Whether you like it or not, all sales representatives need coaching from time and time, depending on their level of expertise. ‘Sales coaching’ is one of the most effective ways to optimize sales team performance to help them reach their targets. You might not have thought of CRM enabled coaching but it is actually a great tool for the realization of greater sales performance. CRM software facilitates full visibility of your sales representative’s performance and pipelines for better coaching and guidance. Here are 4 important tips to effectively use CRM as an exceptional sales coaching tool.

CRM as an activity tool

According to Salt Lake City Sales Training sessions, CRM data can act as a great starting point for your sales coaching session. If there has been a visible change in one of your sales reps’ performance pattern, you can compare them to find out what the sales representative did differently to get previous results. You can analyse daily activities of a sales representative such as ‘making phone calls’ to make this observation. Check the number of activities resulted in responses and follow-up activities your sales rep performed a day. Analysis of these key points will give you an idea of where your sales rep is experiencing problems.

CRM as an activity tracking tool

CRM data helps you to track your sales reps performance in different periods of time. This helps you to compare their performance and observe the factors that contributed to their good or poor performances. You can also discuss the reason for such sales behaviors with the concerned representative and decide the future course of action that can lead to more business.

CRM as a focus tool

CRM will give you a clear picture of both the celebrated and failed sales opportunities. Sales representatives have their own limitations in terms of how much effort and resources they can pour into closing each opportunity in a given month or quarter. Therefore, it’s essential to prioritize opportunities and to focus on the most important and urgent ones. You can coach them to concentrate their efforts on the more productive opportunities. Based on the visibility into your team’s pipelines coupled with sales representative logic for choosing some opportunities over another, you will be able to prioritize the opportunities and instruct your representatives to focus on them in that order.

Use CRM as a feedback tool

According to Spokane Sales Training you can use CRM data as a key performance indicator of sales success. Some key points to measure are as follows:

1. Win rate.

This shows success percentage of your sales representative after the opportunity stage. If he/she has 40 opportunities and closed eight deals, their success rate is 20%. This number can be compared to the rates of previous periods or to the rates of other members of the team. It also indicates whether your sales reps are improving or their performance is deteriorating.

2. Average sales cycle.

This is the number of days your sales representative takes to find an opportunity to close a deal. The sales cycle should get shorter if the changes made by you in the sales process works. If your sales cycle starts flickering in its behavioral pattern without significant changes in the performances, it is considered as a red flag!

3. Size of closed deals

This indicates the expertise of your sales representatives. Even if the win rate is high but the deals are small, this may not be termed as a success. This way you can leverage CRM data to not only evaluate your team’s performance but also to provide valuable feedback for further improvement. As the software provides you the historical trends of the pipeline activities, you can decide what works and what not to coach your representative to make the best use of their time.