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How To: Build a Culture for B2B Sales Coaching

In this How-To, we provide a practical, tactical dive into the strategies that revenue teams need to improve their game … and drive more business.

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A sales leader reviews a call with one of her BDRs

Chapters

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

What is a Coaching Culture?

Chapter 3

Elements of Effective BDR Coaching

Chapter 4

Common Coaching Roadblocks

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction

Selling and marketing are harder than ever. Old-school tactics are pushing modern buyers away, leaving revenue teams frustrated, inefficient, and unable to compete. In No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls, Latané Conant delivers the recipe for scalable, repeatable, data-driven sales and marketing strategies that work today. 

In this How-To, we provide a practical, tactical dive into some of the strategies outlined in Chapter 5.

Identifying and hiring top business development representatives (BDRs) is one of the first steps in building a successful revenue team. But once they start at your organization, how can you foster a culture of ongoing learning and growth?

Onboarding and training are certainly great initiatives, but if you want to ensure your BDRs’ success, you must help them strengthen the skills that boost performance.

And the best way to do that is to create a formal coaching culture within the organization.

Chapter 2

What is a Coaching Culture?

A coaching culture is a workplace environment that promotes feedback, support, and ongoing learning across teams to improve performance. The entire team is committed to sharing challenges, best practices, and learnings to aid in one another’s growth.

Coaching instills standards and accountability from individual reps all the way up to leadership — which generates better sales numbers. CSO Insights’ Sales Enablement Report found that sales coaching was related to a nearly 33% improvement in win rates and nearly 28% improvement in quota attainment.

Where training is typically a group activity, coaching is individualized, with one-on-one sessions between manager and rep. And not only does it significantly improve performance, it can help to reduce employee turnover.

Research from ValueSelling shows 58% of high-performing companies use sales coaching to increase employee retention. 

Chapter 3

Elements of Effective BDR Coaching

To truly improve both individual and team performance, coaches must dedicate time to meet one-on-one with every rep. And these aren’t rushed, last-minute meetings where you come in unprepared and have 10 other tasks or issues on your mind. Being focused and equipped with specific, performance-related information about each rep will keep conversations on track and productive.

Meeting regularly — weekly is recommended — allows you to track progress more accurately and boost the skills and competencies that will make reps successful.

At the most basic level, each session should include:

  • Discussing progress
  • Listening to challenges or struggles
  • Giving personal guidance
  • Asking for feedback on your leadership style

Putting it in Practice

It bears repeating: Coaching sessions are most impactful when both the manager and BDR come prepared. Sharing real-world scenarios and examples facilitates the session and helps to pinpoint where reps did things right and where they could improve.

Before a session with one of your reps, listen to a handful of their recorded calls to get a sense of the conversations they’re having with prospects and find specifics to discuss. Encourage the rep to surface examples as well. These should include instances where calls went well, poorly, or completely sideways.

Additionally, look at quantitative and quantitative indicators like:

  • Email word count, opens, replies, click-through rates
  • Language used within emails
  • Number of calls answered
  • Objection handling
  • Meeting-to-conversion rate

It also helps to benchmark what a great BDR looks like at your organization. Block time in your calendar to look at calls from across the team and create rubrics of what good, bad, and OK calls look like. Then, score five calls and five emails per person on your team to gauge where everyone measures up — and identify gaps to address in coaching sessions.

Over time, you’ll learn each BDR’s learning style to further tailor your strategy moving forward. Some may push back more than others; some may require more hand holding. With commitment and a little patience, you’ll find your groove. The coaching process will feel like second nature.

Chapter 4

Common Coaching Roadblocks

Coaching sounds simple enough in theory, but it can be difficult in practice.

The first challenge is your own discipline. Preparation, execution, and follow-up takes time — something you may already feel short on. And while you may think you know what your reps are doing, the reality is it’s very likely you don’t. You’ve got your own tasks to complete and individual goals to meet, so it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day and fail to notice what’s going on within your team.

Consistency is key, which means being committed to your coaching initiative. Hopefully your dedication is contagious and drives motivation for the BDRs on your team, but this can become a challenge, too. Show your reps what’s in it for them, offering opportunities for career development and laying out the roadmap for where they can progress within your organization and beyond.

And besides getting them on board for the initiative, you’ve got to be sure BDRs take your feedback to heart and make the necessary changes to improve. Try this approach:

  • Align on the issue and its impact by asking a question: “Are you also noticing X, Y, Z?”
  • Show the current and potential future impact of the issue: “If this doesn’t improve in six months, here’s what can happen.”
  • Develop a game plan to facilitate improvement and set incremental goals.

It’s critical to work together throughout this process, rather than simply lecturing and telling the BDR what they should do and how. Create an environment where reps feel like they have control over their success and take pride in their work.

Learn More in Our ‘No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls’ Resource Center

Interested in learning more about taking your sales and marketing effort to the next level by uncovering and targeting the accounts most likely to buy? Visit our Resource Center to find more How-To’s like this one inspired from the pages of Conant’s book.

All of 6sense’s proceeds from book sales go to GoodSense, the charitable arm of 6sense whose mission is to do our part for our community and beyond.

No Forms.
No Spam.
No Cold Calls.

The 6sense Team

The 6sense Team