The Power of Strategic Sales Coaching

According to McKinsey & Company research, improving sales force performance can give organizations up to a 10% revenue boost. A robust sales engine, then, might be the key ingredient in strong market growth. But just as tuning up your car’s engine tune up has many steps and components, so does tuning up the sales engine. Where do you turn your wrench first?

The usual answer seems to be “give them good training”. And while our roles as training industry insiders should lead us to say a hearty “Amen!” to this answer, sales training seldom measures up
to expectations. One well-known study demonstrates that as much as 87% of new information erodes within 30 days of training, which, in economic terms, means that $0.87 of every dollar spent is thrown away. As one wag has joked, the half-life of learning is two weeks, which ought to depress anyone who puts training in place.

We think an often overlooked key is in systematic sales coaching. We recognize that it’s a current fad to talk about coaching and developing a coaching culture, with books a-plenty on offer promising you the “secret” (in fact, Amazon lists over 1800 books with sales coaching as their topic). Download the white paper now to learn six steps to apply strategic coaching to turbocharge your sales engine.