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Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and, well, you know the rest. Why automated self-coaching is the future of Inside Sales, and that's great news for Inside Sales Managers and Reps alike.
After 30 years of Salesforce Management, Chris Boudinet was unequivocal. One Sales Team stood above all the rest, and he knew exactly why. "The best Salesforce I ever had also had the best company culture [...] They not only wanted to be better than our competition, they pushed one another to constantly improve so they would not lose to our competition. My role with that sales force became almost more of a mentor and sometimes referee, than a manager."
In aligning competitiveness, culture and success, Boudinet's insight hits a critical flaw in the thinking of many inside sales organizations. They have the right components, but they're emphasizing competition in the wrong way. They're trying to drive performance by placing their personnel in a Battle Royale, when they should be directing that competitive fire towards industry competitors.
Get Inside Sales Personnel to Coach Themselves
It's a wonder that many Sales Managers still have yet to discern how severe,y internal animosity adversely impacts coaching. When your successful Account Executives are actively hoping that new reps fail, you're all but ensuring another checkmark under 'Training and Coaching' in the next AA-ISP Top Challenges Report.
Bottom line: You always prefer a sales team of Bill Russells, who won two NBA championships as a player-coach for the Celtics, over a team of, say, 2006 Kobe Bryants. And the following four tactics will help induce your Inside Sales team to coach themselves and one another (while putting up Kobe's record-setting numbers in the process, ideally).
1) Establish one goal: Continuously improving aptitude in executing the sales process. Don't worry about making the Leaderboard. Don't only think about how many deals you're closing. The focus should be improving productivity and proficiency across each of your daily sales activities.
2) Give them a common enemy: Sure, your industry competitors are probably nice, decent people. But that should never be spoken of within the walls of your office. Set up competitor intelligence initiatives and train your personnel to take all public displays of pride from these companies as personal affronts. If your personnel refuse to buy into this line of thinking -- fire them.
Okay, maybe that's pushing it too far, but you get my drift. The more team members you have adopting this line of thinking, the better.
3) Appeal to ego: Your most successful reps will have the most to offer the rest of your Inside Sales team, initially, and you damn well better make sure they know that. Fight reticence by reminding them that there is something in it for them as well, be it more opportunity for growth, attending big events or something similar.
4) Replace yourself with technology: Powerful performance analytics tools are now a reality -- you're actually currently reading one of their blogs. Our software, Ambition, comes with features like our Reports Scheduler, which lets you receive automated notifications around whatever metric you want, and Ambition Score, which scores individual employee performance based around custom benchmarks and provides that information to them in real-time.
Drive Inside Sales Performance with Ambition
Ambition is a sales management platform that syncs every sales organization department, data source, and performance metric on one easy system.
Ambition clarifies and publicizes real-time performance analytics for your entire sales organization. Using a drag-and-drop interface, non-technical sales leaders can build custom scorecards, contests, reports, and TVs.
Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review, AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization), and USA Today as a proven solution for managing millennial sales teams. Hear from our customers below.
Watch Testimonials:
- FiveStars: Adam Wall. Sr. Manager of Sales Operations .
- Filemaker: Brad Freitag. Vice-President of Worldwide Sales.
- Outreach: Mark Kosoglow. Vice-President of Sales.
- Cell Marque: Lauren Hopson. Director of Sales & Marketing.
- Access America Transport: Ted Alling. Chief Executive Officer.
Watch Product Walkthroughs:
- ChowNow. Led by Vice-President of Sales, Drew Woodcock.
- Outreach. Led by Sales Development Manager, Alex Lynn.
- AMX Logistics. Led by Executive Vice-President ,Jared Moore.
Read Case Studies:
- Clayton Homes: HBR finds triple-digit growth in 3 sales efficiency metrics.
- Coyote Logistics: Monthly revenue per broker grew $525 in 6 months.
- Peek: Monthly sales activity volume grew 142% in 6 months.
- Vorsight: Monthly sales conversations grew 300% in 6 months.
Contact us to learn how Ambition can impact your sales organization today.
