Dear readers, we are thankful for the interest you have shown towards the articles we have published during the year. The team at Prima Resource hopes that these articles have been useful to you, whether you are a business leader, entrepreneur, sales manager or sales representative.

Some articles have sparked more curiosity and we have compiled them for you to discover them or to rediscover them a second time.

If I'm talking about a mammal living in the lands of Africa and Asia, that is fast, elegant and resembles an antelope, you may guess that I'm talking about a gazelle. The main strength of gazelles is that they travel in herds to better react to danger. Impressive fact, some of them reach a running speed of more than 100 km per hour. Are you wondering why I'm talking about gazelles in an article on sales team performance?

Just like a group of gazelles, a sales force is more efficient with the contribution of each of its best players. The company's goals are achieved more quickly when everyone also gives their 100 km per hour.

Since joining Prima Ressource, I've had the opportunity to greatly expand my knowledge and skills in sales management. It allowed me to discover some things I would have loved to know when I was in a sales manager position, that would have completely changed the way I acted in that role.

Among all that I have learned, there is one fundamental component that caught my attention and that would have made all the difference: the importance of using specific sales assessment tools such as Objective Management Group's assessments. These are tools that make a huge difference in sales coaching and that would have made me a much better sales manager than I have been.

Coaching sales representatives is essential for sales manager. As it is often said in our articles, a sales manager should spend at least half his time on this beneficial task.

In order to be productive, each session with a representative must first be well planned. The sales manager must establish in advance the topics to be covered and the ways to measure their effectiveness.

A sales manager who limits himself to coaching his representatives only on their technical skills does not offer them the opportunity to develop to their full potential.

A manager must also work in depth on his sales team's shortcomings that result from innate characteristics.

To do so, one must coach every representative considering his or her sales DNA.

Recently on our blog we’ve been putting a huge emphasis on the value of asking open-ended questions. The ability to get right to the point is the difference between a long or short sales process.

To ask your client a lot of questions can sometimes be off-putting for both of you, and so it helps if you can figure out a way for them to grasp the importance of them.

Sales managers have huge responsibilities towards their sales team. One of them is coaching.

Just like your sales rep, your sales managers are in need of coaching. So, who’s responsible for coaching sales managers ? This is an important question.

Either the sales VP or the President will coach the sales managers. However, if in some case the VP is unavailable, or the owner finds themselves incapable of coaching, then the best option is hiring an external resource.

Coaching is one of the sales manager’s most important roles, making it an activity which they must spend a good amount of time doing.

The most common mistakes made by sales managers during their coaching sessions can effectively be summarized by this : confusing sales coaching with sales training.

While training remains vital to your team’s success, it’s important to understand that the process, as well as the techniques, are different than the ones used during effective coaching sessions.

As a sales manager, the ability to coach your reps is the most predictive element of your success. The type of environment surrounding these coaching sessions is the difference between their helpfulness and their uselessness.

The 3 most important qualities for a good sales coach are :

1. The ability to listen ;

2. The ability to keep from interfering ;

3. The ability to build positive relationships with their reps.

In many companies, I find sales managers don't role-play enough during coaching sessions with their reps.

One reason is that managers neglect the development of their salespeople and underinvest in the training of their sales force. On the other hand, managers are often poorly trained themselves and don't understand when and how to role-play. Above all, they don't understand its benefits.

In this article, I'll explain 4 situations where role-playing is particularly useful.