6 Coaching Pitfalls to Avoid

Rapidly changing customer behaviors and expectations, coupled with increasing competition, is making it difficult for reps to close deals, often driving sales organizations to re-examine ways to boost sales. And while most sales organizations identify coaching as a key driver of improved performance and invest heavily in it, they often still find themselves facing poor performance results.

That’s because the progressively complex sales environment is pushing sellers to develop new skills. The critical question in this scenario—are managers suitably modifying their coaching approach to cater to the emerging needs of its sales force? The answer – maybe not.

To make their coaching efforts more effective in this evolving environment, managers should ensure that they steer clear of some common coaching pitfalls.

Here are the top six coaching pitfalls most managers face, and how to avoid them:

Pitfall 1: Coach on Relationship Building Skills

Many managers typically focus coaching on sharpening sellers’ relationship building skills. However, SEC studies reveal that sellers who are Challengers are far more likely to be high performers than Relationship Builders, and managers should therefore coach sellers on developing the key Challenger behaviors.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Coach on Challenger Skills

During sales interactions, Challengers focus on teaching customers unique insights which often push customers to take action. Managers must establish systems to help sellers internalize and apply these new behaviors of teaching insights, tailoring them to value drivers, and taking control of customer interactions.

Pitfall 2: Coach All Sellers Equally

Most managers try to spread coaching time equitably across all team members, while some pay greater attention to star performers. However, while effective coaching increases retention of star performers, it does not impact low-performers significantly.

How to Avoid this Pitfall— Focus Coaching Efforts on Core Performers

Coaching time should predominantly focus on the average or core performers, rather than star or low performers. This yields the greatest impact on sales results; indeed, coaching can improve sales performance amongst core performers by 8% to 19%.

Pitfall 3: Focus on Opportunity Pursuit and Post-Deal Activities

Managers often give the same importance to coaching activities across the entire sales process (i.e., opportunity creation, pursuit, close and ongoing post-deal activities). But, most managers seem to focus undue time on stages with relatively lower pay-offs—opportunity pursuit and ongoing post-deal activities.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Overemphasize Opportunity Creation and Close Activities

Managers can better ensure deal profitability by targeting coaching time on high impact areas of the sales process—mainly, opportunity creation, and close. Managers should coach sellers on identifying the right initial sales opportunities and sharpening deal close and negotiation skills.

Pitfall 4: Provide Generic Feedback to Sellers

Coaching sessions typically involve managers providing actionable and impactful feedback to sellers. However, managers often tend to share generic views or examples that sellers find difficult to relate to or implement.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Tailor Coaching to Sellers’ Individual Styles

To ensure time spent coaching is beneficial for sellers, managers must customize feedback to a seller’s unique needs and learning preferences, while simultaneously considering seller personality and response to constructive criticism. For instance, keeping a record of every seller’s progress and mentioning specific instances of improved (or unsuccessful performance) can help sellers better understand and value manager feedback.

Pitfall 5: Coach on Deal-Based Capabilities

Many managers focus coaching interactions on resolving immediate deal-level concerns in order to meet sales targets, rather than long-term skill development. In fact, sales managers are increasingly deemphasizing coaching and are spending more time in the field to secure business.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Coach Sellers on Deal- and Skill-Based Capabilities

To navigate through increasingly complicated sales interactions, companies are looking to sellers to teach and lead the customer through the buying process. For this purpose, leading companies are coaching sellers on both deal-based and skill-based capabilities, targeting a few key development areas based on analysis of trends in seller behavior over time.

Pitfall 6: Improve Coaching Effectiveness by Increasing Coaching Time

The average amount of time a manager spends with his sellers is an important predictor of their relationship quality, but it does not reflect the quality of coaching. Sellers gauge coaching effectiveness not by the amount of time managers spend with them, but by how coaching adds value to their growth and development.

How to Avoid this Pitfall—Coach Sellers for Three to Five Hours a Month

SEC research shows that returns on coaching start diminishing after three to five hours per month. However, time alone does not lead to coaching effectiveness; it largely depends on how well that time is used. Indeed, the key differentiator between core and star managers is that most core managers focus on telling sellers “why” they should improve their skills whereas star managers focus on “how” sellers can improve their skills, making their coaching more effective.

SEC Members, benchmark your coaching practices against best practice and identify existing or approaching pitfalls by using our newly updated Anatomy of World-Class Sales Coaching Practices.