Mobile Sales Coaching and Other Retention Tools

BY Kathy Crosett
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Every employee who comes into your organization has expectations about what they need to do to succeed and about what you’ll do for them. Your newest sales reps might not bring a complete set of skills to the table, but you can help close that gap by offering training and mobile sales coaching. Why mobile? Because your reps need encouragement and reminders when they are working away from the office and because mobile is the leading go-​to advice for today’s workforce. This effort can also help you retain employees.

Mobile Sales Coaching

U.S. consumers spend five hours a year checking out their phones. And they aren’t doing this on their own time. Research shows that 2.5 hours of each workday goes to looking at content that has nothing to do with work. You can establish a policy restricting access to phone while people work. Or you can send your sales reps regular reminders about what they should be focusing on in order to improve their results. You can feed them little chunks of motivational and thought-​provoking tips when you use an AI-​based microcoaching platform that has been personalized to the needs of your sales reps.

Setting Expectations via Mobile

As Jon Christiansen, a writer and principal at Sparks Research writes, “when employees are forced to choose between tasks in order to meet competing expectations, the result is a team of stressed-​out people without clear priorities.” Do your employees know exactly what is expected of them? If they are working in remote locations, daily text messages to remind them of what they should accomplish before they knock off in the late afternoon could help. These kinds of messages could also increase stress. As a good manager, you should help them understand what takes priority – closing a new deal or taking care of an upset customer.

Improve Efficiency by Coaching Through Mobile Formats

Sales training often takes place in a classroom and requires reps to spend hours away from tasks they feel are critical to their ability to make money. Nearly 20% of sales reps told us they wanted more selling time and to reduce their meeting and reporting requirements.  You can help them achieve this goal.

After the initial training is done and your reps have taken assessments to pinpoint where they need coaching on both sales and soft skills, your next step should be delivering microcoaching tips through mobile formats. Whether these tips are delivered to a smartphone or a tablet, your reps can access them when it’s convenient. The best part of this process is the personalization of tips. 

Reps who struggle with empathy or try to rush though the sales process, a common problem, can think about concrete steps to take before they make their next call to a prospect who’s been slow to commit. And if the thought of going for the close terrifies one of your reps, their personalized microcoaching feed will deliver email messages with links to case studies on how other sales professionals handle this challenge. The important point is reps don’t have to sit through hours of sales coaching that hasn’t been designed for their strengths and weaknesses.

Coaching and Retention

Only 46% of sales organizations rate coaching as effective. As sales managers, we expect our coaching efforts to improve outcomes for reps. We benefit from the progress and so does the organization. But remember that great coaching, done in person or through mobile delivery, also counts as professional development. These days, many employees, not just sales reps, are evaluating their career prospects and making changes. If your younger employees don’t sense that anyone in the organization cares about them, they’ll move on. You can use coaching as a retention tool.

Photo by Ylanite Koppens from Pexels


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