How often do sales managers need to coach their teams?
Key Takeaways
- Coaching that occurs on a daily basis or multiple times per week produces notable gains for salespeople in a number of areas
- These improvements are seen in both a salesperson’s attitude (i.e., responsibility and motivation) and tactical skills (i.e., technical facility, sales process)
- Unfortunately, frequent, consistent coaching is the exception not the rule
Intro
OMG clients often ask “I know coaching matters, but how often do I need to coach? And is there such a thing as too much coaching?” From our 30 years of sales evaluations, we know that some managers are extremely consistent coaches. Others tend to be more ad-hoc, letting their salespeople either come to them or addressing issues as they arise. Which style leads to better results?
To answer this, we’ve examined the Sales Evaluations of 11,078 salespeople and their managers. With a specific focus on coaching frequency and how that relates to sales performance
How much coaching is ideal?
Our data clearly shows that any coaching, is better than no coaching for salesperson development. Less frequent coaching –quarterly, monthly, or bi-weekly – all tend to yield similar gains over no coaching at all, often falling around a +2-5% improvement in Sales Percentile.
However, the real impact kicks in when coaching occurs weekly or several times per week, perhaps even daily. Salespeople who are coached weekly have +9% higher Sales Percentile than salespeople who are never coached. Sales Percentile increases +17% when the salesperson is coached several times per week. Just where these gains are most notable will be discussed below.
What sales competencies does consistent coaching improve?
Salespeople who are coached several times per week or daily show a +34% gain in Responsibility versus those who do not receive coaching at all, and a +19% gain in Motivation. Notable gains are also seen over those who experience on-demand coaching, +22% and +10% for Responsibility and Motivation respectively.
What’s happening here? Managers who regularly coach their salespeople are modeling a clear sense of responsibility and commitment for their team. That approach sets expectations and creates a similar attitude for salespeople in their approach to their position.
What else does frequent coaching impact?
Beyond improvements in the salesperson’s attitude, frequent coaching also creates tangible gains in the salesperson’s tactical skills. Most notably, salespeople who receive consistent, frequent coaching show +50% greater proficiency in using Sales Technology than those who do not receive any coaching, and 16% greater proficiency compared to those who receive on-demand coaching.
Additionally, Sales Process improves +28% (over no coaching) and +11% (over on-demand). These salespeople are better at time management, achieving consistent results, following key sales steps, setting milestones, and tracking results using a scorecard.
How often are sales managers coaching?
While the ideal is an active manager-salesperson coaching dynamic, this rarely occurs. Only 10% of salespeople report being coaching multiple times per week or more. In fact, a complete lack of coaching is reported almost as often (8% of the time)! Even weekly coaching only occurs 20% of the time. Most manager coach on-demand coaching.
Our hope is that this data gives more sales leaders the push they need to have their managers coach on a weekly or daily basis. To learn more about how you can create a coaching culture in your sales team, contact your OMG-certified Partner.
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