Training Industry Magazine - March/April 2020 - 21

DRIVING
SALES
TRAINING
RESULTS
THROUGH
MANAGER
COACHING
BY KERRY TROESTER

Albert Einstein once said, "The
definition of insanity is doing the
same thing over and over again but
expecting different results."

was taught in training, and in a week,
the number jumps to 90%. Without
proper reinforcement, sales training
can be a wasted investment.

Many organizations are stuck in a
pattern of delivering the same training
but hoping for or expecting better
outcomes. The goal of most sales
training is to kick off change or develop
new behaviors, such as a new sales
approach, process or methodology.
But often, training fails to make a
sustainable change in sales behavior.

THE IMPORTANCE OF
SALES COACHING

Industry data shows us that training
alone cannot achieve the goal of
engaging, equipping and empowering
sales professionals to be valuable,
relevant and differentiating in every
buyer interaction. Research illustrates
that a single training event will not
result in behavior change.
Studies show that we retain less than
half of the information presented one
hour after training. After one day,
people forget more than 70% of what

While sales training alone may not
achieve the business outcomes
desired, industry statistics show that
sales coaching seems to have a positive
effect on business performance. Sales
coaching is commonly defined as a
formal process that uses one-on-one
meetings to help salespeople achieve
new levels of success by discovering
hidden issues that inhibit their
performance and identifying actions to
move forward.
But what impact does sales coaching have
on performance and business results?
* Sales coaching has had the greatest
impact on win rates and quota
attainment over the past five years,
according to CSO Insights.

* According to Aberdeen Research,
companies
that
provide
realtime, deal-specific sales coaching
increased revenue by 8.4% yearover-year - a 95% improvement over
companies that don't provide that
level of coaching.
* A recent Harvard Business Review
report illustrates that sales coaching
is both growing and proving its value
in businesses today. The report
shows that, in the past five years,
top businesses have focused more
on developing coaches to work with
sales reps than has been done in the
last 50 years.
The biggest benefit from sales
coaching is boosting performance of
the middle group of sales reps. The
HBR report further finds that top quality
coaching will improve the results of
the middle 60% of a workforce by up
to 19%.
However, the HBR research also found
that the bottom 10% of the sales force

T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MAGAZ INE - MODERN LEADERS 2020 I WWW. T RAI NINGINDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

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https://www.aberdeen.com/cmo-essentials/lets-make-a-deal-best-in-class-sales-training-can-shorten-your-sales-cycle/ https://www.hbr.org/2011/01/the-dirty-secret-of-effective https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1379/brain-science-the-forgetting-curvethe-dirty-secret-of-corporate-training https://www.csoinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2019/01/2018-Sales-Enablement-Report.pdf https://www.trainingindustry.com/magazine

Training Industry Magazine - March/April 2020

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