Last week in our sales coaching series, we covered how the top 100 sales managers with the highest win rates listen to calls and coach their teams. But do the best reps wait to be coached by their managers or by Sales Enablement?
Data from Chorus suggest top reps take charge of training themselves as much as they can.
Top reps spend 30% more time listening to sales calls than their other team members. These reviews can include listening to their own calls in order to prepare for the next meeting or learn a skill they’re looking to pick up.
By listening to these calls top reps figure out how to do better on the next call, without having to wait for a 1-1 with their manager or a sales training session.
We next looked at what top reps did differently than others when listening to calls in Chorus. The data highlighted some very interesting best practices that all reps would find useful.
Listen To At Least 2 Sales Calls Every Week #
Listening to actual conversations (your own or others’) helps reps identify areas of improvement, where they need help from others, and what someone else is doing better than them.
Continuous self improvement is key to being a top sales professional.
Our data shows that top reps listen to at least 2 calls per week or about 8 calls per month. How much time are you spending in call reviews?
Takeaway: Listening to calls is key to meeting preparation, continuous learning and improvement.
Spend More Time Listening To Yourself #
When top reps spend time reviewing conversation recordings, 60% of the time is spent listening to their own calls.
There are multiple ways reps can benefit when they listen to their own conversations. They can:
- Prepare for the next meeting with the prospect by refreshing yourself with the highlights of the last conversation
- Identify where you need help from others e.g. marketing collateral, product commitment on a new feature, etc.
- Correct mistakes and determine better responses for customer objections
In the remaining 40% time, top reps listen to calls from other reps and identify behaviors they can use in their own conversations.
Takeaway: Listening to yourself and identifying areas of improvement will make you a better rep than you were yesterday.
Observe What Other Top Reps Do Differently From You #
In a typical organization, top reps’ calls are heard 60% more than calls from other reps.
This is because managers tend to focus on bigger deals when they review meetings and also because other reps want to learn what top reps do differently from them. Conversation Intelligence platforms democratize the learning process in sales by opening up everyone’s sales conversations for review. This means you can learn how your company’s top rep runs discovery, does a product demo, or responds to a question on GDPR.
Takeaway: Learning from the best will help you become a top rep yourself.
During Onboarding Listen To 20-to-30 Calls Per Month #
Top performing reps begin with a bang. They ramp faster than others because they listen to actual sales conversations more frequently than any other training material.
Takeaway: In your early days on the job, listen as much as you can to the voice of the customer in actual sales conversations.
Know Where To Ask Others For Help #
Data from Chorus shows that quota-crushing reps are also on the top of their game with respect to writing comments on call recordings. They write comments on 6 calls each month and tag other people in 60% of their comments.
By tagging and notifying others of comments, these reps:
- Ask other functions like marketing, product managers, or sales engineers for help on a deal
- Request their managers to help them on a specific deal, talk track, or meeting
- The remaining comments are notes they write for themselves to ensure they do not forget something.
Takeaway: Build a habit to add notes to your conversations for seeking help from others or for reminding yourself of what you should do better next time.
Deals Are All About Collaboration #
It’s not just about the comments you write on your calls. Sales reps also seek help and comments from others. In this regard, again, top sales reps are ahead of the game compared to others.
By seeking help and feedback from others, top reps successfully get others to collaborate on their deals and coach them more effectively. Now marketing creates bespoke content that talks to a specific customer objection or scenario, product teams respond with timelines for a feature your customer really wants, and the sales engineer answers deeper technical questions very quickly.
Takeaway: Get others to listen to your calls and comment on them so they can help you close your deals and become a better rep.
Top rep behavior clearly tells us they adopt an aggressive self-help approach to coaching. They do not wait for managers or enablement to train them and instead hold the reins to their skill development firmly in their own hands.