3 Reasons Coaching Belongs in Your Sales Technology Stack

I have sold technology for over 20 years in both the enterprise and stand-alone solution space. In my experience, one of the biggest unresolved strategic decisions companies continue to face is whether to utilize functionality in existing enterprise platforms, or consider a “best of breed” stand-alone solution and then integrate it. Determining an ROI on this decision can be tricky at best and downright impossible at worst.
The underlying challenge most sales leaders face is prioritizing what they want their managers to focus on with their teams. With analytics, CRM, LMS, and a host of other sales automation and enablement solutions, technology overload and prioritization has become a legitimate concern. So here are a few ideas to help frame the discussion around coaching and whether it should have its own place in your sales tech stack.

1. Sales coaching has a proven impact on top-line performance. A growing body of continuing research bears out that managers who coach effectively, spend time consistently with their teams, and set and follow through on expectations (skill development and sales performance) outperform their peer groups. Consistently executing on these KPIs requires the right technology solution in order to maximize performance and make it sustainable. In the pharmaceutical space where we primarily work, there is validated research demonstrating that effective coaches outperform their average peers by a margin of over 30%. Over a 3-year period, that number increases to over 60%. With the coaching platforms available today in a SaaS model, the impact and ROI can be staggering and makes a compelling case for putting a specialized coaching platform in the tech stack. 
2. Sales coaching is a specialized skill. Simply using spreadsheets or other functionality that’s built into a platform designed primarily for another business need may appear to be an easier path, but generally won’t deliver the desired result of maximizing sales. Effective coaching requires a host of skills that range from preparation for coaching interactions to one-on-one in-field sessions, to difficult conversations. The resources needed to support all of these activities are rarely in a CRM or analytics application and are frequently impossible to locate and access when most needed by a manager—in the coaching moment. Whether this is the result of coaching being an afterthought or not thinking of coaching as a strategic value driver, the result can be millions of dollars in unrealized revenue. When you look at coaching as one of the specialized skills that a manager has to have in his or her toolkit, it becomes clear that as a primary function of sales management, a coaching platform is a good strategic decision and will deliver a compelling ROI. 
3. Sales coaching ROI can be difficult to measure. All technology ROI is challenging to measure, but the moving parts in coaching can make this solution area particularly thorny. If your platform and solution partner provides decent analytics, you will be able to correlate the activities associated with better and more consistent coaching that impacts sales. At the least, you’ll be able to draw some reasonable conclusions about how your sales coaching program is getting implemented in the field. In many cases even if you take the most conservative approach to top-line impact and severely discount operational efficiencies, most companies can see and achieve 10x to 20x return on the initial investment and ongoing platform subscriptions.

The bottom line when struggling to decide if a coaching platform belongs in your sales tech stack is to focus on these 3 critical drivers: impact on sales performance, enabling tools needed to support specialized coaching skills, and ability to track ROI. Then look at how well your managers are coaching and where they’re struggling. If you don’t know how to evaluate that or don’t have visibility into both what they’re doing and the results, you’ve probably just answered your question about putting coaching in your sales tech stack.

About the author
For over 25 years Gary Marinko has worked in a consultative capacity with Fortune 500 companies solving complex business challenges with technology. More recently Gary has combined his expertise in technology with sales training in the life sciences industry to bring focused value creation to key Proficient Learning customers. In his current role, he leads the interactive business unit at Proficient Learning, which focuses on developing sales enablement software and mobile solutions that help sales teams and managers accelerate performance and efficiency.