Have you ever wished you could manage your sales team or be managed just like a professional athlete? This episode of Monday Sales Coach may have a way!

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If you believe the research, only 55% of salespeople make quota.

That means 45% of sales people don’t make their quota, and the reason is we’re flying blind.

For years sales organizations have had to use quantitative metrics to determine if a sales person was effective. We’ve measured the number of calls, the number of touches, meetings set, closing percentages, average deal size, emails sent, conversion rates, quota attainment and more, to ascertain a salesperson effectiveness.

Metrics represent the science of sales.

They are the quantitative element of selling. Make more calls, sell more stuff.  Improve your close rates, close more deals.  Set more meetings, get closer to quota.  The formula has almost always been quantitative, we’ve relied on the science, but it hasn’t been enough, clearly.

Over the years, we continue to put quantitative metrics under the microscope, we’ve looked to get more and more data to help us sell more and get more out of our sales team. The problem is, quantitative data only goes so far. Like the old adage says, sales is a science and an art, and until now it’s been almost impossible to address the art piece.

The art in sales happens in the conversations. It’s how we engage with prospects and buyers. The art comes in how we respond to objections. The art is the tone we use. The art is our unscripted responses to unexpected insights and customer responses. The art is the part of sales we’ve had trouble seeing– until now.

Back in the day, there was something called the ride-along.

The ride-along was when a sales manager would drive with his or her salesperson for the day. The sales manager would spend the day on the road going from appointment to appointment with the rep, listening and watching how their sales person sold and how they conducted their meetings. It was a killer way for sales managers to evaluate and observe how their sales people sold.

The ride-along was the one place that provided sales organizations and sale managers visibility into how their sales people sold.

Not the result of their efforts, like quota or number of calls, etc. but what they did on the calls, how they carried themselves, how the positioned the products and more.

Not all sales managers did ridealongs, but those who did garnered a wealth of knowledge.

Unfortunately, outside sales reps are a dying breed.

Who still goes on customers site sales calls anymore?

Therefore, ridealongs are a dying methodology.  (Yeah, yeah, I know some of you still do, but it’s becoming an increasingly smaller number every year).

What’s a sales manager or sales leader to do?

How do we get visibility into what our salespeople are doing or saying if the ride-along is no longer an option?

How do we know how they give a demo?

How do we know how they overcome objections?

How do we know how they position the value proposition?

How do we know how they do a discovery call?

How do we know how they position us against the competition?

How do we know how they negotiate on price?

How do we know how they do anything they do, now that drive-a-longs are a thing of the past?

How?

Call recording that’s how.  I don’t mean call recording like we get when we call customer service line, I mean coaching based call recording.

We’ve seen an explosion of new sales tools, methodologies, structures, strategies and more over the past 20 years.

However, I’m going on record as saying, coaching and call recording will have the biggest impact on sales organizations revenue for the next 10 years.

Call recording and coaching will have the same effect on B2B sales that video analysis and GPS wearing has had on football. There isn’t a team in the AFL that could compete without video. Football’s entire coaching and strategic methodology have been built around video.  Everything, I mean everything evolves around what they see on video, and B2B sales call recording and coaching has the ability to have the same impact on sales.

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