The art of persuasion is a predominant skill for a salesperson. Selling skills were deemed innate for a long time. Many salespersons climbed higher up the ladder without having to go through any sales-specific training. Sales training was never a structured process. It was event-based rather than being planned or strategic.
A little history…
Around 1950, sales coaching audio vinyl records and cassettes became popular with salespersons. Their sales coach was an audio cassette that they would invariably listen to in their car while on the way to meeting a prospect. Around the 1970s, video-based sales coaching was introduced to the sales world. With the introduction of CRMs in the 21st century, sales training took a backseat. Companies began to believe that CRM would automate most of the workflows and take some burden off the salespersons. CRM did provide a lot of convenience on monitoring, managing workflows and reporting; however, it was never a replacement for selling skills.
Enter AI in the 21st century. Driven by the increase in remote sales meetings warranted by the pandemic, intelligent, sales-specific remote meeting tools are emerging in the market. The advantages of these tools are enormous, and a massive shift towards adopting these tools is evident post-pandemic as well.
Why do we need sales coaching tools?
According to a Gartner research,
Sales representatives forget 70% of their training leanings within a week of the training, and 87% forget it all within a month.
Post this, the salespersons return to their older ways and continue to operate on a trial-and-error basis that is far from efficient. Memory retention plays a significant role in these types of training.
The emerging virtual, AI-based Sales Coaching Tools focus on continuous and continuing education. This coaching happens on the job during a virtual sales call. Sales coaching tools enable memory retention, not by preaching but by practice.
These tools provide real-time nudges and corrective steps feedback to the sales representative during a meeting basis the conversation between the seller and prospect.
This enables the salesperson’s brain to weave a story around the nudge and remember it longer than a prescriptive lecture. The possibility of having an incognito coach and recommending training based on the salesperson’s behaviour increases the efficiency of the sales coaching manifold.
Here is a list of top sales coaching tools for managers that will help make their sales team more efficient:
Table of content
Gong
Gong was one of the first movers to foray into developing sales coaching features in its remote meeting tool.
It uses conversational intelligence to identify the best practices followed by peer salespersons.
Additionally, it provides the managers direct visibility into the sales behaviors of the team and helps them in designing relevant and personalized training programs. Gong believes in facilitating the replication of the best behaviors of the superior salesmen by the entire team to maximize sales efficiency.
Chorus
Chorus aptly tags its sales coaching feature as Clone your closers. It provides automatic training and coaching recommendations to the managers and identifies skill gaps at scale.
Additionally, it tracks sales process and training adoption. Furthermore, Chorus provides benchmarking of self-performance of the sales representatives using post-meeting metrics likes talk/listen to ratio and filler words.
With the set of features aforementioned, Chorus provides a comprehensive sales coaching solution using the post-meeting metrics.
MindTickle
Mindtickle offers a unique gamification strategy for sales training that boosts engagement and the sales representatives are motivated to continually advance in learning.
With an exceptional hybrid model offering a combination of gamification and post-meeting metrics for feedback to provide actionable insights, MindTickle’s sales coaching is popular among many organizations.
It is an end-to-end solution for all your sales coaching needs.
TryWingMan
WingMan offers real-time coaching to the sales representatives using discreet pop-up cards.
It listens to the conversations and offers AI-based nudges if there is a monologue from either end. Post-meeting, WingMan recommends best behaviours and helps the managers to identify skill gaps and training needs of the respective representative.
Goodmeetings
Goodmeetings is the next-generation sales coaching tool. It offers the feature of an incognito coach who can discreetly provide suggestions to the sales representative if the pitch is going on a tangent.
Additionally, GoodMeetings provides real-time AI nudges basis the customer attentiveness score, talk/listen ratio and customer body language.
Furthermore. Goodmeetings uses conversational intelligence to identify user behaviour using video, audio and chat to generate real-time insights so that the sales representative can personalize his or her pitch and deliver it more efficiently.
In addition to the above features, GoodMeetings provides post-meeting metrics for identifying training needs and appraising the candidates. GoodMeetings is a future-ready sales meeting tool in the true sense.
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FAQs related to Sales Coaching Tools:
- Motivate and encourage salespeople to improve sales results.
- Plan ahead and set important goals, devise effective strategies and tactics.
- Analyse data and information.
- Project future figures and a series of sales prospects.
- Oversee customer engagement from daily to weekly.
- Ensure efficient collaboration with other teams and executives.
- Ask open-ended, probing questions that allow the sales representative to self-evaluate.
- Review the sales representative’s skills and abilities.
- Identify the root cause(s) of the problem.
- Discuss how the sales representative can improve his/her performance.
Our recommendation: As the selling practices continue to evolve, we cannot rely on the coaching techniques from the past. The pandemic forced selling to be primarily remote leading to the evolution of sales coaching needs.
With no access to face-to-face cues, we need to rely on super-intelligent virtual tools that train our sales representatives to deal with this change. The novel sales coaching tools of today are not only bridging the gap between face-to-face and virtual sales interaction but also providing better insights and improving the efficiency of a sales conversation – a permanent but positive mark left by the pandemic.
The new sales coaching tools are here to stay and increase the productivity of your sales team like never before.
