Sales Manager Lifesavers

Why Your Sales Team Isn’t Hitting Quota (And What to Do About It) [Webinar Recording]

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.

Watch the video replay!


Meet the Speakers

Lauren Bailey
Lauren Bailey
Founder
Factor 8 & #GirlsClub

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
Lori Richardson
Founder
Score More 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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Onboarding New BDRs

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5 Sales Manager Tips for Onboarding New BDRs

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:

  1. 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.
    • Company processes, procedures, etc.
    • Customer FAQ
    • Demos
    • Testimonials and case studies
    • 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
  2. 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?
  3. 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!
  4. 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
  5. 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.


mastering call coaching

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Tips for Mastering Call Coaching

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

THAT.

ISN’T.

NATURAL.

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

DOWNLOAD: Call Coaching Tips To COACHN Success

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

GOOD CALL COACHING IS NOT DEAL COACHING.

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

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

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

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

CALL COACHING SIMPLY ISN’T NATURAL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

COACHN

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best time management tip

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#1 Best Time Management Tip for Sales Managers

I’ve got a quick time management tip for all of you super-busy frontline sales managers.

At 23, in my first sales management job, I was buried by everything my team needed and all the things I didn’t know how to help with. Sound familiar?

Here’s the best time management tip that you can learn that we teach in our quick and easy time management course for sales managers (it’s called Own Your Day)

It’s all about getting out of the reactive mode and into the proactive mode.

READ: 4 Time-Saving Tips for Sales Managers

And here is the most fun and hardest part of what we’re teaching.

You’ve got to learn to say NO. Why?

Because that team of 8 to 15, new, experienced reps that you’re there to lead, serve, motivate, and nurture, will suck you dry.

I’m telling you, it will happen.

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Because we’re all in the business of making money and doing it as fast and as easy as possible.

That makes you the go-to for all their questions.

And my goodness, they’re going to keep asking until you teach them to fish, which takes longer.

So it is a vicious, vicious cycle. 

READ: Top 8 Sales Management Productivity Hacks

One of the most important skills that we teach new managers (who literally hug me afterward) is what to focus on first, second, third, and fourth, what to get rid of, what to delegate, what to do immediately, what to schedule for later, etc.

But here’s the crux of the skill: it’s saying NO to the rep request that’s coming at you right now.

You know the ones—people telling you about the call they just had, the deal they closed, or asking a product question. And all of that hits you before 9 am.

But here’s how to say no without being a jerk:

Scheduled meetings. When you build a sales management cadence, you’re not saying no, you’re saying, “This is so important, let’s talk about it in our scheduled call coaching,” or, “Bring that story to the huddle.” That way, you’re acknowledging their need but pushing it into the cadence.

This is probably the #1 best time management skill you’ll learn to take back your day and stop working before it’s dark (winter excluded 😉). You’re welcome.

Don’t have a cadence yet? Or a way to manage the requests? We’ve got you covered. Join our certification program, Own Your Sales Manager Role.

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increase sales coaching

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Tips for Enablement Leaders to Increase Sales Coaching Focus

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

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

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

READ: Why You Need a Sales Training and Enablement Budget

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

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

WATCH: Creating A Coaching Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

READ: How to Increase Sales Coaching Frequency

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

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

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

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

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


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

Are you looking for sales training?

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


Ultimate Sales Promotion Workshop: How to Get Promoted in Any Role [Webinar Recording]

Ultimate Sales Promotion Workshop: How to Get Promoted in Any Role

[Video Recording]

Learn How to Get Promoted into Any Sales Role

Ready to supercharge your sales career? Whether you’re new to sales, rocking the BDR world, or ready to move from rep to manager or manager to director, LB will break down the secrets she’s seen in the industry that help some people rise to the top FAST while others move at half the speed. 

You’ll learn:

  • What managers/leaders are looking for in each role
  • Key skills and abilities that help you promote faster
  • How to bring up the career path conversation
  • What to get in order before you ask
  • Detailed metrics, ideas, templates, and resources to help plan your next move
  • Q&A with LB!

Watch the video replay!


Learn How to Get Promoted into Any Sales Role

Ready to supercharge your sales career? Whether you’re new to sales, rocking the BDR world, or ready to move from rep to manager or manager to director, LB will break down the secrets she’s seen in the industry that help some people rise to the top FAST while others move at half the speed. 

You’ll learn:

  • What managers/leaders are looking for in each role
  • Key skills and abilities that help you promote faster
  • How to bring up the career path conversation
  • What to get in order before you ask
  • Detailed metrics, ideas, templates, and resources to help plan your next move
  • Q&A with LB!

Watch the video replay!


sales training techniques

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Sales Training Techniques: Telling vs. Teaching

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

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

Job done, right? Not quite.

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

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

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

READ: The Best Sales Coaching Questions Ever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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sales rep 1:1 meetings

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How to Run Successful Sales Rep 1:1 Meetings

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

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

As a Rep, we want:

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

As a Manager, we want:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know, your reps are not your children.

Or, are they?

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