Keys to Automating Sales Coaching with AI
Sales coaching is vital for any sales organization’s success. According to Google’s Project Oxygen survey of 10,000 people, coaching is the number-one driver of performance for their organization. However, it’s often impossible for sales managers or coaches in large and dispersed sales organizations to personally evaluate, guide, and coach every rep.
It’s equally challenging to remain 100% objective in the process. As a result, these organizations rarely provide staff with the coaching they need, and salespeople receive generic training once or twice a year at maximum. Thankfully, there is a solution that can revolutionize sales coaching and give reps what they need to perform at their best: sales coaching AI.
With the help of automation through sales coaching AI platforms, organizations can scale coaching to everyone, regardless of where they work. The right AI solution for sales coaching will give you what you need to optimize sales rep performance, leading to significantly increased sales and profitability, making it well worth the investment.
The Challenges of Sales Coaching
While sales coaching is crucial for sales departments, it comes with challenges that can make it difficult to get the most from coaching. The following are some of the specific challenges that sales managers face regarding sales coaching.
Sales Managers Don’t Have the Time to Focus on Coaching
Sales management involves a lot of tasks, only one of which is sales coaching. Managers spend a lot of their time focusing on reaching sales targets and other critical aspects of the sales process, which makes them unable to dedicate enough time to sales coaching.
Each sales rep needs several hours of coaching monthly to benefit from it genuinely. Otherwise, they won’t be getting the training they need. To make up for this, many sales managers spend several hours monthly coaching the sales team all at once, which doesn’t allow for the individual focus needed for growth. Subsequently, coaching often doesn’t have the effect it should have on sales performance.
Sales Managers Don’t Use Data to Assist with Coaching
Most sales managers don’t have access to or bother to measure data around sales coaching. Instead, they turn to subjective experiences and intuition to determine what reps need to improve upon. They won’t analyze data or test different strategies to figure out what’s working and what doesn’t, making it challenging to develop a plan that works.
Sales managers and reps need to see how agents perform and the areas that need improvement. If sales teams don’t have any way to see sales performance metrics, sales managers won’t see who needs assistance and precisely where they need it. Again, this could prevent sales management from getting the most from sales coaching.
Related: 6 Tips to Transform Your Sales Coaching and Increase Revenue
How AI Can Improve and Automate Sales Coaching
If your sales managers and reps need some help with sales coaching, you can ensure your sales team benefits from effective coaching using AI. Sales coaching AI offers numerous advantages to facilitate sales enablement and empower reps. Some of the specific benefits of sales coaching AI solutions include:
Allow Remote Access for Reps from Any Location
Using the right AI solution for sales coaching, reps can access a user-friendly platform from any location at any time. This flexibility enables sales reps to work from anywhere while still engaging in coaching. On the platform, representatives can perform myriad tasks to gauge their performance and progress, with access to all the data they need to help them develop. This approach eliminates the reliance on an in-house environment and sales managers for sales coaching.
Provide Reps with Unbiased Feedback
When coaching sales reps, coaches and sales managers are often too subjective in their approach. They look back on their personal experiences and use unreliable anecdotal evidence to give guidance and advice.
However, this may not work for every rep. Unlike sales managers with limited viewpoints and experience, sales coaching AI uses algorithms and objective data to provide a genuinely unbiased response to reps’ performance. These systems can then give honest feedback and assessments to each salesperson. They can also consider multiple factors when providing feedback, whereas sales managers cannot focus beyond a few key factors in most instances.
Integrate Sales Coaching into Your Reps’ Workflows
Sales reps need a coaching solution that seamlessly integrates with their workflows. An efficient approach will make coaching less disruptive to their day-to-day activities than a more conventional classroom experience. The latest AI tools make it easy to integrate them with workflows, making personalized recommendations for learning based on where reps are currently at throughout their workflows. For example, an AI solution could help agents prepare for a meeting with a challenging prospect by presenting them with practice objections. Meanwhile, practice conversations could help prepare reps for upcoming sales calls.
Look for a platform that integrates with various tools, including CRMs, LMSs, HCMs, and calendars, to allow for effective integration.
Optimize Sales Coaching in a Way That Sales Managers Alone Can’t
Different sales reps have different levels of experience and needs, making it essential to provide representatives with personalized coaching experiences tailored to them. As such, sales teams won’t benefit from a generalized sales coaching approach that sales managers are likely to take. Managers can only handle so much at a time and won’t be able to give each rep the individual focus they need.
With the help of sales coaching AI, you can eliminate this concern by giving reps more personalized and optimized coaching. A good solution can provide representatives with access to variations of training elements and guide them along unique paths based on their requirements. Ultimately, AI can tailor coaching based on reps’ specific roles and responsibilities and their personas. The result is a highly optimized coaching experience that yields far better results than any one-size-fits-all approach.
Identify and Reinforce Winning Behaviors
Another benefit of AI is the ability to identify behaviors that yield the results that sales teams want, making it easier to define superior sales performance. The AI can help replicate these behaviors through role-play conversations and sales skills benchmarking. A reliable platform will have thousands of behaviors across which you can observe language, sight, and sound.
Related: Can AI Really Unlock Sales Coaching Opportunities?
Finding the Right Platform for AI Sales Coaching
AI is potentially invaluable improving the performance of your sales team, but you need to know what to look for in the ideal solution. There are some things to remember when looking for the right platform.
Choose a Platform That’s Right for Your Organization
Don’t simply go for the first solution you see. Some AI systems may not be able to meet your organization’s needs. Look for a platform with all the features and capabilities necessary to supercharge your sales teams. A good solution will be flexible and help ensure you only pay for what you need.
It’s important to understand that AI won’t replace people completely. The solution you select will be able to help sales reps and managers with coaching, automating various processes while still allowing for human-to-human coaching opportunities. Look at AI as a way to get the best results from coaching in addition to periodic group sessions and other coaching techniques.
Look for More than Words
Many AI coaching platforms only measure words using natural language processing. The most innovative platforms also measure verbal and non-verbal communication, signals that are known to significantly enhance human connection and sales success.
Make Sure Integration is Easy
You must ensure the technology you select for your organization seamlessly integrates with your existing systems. Your reps and managers won’t be able to get the most from AI solutions unless it works well with the tools they currently use. Look for a vendor that offers a solution that can work well with your enterprise’s systems, which will eliminate the need to make a complete upgrade to accommodate it. Your vendor should also provide full support to help you with troubleshooting or other issues.
Automate Sales Coaching with a Dependable AI Solution
The best sales coaching AI solution will be able to help your business thrive as your sales teams benefit from continuous improvement. Meanwhile, your sales managers can focus more on other important matters without leaving reps under-coached. The key is to find the right platform based on your organization’s needs.
For one of the best AI platforms available for sales enablement, turn to Quantified. Using our innovative AI solution, your sales teams will access one of the most effective sales coaching tools on the market.
Our platform seamlessly integrates with existing sales tools and allows reps to control their coaching experience fully. They’ll be able to learn from personalized plans and continue to develop their skills based on their individual needs and goals. Contact us today and request a demo if you want to learn more about our sales coaching AI platform.