Personal Sales Coach: Most salespeople don’t learn to sell in a traditional classroom. Even if you did go to college to get a traditional degree in business, marketing, or communications, you probably didn’t take any classes that really told you how to become a great salesperson.
That’s because most people learn how to become effective at sales on the job, picking up tips from seasoned pros. The trouble is, experience-led learning can be slow, requiring you to detect strengths and weaknesses, and determine personal development strategies alone.
Working with a personal sales coach, on the other hand, gives you a unique way to turbocharge your education, enhance your skills, and overcome your weaknesses with personalized support. One-on-one sales coaching gives you a mentor who guides, challenges, and inspires you to push past roadblocks. Here’s your guide to unlocking your potential with personal coaching.
What is Sales Coaching?
Sales coaching is the process of working with a mentor or trusted advisor to improve your performance and skills through feedback, guidance, and practice. A sales coach doesn’t just tell you what to do to become a better salesperson. They work with you one-on-one to help you develop better habits, fix weaknesses, and discover your strengths.
Individual sales coaching basically gives you access to a dedicated mentor who works with you on a consistent strategy for personal development and growth.
What a sales coach actually does to enhance your potential can vary. Many coaches use a wide range of strategies, based on the difficulties you might be facing in your role. For instance they might:
- Use confidence building activities to help you overcome imposter syndrome, and feel more comfortable around high-level executives and decision markers.
- Teach you how to speak with confidence and authority during sales calls and pitches, with role playing and actionable planning techniques.
- Work with you on lead qualification and scoring strategies, to help you determine whether you’re wasting time on dead-end leads.
- Give you advice on which tools and technologies you can use to boost your efficiency or become more productive in your role.
- Walk through conversations with previous prospects with you, to help you identify areas where you may have gone wrong in the past.
All of coaching sales techniques would be tailored to your specific needs, weaknesses, strengths, and learning styles, ensuring you can get the best results out of your education.
The Benefits of Working with a Personal Sales Coach
A personal sales coach is a secret weapon for a salesperson – but it doesn’t just help you on an individual level. One-on-one sales coaching can help reps secure bigger deals and become more valuable to their teams. In fact, studies show that coaching can lead to an 88% increase in productivity, and 28% higher win rates.
Effective individual sales coaching can generate:
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Revenue and Win-Rate Increases
Coaching isn’t just “nice to have”—it’s a powerhouse investment. Nearly 60% of high-growth companies make coaching a core part of their sales strategy. Why? Because it generates serious results. For five years, the CSO Sales Enablement report found that sales coaching has the biggest impact on win rates and quota attainment in the sales world.
Working with a personal sales coach can ensure you hit your numbers consistently, close bigger deals, and earn more (both for yourself, and your business).
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Boosted Performance and Morale
Sales professionals often crave opportunities to develop their skills. In fact, around 83% of young employees say they’re constantly looking for chances to learn and grow. Sales coaching channels that energy by helping reps to consistently analyze their performance and improve.
Offering sales individual sales coaching opportunities to employees helps businesses to build team morale, improve staff retention rates, and turbocharge engagement. All of this leads to better performance results for sales professionals too. When you’re motivated and engaged at work, and confident in your skills, you’re less likely to suffer from burnout, or disconnect from your job.
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Accelerated Development
In sales, timing is crucial, and one-on-one sales coaching can help you to catch and address issues with your performance faster than you would on your own. You can experiment in a safe place with various sales strategies and processes, before putting them into practice at work.
Whether you’re struggling with cold calls, rejection, or difficult demos, your sales coach can help you work through those issues, helping you to develop resilience and grit. You can even roleplay new sales scenarios with your coach that you might not have had a chance to practice in your role yet, giving you a fantastic way to stay one step ahead in the sales game.
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Enhanced Empathy and Soft Skills
A personal sales coach doesn’t just give sellers insights into how they can improve their technical or hard skills. They also give you an opportunity to improve your soft skills. That’s crucial in a world where human connections are essential – 89% of sales leaders say that building human relationships is the most important part of selling.
Sales coaching sharpens empathy, active listening, and communication—skills that turn a good salesperson into a trusted advisor. Empathy will allow you to adapt rapidly to the needs of each client, improving your chances of conversions, and helping you to build champions for your team.
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Individual Sales Coaching Improves Sales Training
Companies pour billions into sales training, but it doesn’t always stick. According to Gartner, 70% of what reps learn in training is forgotten within a week, and up to 87% fades within a month. Coaching solves this by reinforcing training with steady, incremental learning.
One-on-one sales coaching turns learning into an ongoing, continuous process, paving the way for constant development, growth, and enhanced knowledge retention.
How to Choose the Right Sales Coach for You
Not all coaches are created equal. Every coach has their own teaching style, their own experiences to share, and their own strengths and weaknesses to consider. The best way to make sure you’re choosing the right partner for your development journey, is with research.
Before you begin your one-on-one sales coaching journey, look at:
- Referrals and reputation: How many people have recommended the coach you’re interested in to other sellers after working with them? Does your coach have plenty of testimonials and reviews that they can share with you?
- Coaching techniques: What kind of sales coaching techniques does your coach use? Do they experiment with role-play, simulations, data-driven coaching, or gamification? How does their coaching methodology match your learning style?
- Experience and expertise: Experience matters. Look for coaches with B2B sales experience and a deep understanding of coaching sales techniques. They should have a clear philosophy on coaching and proven methodologies.
You can also learn more about potential coaches by checking out their social media bios, or the information they share on their coaching profiles with a platform like the Hard Skill Exchange. Even tuning into an AMA session with a coach can give you a behind-the-scenes look at whether they have the skills, experience, and background knowledge you need.
Making the Leap to Personal Sales Coaching
A personal sales coach is one of the most powerful resources a seller can access – regardless of whether you’re new to the market, or looking to take your career to the next level. In fact, 96% of people agree that sales coaching makes a huge difference to their performance.
A personal sales coach will help you unlock the skills, techniques, and insights you need to stay motivated, and drive your career forward.
At Hardskill.Exchange, we make it easy for sellers to find the coaches that are best suited to their needs. We source coaches from the world’s leading companies, and share comprehensive profiles with our students, making sure they can pick a coach that has the right skills and experience to turbocharge their sales career.
Visit the Hardskill Exchange website, get to know our world-leading coaches and mentors, and find the partner who can help you take your career to the next level.