#476. How to Automate Sales Coaching. With Cory Bray.

Cory Bray, CEO of ClozeLoop, formerly known as CareerSofia, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[1:37] Cory distinguishes training from coaching. Coaching is a component of management. It enables employees to use the available tools to their best potential.

[3:32] Cory cites Bill Belichick as a great coach who established a system that works, and staffed it with raw talent he could help to become great. The system sets them up for success, and coaches help them continuously to improve.

[5:04] Cory went through Sandler sales coaching, and got a vision of what coaching can be. He went into business with a Sandler associate, to form CareerSofia. Sofia is from Sophia, wisdom, in Greek. Their focus is on sales.

[7:51] Cory discusses the vision of CareerSofia. They set out to make a software product inside Salesforce to deliver the minimum effective dose of coaching for the deal at hand.

[9:08] CareerSofia helps strategize against the competition, with the tactics a coach would suggest for moving a sale forward. Top sales reps and management curate content.

[10:13] CareerSofia supplies salespeople with tools they need to do the job from ‘Day 2.’ No long onboarding is required.

[13:09] The underlying principle is a knowledge base, structured so that relevant sales information surfaces as it is needed.

[15:46] Cory explains why testing is not a part of the CareerSofia platform. They started to include testing, and users didn’t want it. They just wanted coaching on time.

[16:48] Managers retain coaching authority. They coach one-on-one, and they supply CareerSofia with what works best in certain situations. Outside coaching is also encouraged. CareerSofia sells through sales consultant channel partners.

[21:38] The ideal end user has a a growing inside sales team of 5-100 reps, using Salesforce.com to sell one or two products. The ideal channel partner is a seller-doer sales consultant who wants to scale, without adding an associate.

[24:52] Cory sees three buckets in coaching: teaching the tools; teaching how to use them well; and teaching how to use them well under duress. CareerSofia helps the coach. Their future is in adding items to make the product more robust.

[26:53] CareerSofia has some secret sauce coaching tools coming up that Cory will announce at a future date.

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