Two Tips for Post-COVID Coaching for Sales Performance

New Requirements in Coaching for Sales Performance 

Most coaching for sales performance emphasizes traditional selling skills or how to construct a tremendous in-person pitch. In addition to these generic objectives, reps are frequently guided to update their product knowledge or sales processes or simply improve their wording and competitive battle cards. In this guide, we will help you discover a new way to enhance sales reps ‘ virtual-ready skills with personalized, science and AI-based development.

Let’s take the healthcare industry as a reference. Recent data from Medefield, cited by First Word Pharma, shows how the pandemic shifted the way sales interactions take place.

• Only 20% of the doctors surveyed had interacted with pharmaceutical company employees face-to-face in the preceding seven days. 
• Only 10% of physicians had met with a pharmaceutical company representative at a hospital.
• After the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry may have a long road to re-engaging with physicians if social distancing measures ever ease.
• Over the previous week, respondents met with an average of 0.5 industry representatives face-to-face in a clinic or office setting. However, individuals met an average of 0.2 times per respondent in the hospital setting.
• The doctors said they had spoken to an average of 2.5 pharmaceutical company employees over the phone in the past week, and they typically interacted with 1.5 individuals via video conferencing calls.
• Physicians said on average that they spoke to 4.5 pharmaceutical industry employees during the previous week, including face-to-face meetings and other communication channels such as video calls, emails or WhatsApp.
• A year after the survey, physicians expect to interact on average with six sales reps a week as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The feedback suggests permanent changes to the frequency of interactions with sales reps.

The information shows that sales agents’ interactions with their counterparts have changed in frequency and mode. Although percentages may vary, this reality is the same in all industries and fields. Therefore, training and coaching for sales performance need to reflect the new and still changing reality.

Despite the fact that this task may seem overwhelming, it does not need to be. Utilizing the right technology will help you efficiently implement the following two tips at scale. Continue reading for more information.

Related: How to Enhance your Pharmaceutical Sales Teams’ Virtual Detailing

Two Tips to Implement Today in Coaching for Sales Performance

A team of behavioral science experts has developed technology that provides your company with everything it needs to improve coaching for sales performance. In short, it’s about developing soft skills and being able to measure the tiniest of communication variables in your organization. These two tips improve results in every remote conversation.

1) Coaching on soft skills

Communicating effectively is the key to exceeding the quota for every sales representative. Coaching for sales performance often poses a challenge to sales team leaders in assessing all their representatives’ skills. This can be a particularly demanding task in post-pandemic times when soft skills are highly relevant.

According to The Balance Careers, soft skills are “non-technical skills that relate to how you work. They include how you interact with colleagues, how you solve problems, and how you manage your work.” 

Among them are interpersonal or people skills, relationship skills, observation skills, time management, empathy, and others. Developing soft skills is especially important when it comes to customer-facing jobs. Employees working in these positions are in direct contact with customers on a daily basis. 

Providing helpful and courteous customer assistance requires several soft skills and a wide range of complex skills that not all employees possess. 

No matter how innovative a product or service may be, it won’t sell if the rep can’t communicate its benefits. A well-spoken sales representative can build trust with prospects, leading to successful sales, long-lasting relationships, and happy customers who recommend the business. But, when a rep does not perform well, what happens? 

There are times when the problem comes not just from what they say but how they say it. Even through a video call, there may be subtle actions that result in damaging the outcome. When their leaders coach and measure soft skills that directly impact how they move, stand and communicate with their counterparts, reps can receive the right coaching to create powerful and authentic connections. 

Suppose you are concerned about grating a numerical value to these skills. In that case, you can now measure variables such as trustworthiness, confidence, credibility, curiosity, emotional intelligence, likeability, empathy, self-control, or relationship building. 

To gauge these abilities and others, managers used manual and subjective observation methods in the past. Today, you can develop coaching for sales performance around these skills through advanced, accurate, and scalable technology. 

Related: Get the Most Out of a Conversation Intelligence Platform for Sales

2) Measure and assess with AI

Traditional methods of assessing soft skills are subject to subjectivity, highly variable, and of limited use on their own. If you are looking for candidates with the soft skills you need, you could benefit from designing personalized coaching for sales performance based on surveys, workshops, or online courses.

To maximize the efficiency and precision of the whole process, you can also use the best AI-powered assessment platform. Having a trusted provider to partner with allows you to evaluate your sales team objectively, effectively, and at scale rather than using subjective metrics exclusively.

Using behavioral analytics, you can determine if your sales team possesses the same soft skills and potential as your most successful sales representatives. Coaching for sales performance is more about soft skills when you have the right technology.

Engaging and developing employees is critical to an organization’s growth. The AI-powered performance reviews will enhance your reps’ growth and soft skills management. After an initial one-to-one assessment, choosing the right technology will lead to a customized improvement plan. 

When you integrate soft skill assessments into coaching for sales performance, you can increase the metrics of your sales team. The following section explains what to look for in the right platform after identifying which technology will help you.

Your Technology Partner Is Available Today

Tracking and coaching sales performance based on these tips might seem impossible with your current tools and bandwidth. The solution uses a sophisticated AI platform to automate sales coaching at scale.

Using Quantified’s strategy, video communicators can tap into their extraordinary skills. Through primary and secondary research, we uncovered trends related to the present and future of video communication, how people are perceived over virtual calls, and what communication gaps arise when sales representatives switch from in-person to virtual interactions.

A sales rep can establish better human connections and begin receiving proper coaching for sales performance with Quantified’s AI technology. We measure communication effectiveness with our proprietary QC Score. You can assess skills using peer assessment, industry benchmarks, and aspirational standards. 

By integrating customer interactions and key behavioral dimensions into Quantified, sales results are improved, coaching, feedback, and performance measurements are provided accurately and at scale. Request a demo now.