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Despite Impact on Revenue Growth and Sales Win Rates, Majority of Companies Still Fall Short When it Comes to a Formal Coaching Strategy
BURLINGTON, MA (January 28, 2016) – Qstream, makers of mobile enterprise software for igniting high-performance sales teams, today announced sponsorship of three reports based on research conducted by the Sales Management Association and CSO Insights, a division of MHI Global, that surveys thousands of sales executives yearly to provide sales effectiveness benchmarking and trends. The research findings reveal that companies are missing the mark on sales coaching, hampering sales win rates and revenue growth.
While coaching is widely considered to have the greatest impact on sales effectiveness, formal strategies tend to be poorly executed or non-existent in a majority of sales organizations according to Sales Management Association, a global cross-industry association focused on sales leadership and sales operations. The company’s recently published research report entitled, Best Practices for Supporting Sales Coaching, revealed that:
- More than half (55%) of all the firms surveyed have ineffective coaching programs;
- An overwhelming 77% of firms said they don’t provide enough coaching to their salespeople;
- While “identifying skill deficiencies” was listed among the top three factors respondents felt had the biggest impact on revenue growth, it ranked #12 on a list of thirteen priorities for sales managers; and
- Implementing an effective coaching program optimized for coaching quality and quantity can help grow revenue up to 16.7% faster.
A separate coaching report by CSO Insights entitled, Optimizing Sales Management, revealed that the average win rate of the more than 600 companies surveyed was just 47.1% in 2015. The two-part report discusses the challenges that impede sales coaching efforts and explores what sales managers can do to improve win rates. Other key points highlighted in the report include:
- The average salesperson to sales manager ratio of approximately 6:1 is creating an availability time crunch for front-line managers expected to deliver coaching;
- On average, managers dedicate 20.8% of their time to coaching and mentoring sales people;
- Formal coaching processes generate much stronger results (53.6% win rate) in comparison to informal coaching (45.7% win rate) and discretionary coaching (44.7% win rate); and
- An effective framework for sales coaching includes timeliness, accuracy, relevance, consistency and individualization.
Delivered from the cloud, Qstream’s broad platform capabilities include mobile sales reinforcement, coaching optimization, performance data analytics, manager dashboards, and CRM integration. The secure platform is easy to deploy at scale and uniquely addresses the cornerstones of effective coaching, including continuous, real-time analysis of individual performance and sales fluency, and coaching insights based on manager-defined filters, such as time period, tenure, territory, product expertise, onboarding class or training history. In addition to targeted coaching recommendations, Qstream offers onboard communication tools, templates and coaching tips to expedite effective coaching. Last year, the platform identified more than 200, 000 unique coaching actions, increasing the sales coaching effectiveness of front-line managers using Qstream by 55%.
Complimentary Research
Visit the following links for complimentary copies of Qstream’s sponsored research:
- Sales Management Association, Best Practices for Supporting Sales Coaching
- CSO Insights, Optimizing Sales Management: The Sales Coaching Challenge and Optimizing Sales Management: Increasing Sales Coaching Effectiveness.
