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Why Coaching Frameworks are important

Written By Bekkie Wetz (Super Administrator)

Updated at June 5th, 2023

Coaching Frameworks are a core part of embedding and growing a successful growth mindset and culture. They’re designed to help you create consistency in how your teams give feedback to each other and to help embed what good looks like. In short, Coaching Frameworks make using Jiminny and giving feedback as well as Self Coaching as powerful as possible. 

What happens if you don’t have a coaching framework for your key customer conversations?

There are likely to be inconsistencies in your team's performance in terms of how they deliver the different sales activities in your sales journey. This is likely to be driven by individuals' ideas on how to do things and what good looks like to them rather than a consistent view for the whole team.

This means that, left to their own devices, feedback and support provided by each team member on other team members' conversations will be inconsistent and up for ‘debate’ as to whether it’s feedback worthy of listening to or not.

The knock on effect of this is that coaching time, whatever the format, won’t be as effective, because there isn’t clear guidance on what to listen out for within the conversation itself. 

As the leader, you’ll be depended upon for support, the one to provide feedback to the rest of the team, instead of each other.

This may stifle peer to peer coaching from happening at all and your culture may lean entirely on definition by results (did we win/ lose an opp) rather than focusing on development and improvement within the process.

Development will be slower because the path to excellence will be foggy. With Coaching Frameworks, instead you can create clear expectations, give people clarity on how and where to improve so you can make a true impact on your results!

The benefits of creating Coaching Frameworks 

Coaching Frameworks are the foundation for creating consistency across the team. 

Here are the core benefits to setting these up:

  1. The focus shifts to be on performance vs outcome

         It's natural for us to obsess about results in sales and CS and any revenue driven team. 

What was the result of that demo? Or that negotiation call? Did we secure the renewal?

But when we do this, it's easy to overlook the quality of skill displayed by the person in the conversation. For example, a rep can hold a discovery call, and it may not be an opportunity for the team, but the sales rep may still have done an amazing job at handling the conversation. Sometimes things are out of our hands e.g. they don’t have the budget. Coaching Frameworks keep our attention on the delivery and quality of performance, not just the result / outcome.

  1. It creates the standard

With a Coaching Framework, the whole team understands what great performance looks like within a particular type of call, which means there's no grey area as to what great looks like, there's a team standard as to what's expected.

  1. It supports the coaching culture

Clear definition on what is being assessed in the delivery of a sales / CS call, allows freedom for anyone to be the ‘assessor”! Whether your team are big on self-coaching and want to be able to reflect on their own performance, whether they want to support another member of the team or as an aid in manager coaching, a coaching scorecard is a core tool in scaling coaching across the team in a big way.

  1. It actually provides freedom for the reps

You may think a framework creates rigidity, but done in the right way, we know it can provide real freedom for reps to deliver a great call their way, in their style. A fairly common way for sales / CS teams to know what good looks like, is to listen and learn from the boss or the A star player, and this is great for learning what works. It becomes problematic if reps try to copy vs listening, learning and adapting it to fit their style. So other reps should be a source of learning and inspiration, but shouldn’t be the framework, reps need to be the best version of themselves. Coaching Frameworks give them that permission. 

  1. And the obvious

If you have a clearly documented framework, then most importantly, it helps the team understand what they’re doing really well, and what they need to work on to improve. In the same vein, it helps you see where your team has strengths and areas where you can work on with them or run extra training. 

I have a training document for calls, can I upload this as my Coaching Framework?

Well let's start with the obvious…

The big difference between a training doc and a coaching framework is the context it's used in. Additionally, a training document is key when you're onboarding new starters, however your Coaching Framework will be a key development tool for the whole time your reps are part of your team. The training doc is used in the safety of our workspaces and in hypothetical situations. The Coaching Framework is used in real life conversations with customers, this is where the unpredictability is! And where the real learning happens! 

You probably have some kind of training document that you use to train your team on what a great discovery call looks like or a great demo/ renewal call for example. The training material will most likely focus on the “WHAT’  = this is what you do in the call.

It will probably cover things like

  • Pre-call preparation - what should be done to prepare for the call / research etc

  • Call structure - to help the team navigate the flow of the call

  • Key phrases / positioning statements - hints and tips on what to say and when based on the delivery of core messages

  • Call outcomes / objectives - what the objective of the call is, so for example, if it’s a discovery call your reps are looking for an opportunity so you’ll likely train them on the criteria of your opportunity definition

With a Coaching Framework you’re focusing entirely on how the person delivers that type of call, vs the key measurement of success being the outcome of the call. Here's a grid to demonstrate the difference between the 2 things:

Training Framework

Coaching Framework

How to prepare for a call

Soft skills in performance

Structure of a call

Delivery of messaging / positioning

Key phrases or questions to use

Game changing area to improve 

Call objectives / desired results 

Call strengths in performance 

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