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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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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By now you’ve heard that the sales rep onboarding experience is a major factor in how they ramp to quota and ultimately affects how they feel about your company.
There are about 3 million moving parts in an onboarding program since it happens across so many departments, mostly outside of sales. Because of this, it’s easy to lose our way during onboarding. One of the most important hindrances is the lack of investment — both in effort and money — in onboarding.
Insidesales.com did a study that found organizations spend an average of 3x more on rep tools than on rep development, with the average rep having between 5-10 tools. Similarly, Training Magazine found that organizations spend on average 25x more on recruiting than development.
Moreover, Training Magazine tells us that a good onboarding program can cut ramp time and attrition by 50%. If we focus more time on crafting an onboarding program that will help retain the reps we recruit, we save time, money, and energy down the line.
So let’s do this! Here are 8 best practices you can dive into fixing right now.
Integrate These 8 Best Practices Into Your Sales Rep Onboarding
“Just-in-time” training
Leverage sales (not HR) professionals
Balance software and traditional training methods
Continue onboarding long after the rep is “ready”
Adopt the six critical components of a training program
Use ample multimedia resources
Create a formal, but flexible, rep training program
Set realistic, data-based expectations
Let’s dive a little deeper into why and how to integrate these tips into your onboarding.
1. “Just-in-time” Training
When building an onboarding program, it’s tempting to start by listing all the things “Johnny” may ever need to know and start from the top. Instead, try slicing off only what Johnny needs to know in month one.
It can be tempting to dive deep into company waters with things like histories, organizational charts, and other detailed and specific areas. It’s more effective to shift this information to the backburner for the time being and focus only on what the new rep needs in the first month to be successful. After all, how often does a customer quiz your rep on key events in the company’s founding?
Onboarding training should mirror what a rep’s day-to-day activities will look like once training is finishedduring the first month on the job (and only that first month). This ensures reps don’t feel like a fish out of water when the time comes to execute the tactics taught in training.
Why stop at month one? Because we want our reps to come out of onboarding feeling confident! We want them ready to pound the phones and execute what they learned! If we start introducing them to all the sales process complexities, advanced products, and deep conversations, then we run the risk of scaring or overwhelming them.
This is a time when “you don’t know what you don’t know” is a good thing. If your reps will likely spend that first month talking to existing happy customers or cold calling and leaving a lot of voicemails, stop training there. Bring them back later for the rest.
2. Leverage Sales (Not HR) Professionals
Aberdeen reported that 85% of the sales teams considered “best-in-class” use professional sales trainers or curriculum. But the majority of us outsource our onboarding to HR.
This absolutely does not mean that your sales managers should be the trainers. It means that as a sales leader, you have sales managers and a sales training manager reporting to you (or at least attending your meetings). It could also mean that you have a sales manager who acts as a liaison to training.
But what it definitely means is that you and your sales team all know what is being taught, agree with the how, and are thrilled with what reps can do when they graduate from the onboarding training.
Some companies shy away from investing in an expert for new hires due to the high turnover rate. But, by investing in good sales training and following best practices, companies can reduce new hire turnover rate and save money in the long run.
3. Balance Online and Classroom Training
What we use to teach reps is another balancing act between digital learning and resources and traditional training methods.
Best practice? Use technology for about 30% of your overall curriculum. Much more and we’re missing the opportunity to engage new reps and ensure their first month is lonely and, let’s face it: boring.
Online learning is easiest to leverage for one of the following areas:
Rote knowledge that isn’t likely to change. This includes policies, laws, company history, and unchanging products.
Already-created, third-party curriculum. Commonly this is from technology vendors like Salesforce or basic Microsoft how-to assets
Trusted adviser curriculum. If you’re working with social, sales, or marketing experts already and have adopted their methodologies, ask about online resources to onboard new reps.
Leverage your training department’s learning management system with whatever you’re doing. You’ll want to track what reps have and haven’t done and add a layer of accountability with reporting and testing.
4. Don’t Let It End! Continue Training Even After Onboarding
Rep development should be ongoing. Don’t ever fall into the trap of “They’re trained! My job here is done.” That’s akin to the NFL putting players in preseason camp and then stopping practice when the regular season begins.
Development is an ongoing sport.
At Factor 8, we’re huge champions of sending new reps to the phones early and often. But that is with the assumption that they’ll come back to the classroom to address the gaps they find while out on the harsh streets of your sales floor. It’s also assuming that managers are closely keeping track of rep progress and development needs.
How do you facilitate this?
Try to organize the curriculum into three levels:
Level 1 maps to onboarding – the foundational/month 1 skills.
Level 2 is “just in time” after reps master level 1 and get 6-12 months under their belt. They’re ramped to quota, and it’s time for ongoing development to keep growing and do the whole job well.
Level 3 maps to the mastery of the job in years 2 to 3 — more advanced skills to help them be superstars.
Between each level we add exercises, activities, assignments, and refreshers to keep the skills top of mind, show new ways to try certain tactics, and help managers engage reps in 1:1 and team skill development. The Sales Bar helps us make all of this accessible on-demand so teams can learn what they want to when they want to while still keeping track. We also drip new content monthly and use leaderboards to keep things fresh and different so users want to log back in.
Use this as an example of the microlearning and ongoing development young reps crave. Millennials expect a certain percentage of learning to be in the classroom and online, and they expect opportunities to develop themselves long after onboarding.
Offering blended learning, leveled learning, and ongoing learning checks all those boxes.
5. Adopt the 6 Critical Components of a Sales Training Program
If you’re just starting to build your program or you’re going in to assess yours, start by evaluating what’s being trained. It’s easy to go deep into systems and products, but those are just two of the six components of well-rounded onboarding training:
Systems and tools — Your CRM, intranet, engagement tool, dialer, etc.
Product and service — What you’re selling. Tip: Focus on “how to sell it” versus a full rundown of product history, speeds, and feeds. This harkens back to best practice #1 and maintaining training relevancy. If your product people are teaching this, chances are your reps don’t need half of it and are using this time to snooze.
Sales — Even if you hire for experience, reps need to be taught how to sell your services to your customers in your industry over the phone. Haven’t met a new hire yet who doesn’t.
Process — Think of how your leads and orders get processed internally and who a rep goes to for the top customer questions. In other words, how do you get stuff done at your company?
Acumen — Sorry folks, they’re not coming out of school with business acumen and certainly not industry and customer acumen. This is a big gap, and filling it will drastically shorten ramp time.
Manager integration — this is where tip #5 really comes to life, both during and after onboarding. Reps need to see their leaders often, and training needs input and oversight.
6. Utilize Ample Multimedia Resources
No two reps are identical when it comes to learning style. Make sure you’re meeting every new hire where they’re at by using a mix of helpful resources.
Mixing up these methods not only appeals to reps with different learning styles but also helps keep training exciting and fresh. Who wants to sit and listen to someone else make calls all day and slap a “training” label on it?
7. Create a Formal, but Flexible Rep Training Program
If you’re not putting all new hires through the same rep onboarding process, how can you ever tell if what you’re doing is working?
As we said: Different reps have different learning styles, so it is important to remain flexible to an extent. Just make sure you have some core pillars of onboarding training in place so all new hires are experiencing the same process.
This helps you measure KPIs and tweak your processes if weak spots surface.
8. Set Realistic, Data-Based Expectations for Your New Reps
How many times have your managers set sky-high call quotas for new reps? How many times have they failed to reach it? But, most importantly, how many times has this been documented?
The only thing more frustrating (for both rep and manager) than someone consistently underperforming on quotas, is for there to be nothing in place to fix it moving forward.
Make sure when you’re setting expectations and KPIs for new hire reps that they are based on data. Once you have a fleshed-out onboarding process, it will be easier than ever to keep track of this information.
Find a Tool That Works for Your Onboarding Needs
What if we told you there’s a tool that complements in-person sales training, allows managers to monitor new hire learning during onboarding, and offers a wide variety of inside sales resources?
It’s not magic — it’s The Sales Bar. Fill out the form below to learn more.
Want more information on our sales rep onboarding programs?
Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs available for reps (and managers).
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.
Join Another Sales Shot
View our live Sales Shot webinar schedule and register for upcoming events below.
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.
