If you haven’t discovered the power of one-on-one sales coaching for career progression yet, you’re missing out. Around 96% of today’s sellers believe that working with a sales coach has helped them improve their performance, win rates, and confidence in the sales landscape.
That’s because a personal sales coach is more than just a mentor, ready to guide you through the complicated world of sales. Coaches are valuable resources that can help you identify your weaknesses, improve your strengths, and stay one step ahead of the competition.
Here’s your guide to the phenomenal power of working with a professional sales coach, alongside some tips on choosing the right coach, and preparing for your first coaching session.
What is a Personal Sales Coach?
There’s a lot of confusion out there about what a sales coach is. A lot of people assume that a “coach” is just a mentor, or a teacher. However, they’re really something else entirely. A sales coach is basically an expert that works with you to facilitate constant career growth.
They’re specialists in their industry that are there to help you constantly identify your strengths and weaknesses, develop new and valuable habits, and improve your win rates. Unlike your standard teacher, a one-on-one sales coach customizes every learning experience to your needs.
They’re familiar with industry best practices and selling methodologies, and can help you understand them, but they don’t deliver pre-set classes. Sales coaches help you overcome the most significant challenges you’re facing in sales, specifically.
That could mean helping you find new ways to build rapport with clients, improve your cold calling confidence, or just assisting you with time management.
Coaching Sales: Techniques Used by Sales Coaches
As mentioned above, a good personal sales coach will always tailor their approach to your needs, but many professional coaches use similar strategies and methodologies to help sellers thrive. The sales coaching techniques your expert uses could include:
- Goal setting and progress tracking: Many individual sales coaches will ask you to set specific long-term, and short-term goals while you’re working with them. They’ll guide you through the process of setting “SMART” goals, and help you identify ways to track your progress towards your targets, checking in with you regularly.
- Process reviews: If you want to address a specific weakness in your sales strategy, you could present an example of your process to your personal sales coach and ask them for feedback. They can walk you through the things you might have done well, as well as the things you did one, offering constructive guidance.
- Developing personalized sales strategies: Every salesperson has a unique “selling style”. Coaches can help you to find your style, giving you insights into multiple sales methodologies and processes, to help you find a strategy that works best for you. They can even give you tips on which sales methodologies are best suited to your skills.
- Role playing: Many sales coaches use role-playing to expose sellers to “simulations” of real-world experiences they might have in their role. They can help you work through the process of handling objections, or making cold calls, ensuring you have the confidence to perform well in high-pressure situations.
Core Benefits of Individual Sales Coaching
Countless sales professionals seek out coaching opportunities, even when they have access to on-the-job training and skill development solutions. That’s because one-on-one sales coaching gives sellers access to a highly personalized learning experience.
Working with a sales coach helps you:
- Become More Adaptable, and Develop Faster
Sales is constantly changing, with new trends, technologies, and customer preferences to consider all the time. Working with a sales coach allows you to adapt your development strategy based on the current challenges you’re actually facing. You can adapt your development process and ask for specific guidance with new issues and threats as they arise, becoming more resilient and adaptable.
- Increase Your Win Rates and Revenue
Effective sellers are always looking for ways to surpass their quota attainment goals and boost win rates. Studies show that individual sales coaching has potentially the biggest impact on win rates and performance, because of the tailored approach coaches take to seller development. Coaches can rapidly turn average performers into start sellers, and help sales leader retain great results.
- Improve Empathy and Soft Skills
A great salesperson knows that sales isn’t just about the numbers – it’s about connecting with people too. When you work with a personal sales coach, every interaction you have with those professional gives you an opportunity to build communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. Sales coaches can help you develop empathy and emotional intelligence, giving you the tools you need to build stronger relationships with customers and colleagues.
- Enhance Productivity
Studies show that working with a coach can help sales professionals to improve their productivity levels by up to 88%. A one-on-one sales coaching strategy helps you to identify the things that are holding you back in your career, manage your time more effectively, and stay laser-focused on your goals. All of this leads to better performance, and increased opportunities in your career.
- Optimize your Sales Training
Sales training courses are fantastic, but the knowledge we learn in traditional classroom settings can often fade quickly. In fact, Gartner says that most salespeople forget about 70% of what they learn in a course within a week. Sales coaching turns learning into a continuous process, reinforcing what you learn from training sessions over time, and helping you to constantly build on your skills.
Choosing the Right Individual Sales Coach
There’s no doubt that a personal sales coach can have a phenomenal impact on your performance and growth as a seller. But the path to success starts with finding the right person to help you navigate your journey. Not every sales coach works the same way, has the same experience, or can share the same skills. Here’s what you should be looking at when searching for your coach:
- Knowledge and experience: Your sales coach should excel in the areas where you struggle. If you have trouble with cold calling, enterprise sales, or account management, then your sales coach needs to be an expert in those areas.
- Coaching style: Everyone learns differently. Think about how you best absorb and retain knowledge and find a coach that can adapt to your learning style. For instance, you might prefer gamified learning experiences and role-playing to data-driven assessments.
- Reputation: Does the coach you’re considering working with have a good reputation? Do they respond quickly to the questions of students, and treat them with empathy and kindness? Look for reviews and testimonials to find out.
Platforms like the Hard Skill Exchange make it easier to assess all these factors by giving students access to coach profiles, complete with skill lists, reviews, referrals, and even videos of AMA sessions hosted by industry experts. Take advantage of platforms like this to get behind-the-scenes insights into your coach, before you agree on a long-term partnership.
Preparing for Your One-on-One Sales Coaching Sessions
Once you’ve found the ideal coach based on your specific needs, the next step is preparing for the coaching experience. The best thing you can do here is embrace the right mindset. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and prepare yourself to be open to feedback (both positive and negative).
Before you dive into your first coaching session:
- Identify clear goals: Ask yourself what you want to get out of the coaching experience. Where do you want to learn, improve, and grow?
- Block time in your schedule: Commit to regularly connecting with your sales coach, whether you’re just checking in, or having lengthy meetings.
- Prepare information your coach might need: Share any valuable information you have with your coach, about your current win rates, performance, and concerns.
- Get ready to take notes: Take notes from every conversation with your sales coach and use them to prepare action plans and growth strategies.
Embracing One-On-One Coaching for Sustained Sales Success
Working with a personal sales coach isn’t just a way to invest in your skills – it’s a way to invest in your future as a salesperson. Top-performing sales professionals know that continuous learning and development is the key to staying one step ahead in this competitive landscape, and a coach will help you to embrace the benefits of a growth mindset.
Need help finding the ideal sales coach? The Hard Skill Exchange offers access to a comprehensive skill sharing platform where experts can find industry-leading mentors and coaches, ready to deliver personalized learning experiences specific to their needs.
Join the Hard Skill Exchange, find your ideal coach, and take the next step towards a brighter, more successful future in sales.