Virtual Sales Coaching – The Essential Elements to Know

Publish Date: 07th Jan 2021
Publish By: Shivani Thakur, Sales Lead

In today’s article, we have our Sales lead, Shivani Thakur, share some valuable insights on Virtual sales coaching. She holds relevant and rich years of work experience in Customer delight, Sales management, Client coordination, and Team management. 

In today’s article, she will discuss the various essential factors for Virtual Sales Training.

So, let’s begin to deep dive to understand her perspective on this topic for today.   

Ø Virtual Sales Coaching – The challenge and the solution 

The majority of the daily sales activities and processes have turned online, considering the pandemic. B2B firms are also focusing on their online sales by selling remotely. Sales reps today face new challenges as personal meetups are not always feasible. 

The sales enablement experts are on the front line. They are the ones who assist your sales reps in achieving the right skills. Also updated information, best industry tools to enhance remote selling effectively.

Today, the key to success is sales enablement tech as it provides your sales team with the required training. Besides just training the content, practice environment, assessment, and collaboration virtually. As it actually helps them to bridge their gaps and perform better than before. These tools leverage mobile, record videos, network with peers to engage with the team anytime, anywhere as required. This calls the need for a robust online sales readiness platform.

Ø Virtual Sales Coaching – Managing Virtual Teams in Current scenarios  

In one of our previous articles, we learned the basics of virtual sales team management. That talks about the dos and don’ts of virtual team management. 

The idea is not to repurpose the current going program in a conference that will be easily forgotten.

Hence, we are introducing the essential elements of a remote training program. To help the firm achieve success and scale growth. So, let’s begin our discussion on the key points required for successful virtual sales training online. 

Remote Sales training is a vast exploratory field, for today, let’s take a deep dive and focus on eight important elements of virtual sales training.

– Understand Coaching Gaps:

Figuring out if the sales reps and the managers are on the same page. Hence, the need to realign and match expectations, identify competencies that require improvement is essential. To focus on the managers who support delivery for that coaching.  

– Utilize Practice Environment for Video Recording:

The pre-recorded videos enable sales managers to evaluate and coach the reps on the required parameters. It helps both the sales reps and the managers to understand their performance and improve where needed. Real-time learning might not provide the advantage of providing feedback. 

– Resolve Training concerns:    

The sales managers must know the issues faced by their sales reps. At which aspect are the sales reps struggling, and how can you assist him/her overcome the same. As an online sales readiness platform, the right tool will help reveal the problem faced in sales. The flaws in the sales pipeline, and classify the good performing sales reps from the under-performing ones. So, this is purely where the role of the sales readiness platform comes in the frame. 

– Promote Peer – Peer Collaboration: 

Better performing peers can share their best practices with others. This can prove to be more multi-functional. It reduces the sales managers’ burden to train their sales reps. In addition, encouraging fresh ideas to share with the entire sales team. It is one of the most vital team-building activities and should be encouraged amongst your sales departments. 

– Maintain Consistent Messaging: 

The essence of clear communication should not be ignored at any stage of the process for any department. But, mainly when it comes to product line mergers and developing the new product. The sales managers should deliver the right message and share consistent information with the sales reps.  The sales managers can also again go through the recorded videos of their reps. To better understand the message being communicated and identify queries. So that it is resolved in the next phase of learning. 

– Manage New Hiring with Ease: 

Even if you are hiring new reps or shifting the current ones for a new role. The minimizing time to get new hires ramped & productive is critical. Pre-boarding reps through online programs is time and effort saving. You can have reps practice their stuff based on the online program. To learn independently, and the sales managers will know how to implement their knowledge and skills. 

– Record a Content Repository: 

Providing your sales teams with a central content repository can assist them in creating and sharing as per buyer’s requirements. It will save a lot of time and effort in recreating what is already done. The marketing team should create fresh and relevant content for the sales team. To always answer the questions about the brand, offerings, pricing, demo, and so on. 

– Learn with Interactive Gamification:

There is a need to tap into a sales competitive drive to create learning more fun. This is achieved with interactive gamification. These efforts led by video assessments, contest participation, and answering MCQ types enhance their motivation and improve their sales performance.

Ø The new era for Online Sales Readiness Platform 

When it comes to sales management for virtual teams, this is a new era. If your organization hasn’t upgraded itself to a modern sales enablement approach, now is the right time. The sales enablement approach has got you covered by so many parameters to improve your sales process. It also includes performance, right from understanding coaching gaps to learn smartly with gamification. 

Organizations using the modern online sales-readiness approach see improvement in various directions. Basically like new hiring, winning rates, improved collaborations, virtual practice environment. Hence, these core pointers’ involvement in your process will deliver a better sales experience for your team & drive better outcomes.