As a business leader, you understand the role your sales team plays in converting the leads into customers. You need to spend time with your sales team, listen to their problems, talk to them, and provide them with the necessary tools and skills they need. Most managers will call this either coaching or training. Often the terms “training” and “coaching” are used interchangeably. It’s important to recognise the difference between training and coaching if you want to truly succeed as a sales leader and ensure your team is in top shape. Both have their benefits, but the question is when to use one or the other. For getting a truly successful performance from the sales reps both should be used properly.
Let’s get on with the differences between sales coaching and sales training.
What is Sales Training?
Typically, sales training is a proven age-old method of educating and equipping sales reps with adequate sales skills and knowledge needed to perform and execute the duties. This is the best method for training the newcomers to the sales world. Sales training is an extremely structured approach to provide a person with new skills or to help them shore up something they’re weak in.
A proper sales training program ensures that the new reps learn the right skills before they hit the phones.
Sales training is a quick, effective way for getting the basics across. The training program includes general subjects like pitches, cold calling, value propositions, objection handling, negotiations, and so on. Specialized or project-based training is also there to train the employees on new tools and techniques, selling strategies or new products or services. This training proves to be beneficial for the sales reps in adapting them to the new sales platforms and strategies so with the change in the market dynamics teams and can always ensure their sales force is selling to its absolute best potential.
What is Sales Coaching?
Sales coaching is one-on-one, personal training of sales reps to improve their performance. The role is played by the sales manager in general or at times even an expert is hired to develop people, improve their performance, and achieve goals. Sales coaching is best thought of as a behaviour rather than a task where the sales coach creates a safe environment for the reps to experiment and find their voice. Coaching is the most successful way for reps to develop their skills and stay on top of their game.
Why Sales Coaching?
Sales leaders will use a mix of sales training and coaching but will weigh it towards coaching more. Coaching is a personal interaction and focuses on the specific needs of the individuals. If a sales rep particularly needs guidance with building a rapport or asking for the deal, coaching can help them crack it. When you teach rather than practise, the discovery aspect of coaching helps reps maintain knowledge better; information is less likely to go in one ear and out the other. Finally, there are a variety of approaches to coaching. Call coaching is one of our favourites, where you go over sales conversations that a real team member has had to discuss how you might improve.
Summing-up – Don’t Know How to Coach?
While most sales managers would agree that mastering sales coaching techniques and skills is an important aspect of their role, but some of them may fail to offer it as required. Not every manager can be a good coach, which is fine both roles need different skills and knowledge. There is no reason to expect that a manager will know how to coach without coaching skills and a coaching process. Fortunately, there are a number of great sales coaching experts that sales managers can take advantage of including Bruce King Sales Coaching program.
Shergroup’s offers an online sales coaching program, in affiliation with, the sales guru, Mr Bruce King. Our CEO, Claire Sandbrook recommends sales coaching and has implemented it in Shergroup’s training and support system. So, if you’re looking to get your team excited about the prospect of growing your business, now is the time to invest in Bruce’s world-class sales coaching programme!
To find out more about the sales training program check out the link below- https://shergroup.com/sales-bruce-king
