in the next step!)
Which pitch: Which solution is a better fit right now? Which option is a better match for budget? Do you like option A or option B?
Timeline: You mentioned wanting XYZ in place by next month – working backward we’ll need to ink the contract by next week.
Add-On: If we can get this wrapped up by the end of the month, we can throw in an extra license and a live training.
Don’t make the super embarrassing mistake of lacking customer insight and information by the time you get all the way to closing!
CSO Insights estimates that 26% of deals are actually LOST because sellers weren’t fully aligned to a buyer’s needs before closing. Save yourself the time and hassle by making sure you know these before you get to close:
What is the agreed customer goal or pain?
What is the “why” behind the buy/value to them?
What’s their budget & timeline?
What does their buying process look like?
What is their current state vs. desired state?
Are there other options/competition?
Any personal motivation here?
(Hint, if you need help coming up with a pitch that aligns with their value – check out SWIIFT℠!)
Closing is a muscle just like anything else – if you aren’t exercising it, you’re not going to know what to do with it when the time comes to use it!
You can close every single call you have with something we like to call closing for commitment.
Think about football for a second. You’ve got your first downs to lock it in – and instead of having to go all the way back, you get to start on THAT yard line. Now when you apply to this sales – even if it’s something small you’re getting a customer to make a commitment to you. That means next time you’re starting from THAT point! You’re taking up mindshare with them.
Here’s an example:
You’ll never have to ask yourself if it’s closed because you will know and you will OWN exactly what you need to do.
Can you guess the most critical stage when it comes to closing?
Gong did a study on this, and believe it or not – the qualification stage is MOST important. Close rates decline by 71% when the next steps are not covered on that first call. Plus – deals that closed the fastest spent 1.53 times MORE talking about those next steps compared to other deals.
If you have a well-defined sales process, you’re 33% more likely to close your deals (TAS Group). And if you don’t know how to gauge when that is or how it plays out – do a trial close! Try something different!
Sometimes you have to abandon your sales script, and that’s okay.
The more confident you get with closing, I promise the easier this gets. So don’t be afraid to get out there, practice, and remember that there’s a closing strategy for each and every one of those fears you might have. You got this – now go get those deals!
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Learning to be a great sales coach is hard – really hard. It’s the hardest thing we teach new managers who were formally reps. Now, it’s not as hard as climbing Mt. Everest or teaching your grandma how to order presents online, but it’s rough.
It’s the #1 skill that most new managers struggle with. If you’re a naturally phenomenal coach, congrats (seriously!), but the rest of us are struggling. Why? We don’t often know what defines great sales coaching. So let’s break it down…
The Difference Between Presenting vs. Facilitation vs. Coaching
The lines are often blurred between presenting, training, and sales coaching, especially when we don’t have staff and resources dedicated to each. Why does it matter?
Well, does this sound familiar?
“I’VE TOLD THEM 100 TIMES!!”
We’ve heard it from managers and VPs (and parents 😉 ). It’s rough, folks. If people aren’t retaining what you’re telling them to do, they obviously aren’t going to do it. So we have to back up a few steps and make sure it gets in their brain and sticks.
What is presenting?
We define presenting as…Introducing new information through speech often using slides/visual aids.
Watching a webinar? You’re listening to someone presenting. Sitting in a lecture hall in college? That’s presenting.
Now the downside to presenting is something called The Forgetting Curve. If you’re in sales enablement or training, you’ve likely heard of it. It shows us that by the end of the day, reps have lost 50% of what you taught them. In a week, they’ve lost 90%. So it’s pretty obvious why they aren’t doing what you told them to do – they can’t even remember it!
There are two ways you can beat The Forgetting Curve.
By utilizing great facilitation or training. The better (and more interactive) the training, the more likely the skills will stick. The more often reps actually do something, the more likely they’ll remember it and the more likely you’ll get results.
Through coaching. All you have to do is tell people what to do and then 1:1, 4x throughout the week, go and coach them on the same skill. You’ve got time to do that, right? 😐 Nope! That’s why good facilitation is the better option.
What is facilitation?
Folks the name of the game to get people to do what you need them to do, to get results, to get commission checks is: RECALL. They can’t do it if they can’t remember it.
In order to obtain recall, you need to have good facilitation or training. Unfortunately, most facilitation is broken. You can’t just tell someone to do something and expect them to do it perfectly, they need to practice.
Grab a sheet of paper and draw a picture of the Statue of Liberty based on memory. Assuming your side hustle isn’t as an artist, it’s probably going to look like something a child drew. Why? Well, when was the last time you drew something? Drawing is something we did a lot as a kid until other things became more exciting or interesting. We quit practicing, and when we quit practicing, our skills freeze.
For many of us, teaching is also a skill frozen in time. We think of teaching and we see ourselves sitting in a lecture hall with someone talking at us, telling us what to do. And we know that’s not how people learn.
That’s why we’ve got to redefine teaching and facilitate instead.
We define facilitation using the acronym CUP. It stands for…
C = Connect. If you want people to remember things, apply them, and do what you tell them to do, you have to help them connect with the information (it’s called Adult Learning Theory). It basically says that adults have filing cabinets in their heads. If you tell a kid something new, they’ll accept it as fact. Adults won’t even log it until you help them find the file folder. That means you’re helping them connect with it.
U = Use. Great training takes longer because we’re facilitating them actually getting their hands on it. I’ve watched people do systems training where their team is just sitting and watching. Totally hands-off, and totally a waste of time. If we want people to understand, we have to get them to use it.
P = Practice. We absolutely, positively have to practice. End of story.
By using the CUP method for facilitation, that’s how we beat The Forgetting Curve. Expect 70-80% recall. Get some buy-in along the way, a little practice and roleplay, synthesis with what they do on the job, and you’re looking at 80-90% recall. Plus, you’ll create new habits.
What is sales coaching?
Everyone does it a little differently, but a lot of people confuse sales coaching with leading, but with a few questions sprinkled in.
We define sales coaching as… Ongoing development method used by leaders using questions to inspire and deliver personal feedback on skills.
Pay attention to the bolded words. If you’re just giving people advice or there are 25 people in the room, that’s not coaching. When you’ve got a team of reps in the room, what you’re really doing is presenting.
ACTION: Go and CUP check your virtual sales training. If you’ve got a lot of videos and little practice, people aren’t doing what you tell them to do. Leaders, if you do a lot of announcing without any coaching, follow-up, or roleplays, they’re not doing what you tell them to do. And when it’s something critical like learning how to sell and be successful in new hire onboarding, you’ve got to do all 3.
If behavior change is critical, start with the 1-2-3 punch. Begin with the presentation, then facilitate, and then coach. Now, coaching alone CAN be powerful (but not how you think…)
Great coaches have 1 thing in common: they motivate people. Motivation is the key to everything. It affects recall (information + caring = recall).
Our job as managers and coaches is to ensure our reps leave our coaching sessions feeling like superheroes. That’s why we teach the 5:1 method – share 5 positives and 1 area for improvement. It’s also the #1 mistake new managers make. Why? We hear the laundry list of things that went wrong on a sales call and can’t help but tell them every single one of them.
The power of sales coaching is in the questions you ask. Said in another way:
“Leaders who ask more, get more.”
That’s why we coach in questions. It’s called “Instinctive Elaboration”. It’s the secret behind the Factor 8 SWIIFT℠ intro where we’re literally hijacking the brain of the prospect to answer our questions even if they didn’t mean to and it’s why it works to get them talking.
It works like this: how old are you?
Did a number pop in your head? Now it’s halfway out of your mouth.
The brain stops what it’s doing and starts answering questions whether it wants to or not.
Here’s more proof: how much do you weigh?
I know you didn’t want to share it, but you thought it, didn’t you? 🙂
We’ve spent years mastering the art of coaching and have compiled the best sales coaching questions ever (and they’re backed by science).
1. “Tell me about a time you had to do something similar?”
This helps them connect. Unfortunately, not all of us have the time or tech to do the CUP theory. We use a lot of video, but do videos actually teach? We don’t think so (read more about that here.)
2. “Why are you so good at this?”
You can ask this to anybody in any coaching session and something happens in the brain called “Confirmation Bias”. If you ask them a ‘why’ question, they’ll look for the reason that it’s true. This instantly boosts motivation.
3. “What happens when you knock this out of the park?”
This question builds confidence by creating mental imagery, scientifically known as “Functional Equivalence.” You’ve probably heard it with Olympic athletes where they picture themselves doing their gymnastics routine perfectly in their head and it fires the neurons as if they’re doing it. If you can get your reps to picture success, they’re more likely to achieve it.
There’s also something called the “Pygmalion Effect” which says that if your manager believes in you, you’ll believe in yourself more. Read differently:
“Leaders who expect more, get more.”
4. “What are you most proud of on that call?”
If anybody has reps that beat themselves up a little bit, this question is for you. The brain will search for an answer and find it – guaranteed.
5. “What should we do next?”
This is all about active recall; going in and finding the information in the brain. The other question we ask is “what was the customer thinking?” This is out of our head and our noise and puts ourselves into the shoes of the customer which is what we’re trying to do. It shortens ramp time, folks. Ramp time isn’t about me not knowing it, it’s about me not knowing when to use it. And if we can burn the pathways in the brain to recall the information we need at the right time, that’s how we get people to learn and apply skills faster.
6. “What one thing is most important to work on?”
You can use this in any coaching interaction anywhere and the science behind it is called “Implementation Intention.” Studies show that if you work on one thing and put a plan in place, it’s 2-3x more effective.
Coaching your team is more than just sharing information with them—it’s about really changing the way they think and act. By incorporating presenting, facilitating, and coaching, you’ll move from just talking at your team to actually sparking real behavior change.
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Why Your Sales Team Isn’t Hitting Quota (And What to Do About It)
[Video Recording]
Discover the gaps that are stopping your team from hitting quota
If you’re a sales leader who is frustrated trying to figure out why your team isn’t hitting their numbers—or why it feels like you’re constantly putting out fires—this session is for you.
Lauren Bailey and special guest Lori Richardson are here to help you crack the code on what’s really going on with your reps and managers. This webinar isn’t about fluff—it’s about diving into the hard truth: the skill gaps and missing attributes that are likely dragging down your results.
We’ll share the top strengths and gaps we’ve uncovered from assessing, evaluating, and training thousands of sales teams just like yours—and show you the skills your managers and sellers need to focus on now to turn things around FAST. You’ll have the opportunity to access real data on how your team measures up against the competition and learn where your reps and managers are falling short.
You’ll learn:
3 tough questions you need to ask to expose what’s really going wrong
How to determine where your team stacks up against other companies (from skill gaps to coachability)
Top strengths and gaps we’ve seen in reps and managers (and the must-have skills to fix them)
Why accountability is the secret sauce for improving team performance
Will vs. skill: how to make sure you’re keeping/retaining the right people
This session is all about giving you the data and insights to make smart moves for 2025. Join us if you’re ready to lead with confidence, armed with the facts and a plan to drive results.
BONUS: Get discounted team sales evaluations and access to the Factor 8 Sales Management System to get control of your rep development and enjoy time back in your day.
Watch the video replay!
Discover the gaps that are stopping your team from hitting quota
If you’re a sales leader who is frustrated trying to figure out why your team isn’t hitting their numbers—or why it feels like you’re constantly putting out fires—this session is for you.
Lauren Bailey and special guest Lori Richardson are here to help you crack the code on what’s really going on with your reps and managers. This webinar isn’t about fluff—it’s about diving into the hard truth: the skill gaps and missing attributes that are likely dragging down your results.
We’ll share the top strengths and gaps we’ve uncovered from assessing, evaluating, and training thousands of sales teams just like yours—and show you the skills your managers and sellers need to focus on now to turn things around FAST. You’ll have the opportunity to access real data on how your team measures up against the competition and learn where your reps and managers are falling short.
You’ll learn:
3 tough questions you need to ask to expose what’s really going wrong
How to determine where your team stacks up against other companies (from skill gaps to coachability)
Top strengths and gaps we’ve seen in reps and managers (and the must-have skills to fix them)
Why accountability is the secret sauce for improving team performance
Will vs. skill: how to make sure you’re keeping/retaining the right people
This session is all about giving you the data and insights to make smart moves for 2025. Join us if you’re ready to lead with confidence, armed with the facts and a plan to drive results.
BONUS: Get discounted team sales evaluations and access to the Factor 8 Sales Management System to get control of your rep development and enjoy time back in your day.
Lauren Bailey, known to many as “LB”, is a sales leader, enablement leader, and entrepreneur and founder of 3 successful brands: Factor 8, providing front-line job training for inside sellers and managers, The Sales Bar, a subscription-based virtual sales training platform, and #GirlsClub, a community and development program helping more women earn leadership positions in sales.
Lori Richardson is a sales process and leadership expert who helps mid-sized company leaders build top sales teams through the right people, processes, pipeline and leadership moves. Lori is a sales coach at Harvard Business School for their MBA students, hosts an award-winning podcast, and is author of “She Sells – Find, Hire, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales” Founder of Score More Sales, you can find her @scoremoresales on most social platforms.
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Great news. You’ve got proof of concept, found your ICP, and gotten some funding. Now it’s time to build out your BDR team.
Bad news. Once you win the war for talent, the real work of sales training begins. Since most SaaS startups aren’t hiring classes of 15 reps and a trainer, you get the task of onboarding one or two at a time. And then again. And again. And again.
Here are some sales manager tips to save your sanity when onboarding new BDRs:
Start a Google Doc now with everything they’ll need to know. Brainstorm in the following categories:
Industry acumen
Product knowledge – feature, function, benefit
Customer knowledge
Ideal customer situations
Business acumen
Competitor acumen
System logins and skills
Company info – who’s who, relevant background, etc.
Questions to uncover ideal customer situations and challenges
Call recordings to hear good, bad, and ugly calls
Phone sales skills like leaving good voicemails, intros, uncovering contacts, and delivering value props on the phone
Wherever possible, start hyperlinking to internal and external sites, videos, and resources so reps can self-serve for the info. Why go back and re-find that email 20 times?
Now identify what you can outsource. Trust me, if you try to hire, train, coach, and lead the team you will either explode or mess a few of these up in a serious way.
Buy the system training if your vendor offers it or go find free forums and videos to link to.
Sales skills are another area. Your job is to coach them, not teach them from scratch. Outsource the heavy lifting and stick to leading the team and coaching the delivery. The Sales Bar has hundreds of phone sales resources for new BDRs and Managers. They’ll also want some basic LinkedIn skills. I like Vengreso or Frontline.
Find internal experts. Use your CEO, product geeks, and past customers and get them to do a video or recorded webinar to teach key points. Keep them short and on track with some guidelines during your request; these folks typically aren’t natural trainers! And if they do it live, get it recorded, I promise they won’t be available every time. Where you can’t record, set up a lunch or coffee chat vs. a formal presentation. Get your new rep to record it, plus their notes!
Start a schedule and get your document in chronological order with about 6 hours of learning work/day to start. Make the schedule about 2 weeks long and ramp the training time down while call time goes up. So by the end of the second week, they may be doing 1-2 hours of training/day and 6 hours of work. Show that training doesn’t stop and they have some assignments every month! Bonus: show a path to the next level in their career, even if it’s just a footnote. In addition to the learning, your schedule should include:
Call shadowing with you or other reps. Bonus: have them score it using your coaching form. Side note: get a coaching form
Calls to past customers to hear their stories and happy outcomes
Research on their own – e.g. top features of competitors
Outbound calling – even if it’s just to capture contacts, qualify accounts, data cleanse, etc.
LOTS of time with you where they bring their questions, you talk shop, build a relationship, and make your newbie feel important
Hook them up with a buddy/mentor. Reps who build strong friendships at work are happier and stay longer according to Gallup. With the average lifespan of a BDR under 18 months, it’s worth the effort. Pay for their first lunch and ask them to get together weekly for the rep’s first month. If it doesn’t stick after that, you’ve at least planted some seeds. Bonus: they’ll come to you less often for their questions when they have a buddy.
This approach will help your reps be more independent while saving you at least twenty hours per rep. Each hire can help make the document better and old hires can support the new.
Make updating the document and improving it part of their work assignment so it stays current and off your to-do list.
May this also help you resist the temptation to hand your new rep a script and wish them good luck on the phone. Millennials are searching for career development and time with their boss at work, and they make their employment decisions based on this. Spend a few bucks, give them some structure, buy them some training, and you’ll see the payoff in their faster success and tenure!
Want some help onboarding new BDRs?
We’ve got your back! Contact us today to learn how you can incorporate sales training into your new BDR onboarding process to speed ramp time and improve retention.
