With the world around us changing in every regard during this madness, making the switch to remote has brought varying levels of challenge to implement, but much of the impact of completely remote teams is still around the corner. And we’ll face some pretty big consequences without taking action.
Here are 10 reasons why coaching your remote sales team starting today is non-negotiable.
Assuming your reps were less than a month ago, sat alongside each other in the office, where leaders with the ear of the sales floor, managers able to sit alongside their team during sales conversations and peers helping each other, overnight your reps are quite literally isolated.
No great snippets of others conversations to overhear, no advice to call on after a challenging call or question and no one to pat you on the back after a rockstar call or meeting.
Conversations are literally happening behind closed doors and all managers know about, is outcomes.
When they need help more than ever, your reps are all alone.
Without the help of office peers, how do we replicate the effect of peers helping each other - through asking questions, sharing tips and even osmosis?
Peers can listen to each other's calls for inspiration and tips, coach each other's calls to share ideas and feedback and share playbook calls and moments to replicate across a remote team.
How many leads are you happy burning through right now? Thought not. Every conversation counts. Every conversation needs to be the best it can be.
Mistakes and missed opportunities aren’t just missed revenue - they are missed quotas, business risk and jobs on the line.
Managers have lost the ability to walk the sales floor, overhear conversations and sit alongside reps to coach and support them.
Our revenue defining moments, are all happening behind closed doors. And everyone is in blissful ignorance without capturing and coaching.
The middle pack may not make it in these choppy waters. We have to replicate top performers. We must share best practices.
If we can’t coach up our middle performers starting right now, they may not make it to the other side.
Average just isn’t enough today.
UK Government say ‘furloughed employees should be encouraged to undertake training’. What an opportunity! Whilst unable to create pipeline or revenue, whilst no payroll cost to the business, you can use this time uniquely to train and coach your teams to thrive when they return.
For example....
‘Postpone’ was up 959% in sales conversations in April versus March. Sentiment to ‘Save money’ or ‘reduce cost’ have overtaken opportunities to ‘make money’ or ‘increase revenue’.
But what are your prospects saying differently today? And differently to last week in the uber fast changing world?
Having your finger on the pulse of what prospects are saying, to tweak messaging and relevance, has never been more crucial.
What works in your sales conversations? What leads to successful outcomes today? What are today's top performers doing differently in their sales conversations behind closed doors?
Understanding the DNA of successful conversations and outcomes, capturing that and sharing across a remote team, is the fastest route to raise the bar of all your sales team - and coach all to replicate top performers and conversations with successful outcomes.
They cannot be the best they can be without coaching - from you, peers and self reflection. Coaching is proven in countless studies to be the most impactful thing any sales manager can do to improve revenue. And that is in peacetime.
If you deny your team coaching now, you are risking their future - and possibly your own.
If, whilst in these challenging times, with a remote isolated team, a fast changing world and a need to make every conversation count, you are not coaching - then let's face it, you never, ever will.
In this book, you'll discover the keys to coaching a successful SaaS sales team in under 90 minutes a week.
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