Sales managers typically use their CRM in one of two ways when they sales coach.  They either “coach the numbers” or coach their people. 

When sales managers “coach the numbers,” they typically enter into their sales coaching sessions armed with their CRM numbers, as if talking about the numbers improves the numbers. 

In contrast, sales managers who coach their people leverage their team members’ CRM numbers to facilitate their sales coaching conversations and create greater sales improvement.

You may be like many sales managers and miss the prime sales coaching opportunity that your CRM offers to you and your salespeople. You too may be “coaching the numbers.”  If you are, you’re not alone.  And if you are coaching your people while leveraging your team’s CRM data during your sales coaching conversations, congratulations.  You are among an elite few and the ideas below might help take your sales coaching practice to a higher level.  

The value of leveraging your CRM during sales coaching (rather than just “coaching the numbers”) is that you have your salespeople talking openly about:

• The sales behaviors they did and didn’t engage in
• What they did well and what sales “mistakes” they have made
• The sales strategies they’ll engage in next time under similar sales situations 

This kind of sales coaching content provides you with rich material for productive and profitable sales coaching conversations. It gives you real sales intelligence to help your salespeople improve the client experience and therefore increase their sales. 

Here are three ways you can better leverage your CRM during sales coaching:

1. Your CRM as a springboard

Whenever one of your salespeople’s CRM numbers indicate there has been a change in their performance from one recording period to the next, their individual sales reports can serve as excellent springboards into your sales coaching conversations.

Under these circumstances, you can use what I call the Compare and Contrast Model for Improved Thinking. As the title implies, your team members would compare and contrast what they did differently to get these different results.

Let’s say a team member has just come off a month where her sales were down 20% from the previous month. You would ask her questions to compare and contrast what she did or didn’t do differently last month versus the previous month.  You might ask about:

• What sales behaviors she engaged in the previous month to get thosee results
• Which sales behaviors she did or didn’t engage in this past month
• Which of those sales behaviors made the difference in her numbers

Team members are usually able to isolate what it is that they did that got them the better results.

2. Your CRM as a prioritization tool

You can use your CRM data to help your salespeople prioritize their sales actions.

Experience has demonstrated that salespeople often are not actually working on what their manager thinks their priorities should be.  Additionally, there’s sometimes a disconnect between what salespeople think their priorities should be and what experienced sales managers know are more productive priorities. 

To initiate a conversation about this with your salespeople, inquire about:

• Which leads your team member is focusing on today/tomorrow/this week
• What made them choose those leads
• What made them decide not to choose the others

When you use your CRM as a prioritization tool during your sales coaching conversations, you know more about how and why your team members prioritize their tasks the way they do.  Then, you’ll be able to help them find more effective ways of prioritizing their efforts.

3. Your CRM as a feedback tool

You can use your CRM during sales coaching to objectively measure the impact of your salespeople’s new sales behaviors. Your CRM provides you and your team members with the metrics to confirm, definitively, which sales actions work.

Research indicates that feedback is more effective when it’s provided in the context of the individual’s previous performance, rather than when it’s compared to the performance of the whole team. 

With this in mind, after each coaching conversation, try to determine which CRM data to watch as an indicator of the success of the new sales action each team member is engaging in with their prospects and clients.  This way, you have a clear feedback measurable to monitor.   

This might include you asking your team members about:

• Which CRM numbers they would expect to change when they engage in a new sales behavior
• What CRM data difference do they notice from their last sales behavior change
• Whether the change in the numbers warrants the effort required for the new sales behavior

Stop simply “coaching the numbers” when sales coaching your team.  Instead, leverage your CRM during sales coaching and help your salespeople see your CRM as a valuable contributor to their sales success.

Peri Shawn is a sales coaching thought leader who transforms the complexity of getting salespeople to perform better into the fewest number of action steps to help them sell more. Peri’s company, the Coaching and Sales Institute (CSI), has been in the sales coaching business for 25 years and is the sales training and coaching behind the launch of such products as the debit card and Blackberry in Canada. Peri has authored Sell More with Sales Coaching (Wiley, September 2013) as well as the three corporate guidebooks.

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