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 Sales Rep Tips, Lead Qualification + Follow-Up, Team Engagement + Culture, Sales Team Challenges
According to data from LinkedIn, 90 percent of sales and marketing professionals believe their strategy, processes, content, and culture are not aligned.
From our experience, that number isn’t hard to believe at all.
And it’s really frustrating to see, because organizations that don’t align marketing and sales miss out on so much potential:
So how do you get your marketing & sales teams in sync? Here are some tactics you can start implementing today to improve marketing-sales alignment.
The best way to think about marketing-sales alignment is this:
Ultimately, Marketing and Sales aren’t two separate teams. They’re one team: the Revenue team.
At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales have the same goal. They simply use different tools and tactics to get there.
Marketing-sales alignment is just an intentional, strategic agreement to work with – not against – each other. There are a number of ways this can take shape, depending on the organization:
Because every organization is different, how to prioritize and apply these tactics will depend on your specific needs and your team structure. However, no matter which approach you take, the key is to focus on building cohesion and unity among your revenue generators.
We all know that Marketing and Sales don’t always get along. They have their territories and AORs and may not like it when the other steps on their toes.
However, this tension is detrimental to an organization’s ability to grow. Here are some stats to prove it:
Why does marketing-sales alignment lead to these results? Some of the key benefits of marketing-sales alignment include the following:
Big vs. small picture
Generally, marketers look at large-scale audiences, and salespeople focus on individual prospects. Both are important for effective revenue generation. If you lose sight of the individual prospect, you’re going to start to seem out of touch. But if you focus only on a handful of people, you won’t be able to scale.
Data vs. anecdote
What do your customers want? This is a key question that every organization wants to answer, and marketers and salespeople generally use different approaches to arrive at one. Marketers rely on data, which reveals big-picture trends. Salespeople rely on individual anecdotes, which can reveal key information that may get lost in the data.
Focus your efforts
When you have Marketing and Sales working in tandem, each of them can focus their efforts on the same industries, verticals, and segments. For example, Marketing can create content that they deploy through paid ads, social media, and email. Sales can then see who engages with that content and follow up with personalized messages.
If they convert, Marketing gets attributed revenue. Sales gets warm leads. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Improve the customer experience
Marketing-sales alignment also results in a seamless experience for prospects and customers as they move from one stage of the buyer’s journey to another. You don’t want them to hear one message from marketing materials and another from a salesperson—that is jarring and reduces their trust in your organization.
So how do you know whether your marketing and sales practices are aligned (or mis-aligned)? What are some of the metrics you should be tracking?
Here are a few I’d recommend:
Another thing to keep in mind: if you’re having vastly disproportionate success or failure in one team versus the other, then that’s a big misalignment red flag. If one team is dropping the ball, that’s real opportunity you’re missing out on.
Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty: how do you improve marketing-sales alignment within your own organization? Here are six steps that will get you on the right track.
1. Get buy-in at all levels
Before everyone gets aligned, you need to get buy-in—from C-suite, to marketing and sales leadership, to the salespeople on the ground.
The best way to do this is to communicate the value: how will marketing-sales alignment help them be more successful? You can reference info shared above to help you make that case.
2. Maintain clear, open communication
Alignment doesn’t happen by accident. You need to clearly and proactively maintain open lines of communication so everyone stays on the same page:
This approach also allows you to quickly identify gaps and get ahead of any problems.
3. Share and translate respective goals
One of the reasons marketing and sales teams so often misalign is because they have separate goals and success metrics. The best way to combat this is to create shared goals.
For instance, hold Marketing accountable for the revenue they drive (not just the value of the opportunities). They’ll quickly take an interest in sales enablement.
For Sales, hold them accountable for what they do with Marketing leads. Even if they’re bad leads, they should follow up with them and then communicate the issues so that they can be fixed.
4. Establish service-level agreements (SLAs)
Now for this next tip, keep in mind that different organizations have different levels of formality. Whether a formal, contract-style service-level agreement (SLA) is right for you depends a lot on your culture, team size, and the current state of relations between your marketing and sales teams.
However, one thing is the same for all organizations: set clear expectations for both teams.
An SLA should define the common goals for Marketing and Sales and include key deliverables:
SLAs can help establish mutual accountability and start to build trust with everyone.
5. Coordinate content marketing with sales
This is one that’s often overlooked but very important. Marketers often generate content without asking the key question: will this provide value to our target buyers? Or, is this something a buyer is even interested in?
That’s where salespeople can help. After all, they’re on the front lines with customers every day. Often, they can provide a gut-check on content, provide potential topics, and, most importantly, share real-life questions prospects ask during the buying process—which can lead to some great topic ideas.
Additionally, salespeople with active presences on social media can help promote key content and support your marketing efforts.
6. Invest in technology that supports alignment
Finally, it’s important to have the tools and technology in place to enable marketing-sales alignment. This is even more critical in a post-COVID, remote environment.
Some examples of these technologies include:
The more technology you have to align your team and the more ingrained that technology is in their workflows, the more aligned everyone will become.
At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales aren’t separate teams. They’re one team: the revenue team. Get them aligned so you can manage and move forward together!
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Jennifer Devins Sales Leadership Insight, Sales Rep Tips, Sales Manager Life Savers, Coaching, Prospecting, Team Engagement + Culture, Team Performance + Confidence, Strategy + Planning, Empathetic Management, Remote Leadership
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.
[Live Event Recording]
Let’s get this party started right with a kickoff from one of Ambition’s faves, Lauren Bailey from Factor 8 and #GirlsClub! “LB” is talking about why she’s proud to be in sales, her personal crusade to help more people come to sales on purpose and stay, and a war that’s been brewing in our industry for a decade (and how we can win it together). She’ll make you laugh, she’ll make you cry, and she’ll try like crazy to make you swear, because, “We’re in Sales Dammit!”
This recording is from the Ambition PEAK Sales Summit.
Let’s get this party started right with a kickoff from one of Ambition’s faves, Lauren Bailey from Factor 8 and #GirlsClub! “LB” is talking about why she’s proud to be in sales, her personal crusade to help more people come to sales on purpose and stay, and a war that’s been brewing in our industry for a decade (and how we can win it together). She’ll make you laugh, she’ll make you cry, and she’ll try like crazy to make you swear, because, “We’re in Sales Dammit!”
This recording is from the Ambition PEAK Sales Summit.
Lauren Bailey Onboarding, Sales Leadership Insight, Sales Rep Tips, Sales Manager Life Savers, Sales Training + Development, Inside/Virtual Sales Training Tips, Hiring + Retention, Team Engagement + Culture, Sales Team Challenges, Team Performance + Confidence, Strategy + Planning
Whether you believe in “The Great Resignation” or not, one thing is for sure, there has been a record number of people quitting their jobs in the past year.
It seems like every month this year we received more emails bouncing back and letting us know that “John is no longer with the company.” The more of these responses we got, the more we wondered what was the true cause of this unprecedented mass exodus (and if there is anything we can do to make it stop).
To get to the root of the issue, we surveyed thousands of sales professionals to find the true cause of attrition amongst sales teams and to learn what reps and managers want most from their employers. We received responses from every level of the corporate ladder, from individual contributors up to CEOs. Some of the responses were obvious, some were rather surprising.
Spoiler Alert: Higher compensation is NOT the golden ticket to fixing the retention problem.
In our data, we learned that 63% of reps and managers started a new job within the last year. Yikes, that’s a lot of job changes! Most leaders cited the #1 reason their employees leave was due to lack of competitive compensation. However, both reps and managers listed a lack of training and development as their #1 reason for departing. Looks like we, as leaders, need to make some adjustments to improve sales team retention.
The next surprising stat we found was about coaching. The manager responses state that over 86% of managers were regularly coaching their reps. While the rep responses showed the majority of reps desire MORE coaching than what they’re currently receiving. To us, this communicates that while there may be coaching happening, what’s really missing is quality coaching. Coaching is one of our favorite topics (and the one we have seen provide the greatest impact). Recently, we hunkered down and gave some insight on how to master call coaching and how both reps and managers can prepare for an upcoming call coaching session.
While there were certainly areas where reps and leaders didn’t align, there was one area where all salespeople saw eye-to-eye. At each rung of the corporate ladder, the survey responses told us that reps and managers both want and need more ongoing sales training and leaders agreed that their reps and managers need more training. Sounds like this might be an easy area of opportunity for retention!
Want more insight? Make sure you grab your free copy of our survey results below!
Download our Sales Team Retention Infographic to learn why reps and managers are quitting and how leaders can better retain them.
[“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 Leadership Insight, Team Engagement + Culture
Let’s talk about sales rep rewards. With employee engagement at an all-time low and more reps leaving their employers every day, we’ve got to find new and creative ways to show appreciation to our top-performing employees to entice them to stay!
If you lead a digital sales team, you’ll probably remember the days you brought big-screen TVs to the front of the sales floor for the quarterly contest. My husband and I both came up in sales, and we have patio furniture, a few game sets, and LOTS of electronics. We’ve been to countless baseball and basketball suites and even visited Maui, Whistler, and the Bahamas thanks to President’s Club Trips. I bet you’ve enjoyed the big three sales incentives yourself: Sports, Electronics, and Travel (oh my!).
They’re classics for a reason, but every once in a while I have to remind myself that classic can actually mean outdated. Here are a few creative ideas to refresh your sales rep rewards and incentives with the new generations and dispersed teams in mind:
While you’re refreshing your prizes, I invite you to also refresh your criteria. Sales incentives get eye-rolls FAST if the same people always win. Do you have a contest for the newbies? For call quality? For attitude? For key performance indicators? For metrics? All of these can help spread the love for different kinds of talent and behaviors you want more of – not just for the tenured reps with the big accounts. This is critical for keeping fresh diverse talent interested! Folks are watching your leaders and your winners for signs of favoritism and inequity, and sales incentives are definitely in that fishbowl!
Not sure where to go? Pull in a few high-potential reps and ask their opinions! That’s a reward in and of itself.
Contact us today to learn about our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps and managers.
Lauren Bailey Sales Leadership Insight, Team Engagement + Culture, Remote Leadership
Folks, we’re over a year into this new normal. What we talked about 12 months ago to engage your remote teams, is probably not still working today. Need a few new ideas to improve remote sales team engagement? I’m here to help. I’ve collected a few favorites from my friends in high and low places in the past month. Hope you can grab something new that fits – or improves – your culture.
My last piece of advice, regardless of your plan, is to do all you can to retain your hires. The next five years look to be the toughest ever for hiring sales talent. Let’s give our employees every reason to stay!
Amy Wunderlich Sales Leadership Insight, Team Engagement + Culture, Sales Team Challenges, Remote Leadership
Many of the same challenges we faced when we worked on-site carry over to this new reality of working remotely. Other, more recent obstacles are specific to virtual teams.
One advantage we have at our disposal today that was absent for the last generation is an abundance of high-end technology. Instant communication and remote workflows have become essentially mandatory worldwide as a result of COVID-19. Fortunately, there are a lot of really great ways you can use technology to make remote work more efficient and tolerable.
Here are 3 challenges technology can help solve while you and your team continue to work remotely.
Working from home can be a blessing and a curse. When you were on-site, you were able to see your coworkers at their stations, in meetings, or while completing tasks as a team. How do you reconnect while maintaining high productivity?
Video communication software, like Zoom, allows you to participate in video and audio conferences, chats, and more from your computer or phone. You can share your screen, documents or other files and links amongst your team members to help overall comprehension and productivity.
Group chats are also essential for remote teams. These chat apps are useful for instant contact with colleagues, collaborators and even clients to discuss important tasks that may not require a meeting. Not sure what group chat software is best for you? Check out this comparison article to weigh your pros and cons to help you decide between two of the top contenders: Slack and GroupMe.
Sometimes too much communication can be more of a hindrance. We’ve tried a “no meeting Monday” to optimize the workweek. You could make this a “no Slack chat Monday” to allow you to focus more and limit distractions, while still leaving other communication open in case of urgency.
A great way to better manage your time is to stay organized. Leave yourself reminders or clear notes of upcoming tasks. Label all of your important files and documents for ease of reference. This will save you from having to search when you need it now.
Another important factor for time management is your work-life balance. It can be easy to get so focused on your job that you aren’t taking time to take care of yourself. Take short breaks when you can to give your eyes, mind, and body some time away from your computer screen. Try these apps for harboring a healthy work-life balance.
Similarly, a challenge teams face while working from home is not having or taking the time to run out and shop for whatever supplies you need while working from home. This could be anything from migraine and allergy relief to office cleaning supplies. For those hectic, busy days, consider trying the convenience of a home essentials delivery service to get the household items you need without leaving your home. Use that time you just saved to make some coffee, do a quick workout, or plan for your upcoming meetings.
It’s great that we can communicate with one another to make sure we’re all on the same page and have maintained our comradery, but in what way can technology help our teams get the job done more efficiently than ever? Try using some collaborative, coworking tools like Google Suite to help your coworkers.
What’s great about this service, and ones like it is that once the link to the document is shared, everyone with access is able to make real-time edits––no more waiting for an email response before you can proceed. Hop on a chat or video call and communicate while you edit. By utilizing this collaborative workspace, you’ll find that your team feels more apt to participate. This can cause your teammates to feel fulfilled and that their ideas and voices have been heard.
Staying connected during a global pandemic can be as challenging as it is important. By taking a look at your team’s priorities, you will be able to develop the correct solutions. Modern technology has made working remotely more user-friendly and efficient than ever before.
Share these solutions with your team and see what works best for you. At the very least, do your best to help your colleagues stay connected during these difficult times. You’ll be glad you did.
Lauren Bailey Sales Leadership Insight, Hiring + Retention, Team Engagement + Culture, Strategy + Planning
Each month I have the privilege of facilitating a by-invitation-only Executive Open Bar peer discussion. We pick a topic, share what’s working, give advice, and basically help our fellow Sales Leaders succeed (email me at if you want an invite or have a request).
Here we are 6 months into quarantine. What’s working and what’s not?
We put our minds together and shared some great tips, tricks and insights that we hope will help you and your teams. Check your trends against your peers below:
Digital Onboarding & Training – a few are having great success here. Virtual new hire onboarding is working!
We’re over the excuses. Most of us are finding ways to hit goals and holding teams accountable to full targets.
We’re getting the interest and filling the pipeline. We’ve pivoted offerings, markets, industries and payment terms to make it happen. We’re just stalling at the 1 yard line. Best answer: a few creative financing solutions to help CFO’s say yes and close the deal (see below).
We’re getting GOOD at this. 10+ ways to keep the team engaged:
Especially now that we’re all virtual, leaders paying double for virtual and field are working on new strategies. Best advice? Create a threshold – deals below a given dollar range or account potential range stay inside. Those above the line go to a more experienced rep to help close it while still compensating the original inside rep when it’s won. Right now, more experience won’t hurt us with challenging deal closing.
We’re looking for non-event lead gen, and our audiences are fatigued with theoretical webinars that are mostly pitch. Goal: Keep it tactical to drive attendance and require more info on your forms so you can get quality, if not quantity.
Several leaders are using data crawling tools like “6Sense” to target buyers searching for our services. These tools watch our searches and can rate our readiness to buy based on our frequency, recency, and other search values.
Across the board deals are stalling on the 1 yard line. Companies are scared to make that extra investment, and those who have the dollars now are unsure what Q1 2021 looks like. Hoarding is definitely an option. What’s worked? Delaying payment, quarterly payments, signing incentives (add-on products or time) pause and convenience clauses. We’re finding incentives for risk-averse CFOs and differentiating our offers to get the yes first.
Their involvement in deals has nearly DOUBLED according to Chorus. They are monitoring total spend and measuring risk on every dollar. Join us for a webinar in September (or sign up to receive the recording) to get advice straight from the source where LB is joined by four CFO’s with advice for sellers.