Remote Work Fail: Replicating Faux Productive In-Office Practices: Call Coaching Edition

We’ve seen a number of posts on LinkedIn recently from sales team leaders who have been forced to learn quickly that the modern tech stack by itself does not guarantee success while working remotely. 

This isn’t usually due to the tech stack itself, rather to the manager’s mistake of trying to overlay common in-office practices or procedures to a newly remote and distributed team.

It’s an unsurprising, understandable and recently quite common mistake. 

This phenomenon provides great case studies to illustrate how some of these practices and procedures born from in-office environments are in the best case scenario antiquated and in the worst case - simply inefficient. 

Consider this excerpt from a VP Sales’ recent LinkedIN post: 

“There are two things we're struggling with, even with our tech stack: 1. Live call coaching. We were in an open office, with the sales pod sitting together. We made it a habit to eavesdrop on each other's calls. Once reps were done, we'd share immediate feedback and go into micro-coaching sessions. This is incredibly hard to do remotely. We have to schedule time to go in and listen to calls in Chorus.”

In this case, being forced to pivot to a distributed team model is actually moving this team toward a much better sales call coaching practice. 

If there is one thing that will absolutely kill the call focus and flow of the reps and the team as a whole, it’s immediate feedback and micro-coaching sessions. 

This is also a great example of how office settings can appear to facilitate productivity (micro-coaching sessions!) and collaboration (immediate feedback!) when in reality the result is inefficiency, standardization of poor practices and an environment rife with distraction.  

More worrisome than the herky, jerky stop and start inherent to being interrupted with immediate feedback and micro-coaching sessions when actively working in a call block, is the standardization of call eavesdropping. 

Sales team call eavesdropping is a popular faux amis (false friend) of the sales team coaching world. We’ve all had a sales leader swear to us that their team has developed winning call phrases and ways to handle objections from the magical osmosis of call eavesdropping.  

It’s a nice dream and a prevailing myth that doesn’t scale and doesn’t make much practical sense when you drill down on it. 

If your reps are eavesdropping on other reps calls they are either A. not on a call themselves or B. not fully engaged with the call that they are on. Not to mention, inherent to call eavesdropping is only being able to actually hear one side of the call.

Kudos to this manager for recognizing that, “We have to schedule time to go in and listen to calls in Chorus.” 

We’re going to do you one better. Are you sitting down?

Ok, here we go. Take out the “we”, replace it with “I”. 

This manager is getting closer to where they need to be - here’s how they actually arrive.

As the team manager, this person is the one who has to schedule time to go into the call platform and listen to calls to learn what is working and what is not. 

A savvy manager is listening for patterns on the calls across all of their reps - where in the conversation are reps killing it and where are they getting stuck.

It’s the manager’s responsibility to take the data and insights from these call recordings and develop a targeted training for their team. This training should include highlights and lowlights, illustrated by call snippets. 

There may be a call that is a 10 across the board and a perfect example of best case - so it makes sense to have your reps listen to the call in its entirety. 

For calls where that is not the case, what would be the point of having your reps listen to calls end to end? 

So, consider these two action plans for sales team call coaching, irrespective of the team being in-office or remote/distributed.

Plan A - Non-intentional call coaching program

Daily, impromptu “call eavesdropping”, combined with immediate feedback and micro-coaching that takes your reps off the phone and out of call flow during their call blocks. Reps are using your dialing platform and recording features, but who needs to listen to call recordings when team members can just eavesdrop on their teammates’ calls and only hear what their team members are saying? Bonus! After any occurrence of immediate feedback and micro-coaching - your reps can then practice what they’ve just learned directly with potential prospects! 

Plan B - Intentional call coaching program

Scheduled, weekly training specifically designed to train the team en masse on best practices and winning messaging. The team manager designs the training by listening to reps’ calls and identifying patterns of success as well as patterns of failure. The training is delivered at a dedicated time when the team is expected to focus and engage on the topics and the training. Practice is included as well, so the team is practicing with each other, rather than with your company’s prospects.

We think the choice here is clear and the real bonus is that Plan B can be implemented remotely or in-office. 

But that also begs the question, that if Plan B can be done remotely - why wouldn’t you?