How to Create a Coaching Culture [“Sales Shot” Workshop]
How to Create a Coaching Culture
[“Sales Shot” Workshop]
[“Sales Shot” Workshop]
Whether it’s a talent-driven market or an economic downturn, we need to offer more than our competition to retain our best employees and keep them engaged and motivated through good (and bad) times. Companies and teams with a coaching culture are known to achieve higher quotas and lower attrition rates. After all, if you help your employees become successful at work and they’ll keep coming back!
You’ll hear from leaders at some of the most employee-centric organizations on how they’ve achieved a coaching culture and why it’s crucial to employee retention.
During this panel discussion, you’ll hear:
Whether it’s a talent-driven market or an economic downturn, we need to offer more than our competition to retain our best employees and keep them engaged and motivated through good (and bad) times. Companies and teams with a coaching culture are known to achieve higher quotas and lower attrition rates. After all, if you help your employees become successful at work and they’ll keep coming back!
You’ll hear from leaders at some of the most employee-centric organizations on how they’ve achieved a coaching culture and why it’s crucial to employee retention.
During this panel discussion, you’ll hear:
Jennifer Devins Empathetic Management, Remote Leadership, Sales Leadership Insight, Sales Rep Tips, Sales Manager Life Savers, Coaching, Prospecting, Team Engagement + Culture, Team Performance + Confidence, Strategy + Planning
Regardless of the industry you’re in, there’s no escaping the dreaded R-word: Recession.
Some industries might be struggling more than others (over 58,000 tech workers have been laid off since 2023), and those ‘other’ industries might not even be feeling the effects at all. But the bottom line is: you never know when you might be impacted by a recession or by the mitigating factors in a nervous and challenging economy.
Whether you’re in the thick of it or preparing for the worst, if you’re in sales the good news is you’ve got plenty of ways to protect the pipeline you’ve built and keep building on strong momentum.
Factor 8 Founder Lauren Bailey recently chatted with Doug Landis – advisor to the biggest and brightest SaaS startups and current Growth Partner at Emergence Capital, and Zach Miller – a 20-year enterprise-selling veteran and Vice President of Sales at Highspot. Together they compiled essential tips for both reps and managers to keep building pipeline, continue selling, and boost company culture and morale during an economic downturn.
WATCH: How To Build Pipeline And Keep Selling During A Recession
Spoiler alert: DON’T wait to implement these or fall into the analysis paralysis trap! Vigorous execution of these strategies ASAP is the best way to get ahead.
If you’re a rep, the likelihood of the CFO getting involved in your sale just got higher. They’re often now the ones making the final decisions when it comes to implementing new tools and products and adding it to their existing budget. You may also want to get comfortable selling to procurement.
Don’t wait around for your managers to offer you more development, ask for it! If you’ve got goals you want to accomplish or skills you want to learn, do some of your own research first. Find the people who know what you want to know and utilize existing resources. Don’t make excuses to your own success – get out there and make it happen!
DOWNLOAD: Essential Virtual Selling Tips Guide
It might sound counterintuitive – but how many times do you think a decision maker has heard about all the money they’ll save if they just invest in [x] product? Probably about over a billion dollars worth! Finding ways to surpass the ROI and value your product adds by highlighting what they’re missing is the A+ solution right now.
Example: If you don’t buy today, you risk losing out on $100,000 a quarter.
(Looking for more tips on virtual selling? Factor 8 can provide the training and resources you need to excel. Learn more about our training and coaching services here. )
As a leader, it’s important you have a pulse on your reps’ activity without micromanaging. Both of you are in a critical atmosphere right now when it comes to sales – so make sure you aren’t waiting until there’s a problem or all hands are needed on deck before getting involved. Mitigating risk is important on both sides of the transaction!
What’s the one thing you still have full control over? Your time! This is your best resource to utilize and protect. You may be inundated with “fire drills” from your reps – but making sure to prioritize and block off your schedule is still a crucial part of ensuring responsibilities are front and center.
READ MORE: Top 8 Sales Management Productivity Hacks
Quota is probably not the best way to motivate your reps right now if things are tight. So what can you do to keep culture motivated and morale high? Rethink your incentive structures! Shift from focusing on closed business to most leads, highest number of calls, or celebrate the smaller wins that might have previously been overlooked. When employees feel successful, they’ll also feel good about going back to work.
READ: Creative Tips for Rewarding Top-Performing Sales Reps
Remember: the economy is cyclical, so this downward turn isn’t forever. If you’re having a tough time adjusting to the new normal, take a deep breath and remind yourself this is a great opportunity to invest time into your personal training, building pipeline, and preparing for when business is back to booming. You’ll be ready!
Struggling to maintain your schedule? Do you want to take your team to the next level? Check out our Virtual Sales Manager Training Bootcamps.
[“Sales Shot” Workshop]
We know how tough it is to find great salespeople, so the smart leaders are asking a better question, “How do we keep our reps?” The bottom line is always the relationship between an employee and their manager. So what does the ultimate Sales Rep to Sales Manager relationship look like? Gallup reports that reps with great relationships won’t leave a company unless they’re offered over a 20% higher salary.
Watch this uber informative session to learn 10 things you can do ASAP to boost the relationship with your reps (and reps with their managers!). We’ll hear from in-demand sellers and award-winning leaders so we can beat the Great Resignation by keeping talent longer, loving our jobs, and all making more commission.
We know how tough it is to find great salespeople, so the smart leaders are asking a better question, “How do we keep our reps?” The bottom line is always the relationship between an employee and their manager. So what does the ultimate Sales Rep to Sales Manager relationship look like? Gallup reports that reps with great relationships won’t leave a company unless they’re offered over a 20% higher salary.
Watch this uber informative session to learn 10 things you can do ASAP to boost the relationship with your reps (and reps with their managers!). We’ll hear from in-demand sellers and award-winning leaders so we can beat the Great Resignation by keeping talent longer, loving our jobs, and all making more commission.
Lauren Bailey Sales Manager Life Savers, Coaching, Time Management, New Managers Tips, Manager Meetings
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:
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!
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.
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.
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
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:
“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…
OR
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!”
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.
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:
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.
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!
Join one of our upcoming Virtual Sales Management Boot Camps! We offer 3 different classes for new, aspiring, and seasoned Sales Managers. Our Boot Camps cover the most important aspects of a sales management position, like running a successful 1:1, time management and productivity, having difficult conversations, call coaching, and more!
[“Sales Shot” Workshop Recording]
Whether you’re a current sales manager craving more training, a sales rep who aspires to lead, or a leader who wants to know the secret to turning their best reps into great managers, watch this informative workshop to learn:
Plus, many more tips straight out of our Sales Bar. There’s a management tip or two for everyone!
Whether you’re a current sales manager craving more training, a sales rep who aspires to lead, or a leader who wants to know the secret to turning their best reps into great managers, watch this informative workshop to learn:
Plus, many more tips straight out of our Sales Bar. There’s a management tip or two for everyone!
Lauren Bailey Sales Manager Life Savers, Coaching
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 millennial and gen Z’s 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:
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:
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:
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. 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 over-doing 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 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.
Fill out the form below to watch the recording from
our recent session on“Creating a Coaching Culture” for more tips.
[Cheat Sheet]
Why? Because coaching, like any other skill, needs to be practiced. Since managers’ schedules are filled with daily fires, full inboxes, and a flurry of Slack messages, it’s easy for coaching to fall out of focus.
We spoke with various sales leaders who foster a coaching culture to understand how they shifted the focus away from daily distractions and back to coaching. Here are their top 20 tips to help increase sales coaching focus in the workplace.
Why? Because coaching, like any other skill, needs to be practiced. Since managers’ schedules are filled with daily fires, full inboxes, and a flurry of Slack messages, it’s easy for coaching to fall out of focus.
We spoke with various sales leaders who foster a coaching culture to understand how they shifted the focus away from daily distractions and back to coaching. Here are their top 20 tips to help increase sales coaching focus in the workplace.
We all know that we need more and better call coaching – that it can lead to big leaps in quota attainment, improve rep engagement AND leap tall buildings in single bounds. So why don’t we hear any real-life success stories? Why can’t your team find the time? Why are your top managers still avoiding it? And why are our teams still averaging 60% to quota? Because call coaching is HARD!
In this session, we’re breaking down the top 5 things both reps and managers need to prepare before each coaching session and how to ensure every coaching session is productive and efficient.
Bonus: You’ll also gain access to 2 helpful worksheets to help improve call coaching session prep!
We all know that we need more and better call coaching – that it can lead to big leaps in quota attainment, improve rep engagement AND leap tall buildings in single bounds. So why don’t we hear any real-life success stories? Why can’t your team find the time? Why are your top managers still avoiding it? And why are our teams still averaging 60% to quota? Because call coaching is HARD!
In this session, we’re breaking down the top 5 things both reps and managers need to prepare before each coaching session and how to ensure every coaching session is productive and efficient.
Bonus: You’ll also gain access to 2 helpful worksheets to help improve call coaching session prep!
[Cheat Sheet]
Research shows effective sales coaching has a dramatic impact on overall performance. It raises the percentage of successful salespeople in the sales force, enhances salesperson engagement and retention, and improves overall sales productivity, but many firms do not coach salespeople enough – and when they do, do not coach well. We’re here to help!
Download our FREE coaching cheat sheets to help improve your coaching sessions. Here’s what you’re getting:
Research shows effective sales coaching has a dramatic impact on overall performance. It raises the percentage of successful salespeople in the sales force, enhances salesperson engagement and retention, and improves overall sales productivity, but many firms do not coach salespeople enough – and when they do, do not coach well. We’re here to help!
Download our FREE coaching cheat sheets to help improve your coaching sessions. Here’s what you’re getting:
[Webinar Recording]
The current sales environment is more complex and challenging than ever, which means reps need to be onboarded quickly so they can start selling faster.
Sales managers need streamlined processes to deliver effective training and coaching, and they need guidance on who and when to promote in their sales ranks.
In this session, Ted Martin, Chief Revenue Officer at Factor 8, joined Jake Miller, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Allego to discuss best practices for keeping your sales team focused, engaged, and determined to hit their target. This includes knowing which KPIs and skills to watch for when determining whether to promote a rep or give feedback.
Bonus: You’ll also gain access to 4 uber helpful cheat sheets to help you determine which reps should be promoted, what skills reps need to earn a promotion to management, what new sales reps want from their employer, and what skills new managers need to learn to thrive!
The current sales environment is more complex and challenging than ever, which means reps need to be onboarded quickly so they can start selling faster.
Sales managers need streamlined processes to deliver effective training and coaching, and they need guidance on who and when to promote in their sales ranks.
In this session, Ted Martin, Chief Revenue Officer at Factor 8, joined Jake Miller, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Allego to discuss best practices for keeping your sales team focused, engaged, and determined to hit their target. This includes knowing which KPIs and skills to watch for when determining whether to promote a rep or give feedback.
Bonus: You’ll also gain access to 4 uber helpful cheat sheets to help you determine which reps should be promoted, what skills reps need to earn a promotion to management, what new sales reps want from their employer, and what skills new managers need to learn to thrive!