Why Sales Coaching Programs Fails?

Publish Date: 17th June, 2021
Publish By: Sagar Pradhan (Growth Marketer at Awarathon)

If your sales training or sales coaching program does not provide you with the expected outcomes. In terms of better revenue, better sales cycles, better ramp-up, and better sales process enhancement, you need to fix it. 

In today’s blog, we have mentioned down a few pointers. As to why your sales coaching program might not have worked for your organization. 

1. Sales supervisors don’t prioritize training.

In many companies, sales leaders are under constant work pressure to complete short-term objectives over the long ones. As the sales managers require their teams to sell effectively, there is no enough time to practice and coach. Hence, proper time management is vital between the managers, the sales executives to know the time allocation. A middle and long-term benefit of the sales training program must forecast, if not short-term ones. So, proper identification of new learnings, practising it, executing it, resolving real-time concerns with the sales coach, and peer-peer discussion is vital to know what part of the sales training worked and how the impact was.

2. Essential selling gaps should be diagnosed

A good sales pitch does not mean good selling skills. Good sales skills include a lot more – product knowledge, industry insights, competitor offerings, pricing, negotiation skills, presentation skills, body language, managing difficult situations.  

A coaching program to generate a good ROI must target the correct problems with adequate and relevant solutions. Similarly, for your sales executives to become better, they do; they need coaching in efficient pre-call planning. 

3. Are coaching tools customized?

To deliver interaction, coaching solutions, e-learning platforms are a bit easy to use and customized as per requirements, or else they might go unutilized. Some companies use complex learning tools. But simple is better. In an actual scenario, it takes a lot of effort, resources, time, and investment to craft software that is easy to operate and work with. The one that makes coaching more fun and highly interactive. These kinds of tools are prefer more as compare to the complex ones due to their nature.

4. Once fit size program for all 

Some sales coaching and training institutions train across various domain segments with the same learning format. However, it is not specifically designed or exceptionally crafted for your company’s business objectives and challenges. When your sales team is introduced to such a learning form, they learn some generic sales mantras or theory-based bookish concepts. It is also not inclined to sales managers or mid-level sales experts looking for something extra from their sales coach.  

5. Expectations set wrong

Some organizations that often opt for a sales coach or a consulting agency have unrealistic goals or business objectives in their minds. As a result, they neglect the essential sales process phase like learning, practising, testing, asking, performing, validating, etc. They think it is some magical show where once the sales team will be introduce to some techniques/hacks/tips and right from the next day or within the next month, the desired outcome will be achieve. But, as we all understand, this is not going to happen. It requires dedication, practice, effort, patience, learning skills, research skills to get there. It also varies from teams to teams, reps to reps how eager your sales department is to acknowledge, ask and achieve.    

These were the core factors why an organization’s sales coaching program might not meet the ROI, Revenue, and other expectations in place. Now that you know the concerns rework and improve to ensure you get something better from your sales coaching program.