What do successful sports team all have in common? They have a good work ethic, they have star players, and they have a star coach, coaching them to be the very best they can be.
And just like a sports team, any sales team needs the same ingredients to form a successful team. A strong work ethic and drive to learn, hard working employees that excel, and a manager that leads, inspires and continues to coach and upskill their team.
Coaching is extremely important when it comes to the success of your sales team and it's performance. As a manager, continuous coaching should be a top priority as it's not only an investment in your sales reps, it's also an investment in the company and it's prosperity. By coaching your team, you're teaching them new skills, smooths out any old mistakes they may be making, and bridge the gap between your top reps and your average reps.
However, a lot of managers frequently neglect the need to coach their employees. A lack of time and the right tools is usually the culprit and the two usually go hand-in-hand. Because they lack the proper tools, managers are having to pulls stats from everywhere and create reports that they can draw data from to inform their coaching sessions with their team and because this is time-consuming, and managers already have a lot on their plate, yup, you guessed it. They don't have the time to do.
So back to the question at hand, how can apply sales analytics and forecasting to your coaching conversations? Let's take a look.
What Exactly is Sales Data?
Sales data can look like the following:
- Emails sent or received
- Meetings booked
- Amount of time spent on phone calls
- Engagement with communications
- Clients closed vs not closed
While there is an abundance of sales data you could focus on, it'll vary from business -to-business. Once you have an idea of the data you need to focus on, you can start to apply it to your coaching sessions. Let's take a look at how below:
Focus on the Right Metrics
By focusing on your top reps, you'll notice trends and patterns which help them to succeed. Through the help of this, and including your own expectations, managers can start to create benchmarks for the rest of the team and any new employees.
By creating these data-driven benchmarks, managers will be able to create clear expectations and obtainable goals, rewarding those who succeed but also be able to identify those who are struggling and provide them with the proper coaching they need.
Coach with Clarity
When it comes to coaching, it becomes a whole lot easier when you have proper data to reflect on. Pointing to actual numbers and stats reinforces your position and need for coaching an individual, while removing any potential bias or prejudice. With hard data to coach on, managers and reps can now have a transparent conversation and focus on the objectives a rep needs to meet in order to be successful.
Over time, managers need to get into the routine of regular coaching. Only through repetition are people going to learn. You simply can't expect to teach a rep something one day and expect them to be perfect for the rest of the time they work for you. By continuous coaching, one can keep a close eye on the performance of a team and individuals, ensuring they're performing.
Forecast
Like all good weather forecasts, we know exactly what we should wear when we leave home for the day or what we need to bring to be prepared.
And it's the same with businesses. By forecasting, a manager knows which periods of the year drive the most revenue and which don't, and in turn, knows which reps need the most help to be successful in those low-revenue periods. By keeping an eye on a businesses forecast, managers will always be aware of key periods that need to be focused on and when and if extra coaching is needed.
Get the Right CRM
To get all this data flowing in smoothly and easily accessible, you need to have the right CRM for your business. Having the right CRM will help managers leverage their team's numbers to inform the coaching sessions they'll be having without the need to pull reports from multiple sources, and in term, help them achieve a better sales performance.
HubSpot provides a unified platform that makes keeping on top of your sales data easy and simple. No longer will you have to pull reports from multiple locations, wasting precious time on collating data for all the coaching sessions. Below is snapshot of what makes up the HubSpot CRM:
- A powerful, scalable CRM database
- Sales acceleration tools that let reps efficiently manage their day and their outreach
- CPQ tools to help you master the second half of the sales process and close more deals
- Reporting to tie everything together and understand what’s happening in your business
- Strong sales analytics and forecasting tools to get managers and reps firing on all cylinders
If you're in the process of looking at all the CRM software specs and features, while also cross referencing their importance, and all the pricing options - download our free CRM comparison tool today!