The current COVID-19 environment challenges sales managers to have joined customer and prospect calls with their sales team members. Not that long ago, sales managers spent half or full days on the road with their teams; now, this situation has changed. Also, for Telesales Managers, they are no longer in the same office as their team. As a manager, you need to bridge that virtual coaching challenge because sales coaching is needed more than ever. Effective coaching helps front-line Sales with becoming Trusted Advisors. Gartner Research finds high-quality coaching can improve core seller performance by 19%. That is pretty significant. After a call is exactly that coaching opportunity, where the sales coach can share observations and help the salesperson identify practical next-step actions. That’s where the needle and the opportunity start to move.

But what about at the end of the day? Although the sales executive may have documented excellent next steps to move each opportunity forward, what is the conclusion of all observations and coaching on opportunities? Are sales managers and sales execs ending their day without overall outcomes and a focus on the improvement of core new selling skills? As a salesperson, to Sell with the Buyer’s Perspective, what ability do you need to keep, improve, start or stop? There is a need for helpful, practical metrics that help both the seller and the coach with which abilities need improvement. Metrics matter.

After spending a half-day coaching your team member on calls, you have a debriefing moment to reflect and coach on high-level actions. You want your sales executive to leave with a summary of:

• What abilities are their strength?
• What abilities are their weaker points?
• What abilities need polishing?

Post-Call Coaching metrics lead to actionable advice. The below is a suggestion that could work well. You can work with traffic lights or scores, up to you. The key questions are… Did the Sales Executive:

Ensure for each ability you back your view up with observational examples. This will give the sales executive practical guidance and focus to work on, until the next coaching opportunity with their manager. To improve, they can go back to the new way of selling skills training material, read more articles or blogs, or listen to podcasts. On their next coaching day, the sales manager would like to observe the improvements made. Tracking the metrics, month after month, confidence progress can be recognized, celebrated, and rewarded. Give it a try and let me know your feedback.

Thank you for sharing with your network. I welcome comments and feedback on this post. Together we learn more.