Coaching in Sales- Michelle Hecht

Whether it's in us, whether in India, any country. Right. You will see in the job description, you will always see this pointer. You know, we have a four week onboarding program, six week onboarding program. I don't see I've come across any job description which says we have a, you know, fantastic, ongoing, ongoing coaching program. Nobody says that.

Absolutely right. Absolutely right. I couldn't agree with you more.

So why do you think that is like, or do you think somebody has actually tried to solve this problem? Or why do you think company is not solving for it?

And that's a great question. I wish I could give you a broad blanket answer because the one thing I can agree with you on, excuse me, most if not all companies have, like you said, a fantastic onboarding program. They have sales training. You know, people come in, whether it's a week, two weeks, three, four, whatever it is, they go through modules, they train them on the product, the service, it's interactive, they have to pass exams, they have to role play all of that. Very, very interactive and lots of information in a small given amount of time. However, coaching is ongoing training. Training, it occurs when it's over, it's over and we have to soak in as much information as possible in a short period of time. And when we're entrenched in it in the beginning with onboarding, we know it, we have it, we get it. You know, we can model it, we can role play it, we get it. However, after training is done, whether it's in house, people that are employed by the company, that are trainers or they're third party trainers that come in that the company hires to bring in on a consulting basis and they come in, they do their thing and they leave. There's hardly ever any coaching like follow up. So you can train people on the most amazing sales techniques and skills and, and how to role play and how to negotiate and how to close and taking them through the sales cycle and the funnel, the CRM, if there is not a coaching program in place to really help that information stick and to model it for sales professionals within 30 days, and statistics prove this, within 30 days, more than half of that information they were trained on falls by the wayside. If our attention spans in sales training are so short and we have to keep doing it over and over and over in a small period of time. Think about sales professionals when they're prospecting, think about sales professionals when they're on the phone or where they're in person talking to people. How many touch points do we need on Average in order for that information to stick so that a prospect becomes a client and understands that we can solve a problem for them. It takes a lot. It takes numerous attempts, lots of touch points, lots of conversations. So it's like a trickle down effect. And if we can't do that properly and we don't understand and remember and we don't know how to pivot and we're not reinforcing that and understanding what good looks like, right, what great looks like, how can we expect to get results when we're responsible for goals and quotas and we have the prospects? So it's all connected. So if sales leaders are really good at prospecting, presenting, demo, discovery, negotiating, closing, that doesn't always equate to being a great leader in terms of coaching and motivating and encouraging and speaking to different team members and personalities. So you can't do it all. You can't do it all. So having somebody come in or somebody that's appointed on the team or somebody appointed from the company to almost like subsidize right, what the sales leaders are doing so they can focus on numbers and goals and KPIs, it's a win win. It's not taking anything away from that sales leader or that organization. It's supplementing everything that they're doing and making it even better. People want to feel secure in their role, on their team, in their organization. There's a phrase that I heard a few months ago that I absolutely love and I think that it rings true across the board for everyone. And that's psychological safety. People, sales representatives, I don't care what, what status they are, what level they are, everybody wants to feel that they've got psychological safety within their organization and especially with their own team leader. They want to feel that if they fail, you know, if they make a mistake, they can fail forward, they can learn from the experience and there won't be retaliation and they won't be looked at, you know, looked down upon. You know, that's what fosters a healthy culture and really helps sales professionals level up and get better when they feel like, okay, well, I made a mistake and I didn't do it this way and I didn't do it that way and you know, it's okay, I'm going to learn from that and I'm going to do it differently and I'm going to do it better next time. And that is so important.