Data Driven Coaching Webinar - The Highlights
After last week’s webinar with SAP’s Data Driven Sales Coaching Program Lead, Stefan Funk, I have had the opportunity to review and reflect on what was a hugely valuable session.
It is clear that an organisation the size of SAP, with over 8000 sales reps, has both the means and the architecture to implement an ambitious and far reaching program such as this but, using e4enable’s approach and platform, I believe that any sales organisation, no matter their size, resources or budget, can reap the rewards of a Data Driven Coaching program.
Having listened to the session again (you can watch the full session OnDemand here), I’ve picked out my highlights…
Data Driven Coaching has considerable ROI
In Sales, we are all about the money and driving towards optimum performance is what every sales rep and sales leader should be focused on. With that in mind, SAP’s data driven coaching program delivered enviable results. When SAP compared the cohort of sales reps using data driven coaching to those who were not, they found:
21% Increase in Average Deal Size
41% Increase in # Opps
10% Increase in Net New Customers
30% Increase in Net New Bookings
Data Driven Coaching Removes the Guesswork
Ever sat down in a 1-2-1 coaching session or meeting with your sales reps and ended up having an hour long conversation but not really getting anywhere?
Being able to quickly diagnose where there are blockers to optimum performance and be able to review focused options to address these takes the guesswork away and focuses both sales leader and sales rep in the right place.
This will enable both rep, manager and the business as a whole to achieve their goal of improved performance.
The Blueprint of a Successful Program
Learning from both SAP and e4enable’s approach, there are 4 key pillars to successfully implement Data Driven Coaching:
Start with the Data - Understand and align the KPIs and Skills that make your sales people successful
Onboard & enable your Coaches / Sales Managers
Provide easy access to a platform that underpins this
Measure the impact of your program
Align KPIs to the Skills and Behaviours that Drive Them
Work with your Sales Leaders, Reps and Senior Leadership to identify the skills and behaviours that your sales team need to have to be successful in their role. We call it defining ‘what good looks like’.
Align each of these skills to the correlated KPIs. For example, if a key skills is negotiations, then I would expect if someone excels at this skill they would have a high opportunity close ratio. If someone excels at ‘prospect qualification’, then their Call : Meeting ratio would be high.
This is essential to adopting a data driven coaching approach as it acts as a guide during any diagnosis or gap analysis phase.
Align your Skills Matrix to your Learning Resources
Many organisations we speak to, including SAP, have a plethora of learning and enable resources. Some could be in the corporate LMS, some in your sales enablement platform, they could be on your intranet or even external to your organisation. The value of this to your data driven coaching program can be lost amongst the noise.
For your program to be successful, align your key enablement resources to your sales competency matrix so when a gap is diagnosed, it is simple and easy for the rep and coach to identify the right resources to help.
Create Individual Coaching Plans for the Sales Rep to Own
Have a plan of action that your sales rep can work on AFTER your coaching session.
Ensure the sales rep takes ownership and follows up on these action points so they can be reviewed in your next coaching session.
You can then clearly evaluate the impact they have had on performance.
Coaching is a Journey
If you want to see the impact on your results tomorrow or the day after, then coaching is probably not for you.
On that basis, it is important that you set clear expectations for your program.
What struck me throughout the session is that even scaling this in an organisation as large as SAP, it is the simplicity of the approach that makes it work.
It is clear, consistent and transparent. You can scale it across multiple teams without the fear of ‘lost in translation’ or assumption. It is objective and measurable which means it is repeatable.
Above all, it is clear from SAP’s evidence, and our existing clients, that it drives significant performance improvement.
At e4enable it is an approach we are passionate about and it is our mission to ensure that every sales organisation can benefit from the approach.
If you want to talk about how you can adopt this approach underpinned by e4enable’s data driven coaching platform, book in a demo…