Sales analytics is all the rage and done well, the right solution can track and report on a wide range of pipeline and activity-based metrics such as win rates by employee, or number of sales calls completed. For a seasoned sales manager, this data can positively complement their own experience and judgment, while providing a new window into what is happening and when. Unfortunately however, these tools cannot tell a manager, the how or the why of a specific sales reps’ behavior.

Let’s start with an example. Darren is an experienced enterprise sales rep who has recently joined your team. He’s off to a good start building a pipeline, but activity reporting reveals that he’s doing far less prospecting than his peers – and far less than you, his manager, believes is required to meet his goal.

As his manager and coach, there are several options for how you might interpret this information. You could assume Darren has a motivation problem: he simply doesn’t like to prospect, and so doesn’t do it, choosing instead to fill his pipeline with leads provided by marketing or other sales development channels. In this case you might take the “stick” approach, reprimanding Darren for his past behavior and explaining that you expect his prospecting activity to increase, pronto.

Alternatively, you might look at Darren’s lack of prospecting activity and draw a more generous conclusion. Namely, that Darren doesn’t know how to effectively prospect and therefore avoids it. In this case, you might coach him on your own techniques for good prospecting, recommend remedial training, or pair him with a colleague who’s known for their strong opening skills for a day of shadowing.

The takeaway is that if your organization really wants to increase coaching effectiveness, making decisions based on data, versus simply hunches, is a smart approach. But not all data is created equal. An informed coaching strategy requires sales analytics data that is both activity-based, as well as persona-based. This allows managers the real-time insights to assess behavior, but also actual skills and capabilities, and develop an individualized approach that can actually impact results.

Our recent research with the Sales Management Association on sales coaching also bears this out. Respondents to SMA’s recent poll of 100 firms regarding the effectiveness of their coaching rated assessment of a salesperson’s skills as the third most important criteria for coaching success, behind financial results and pipeline reporting. So where can sales managers actually get this critical information?

Some sales execs are turning to CRM-integrated technologies like Qstream to support company mandates for improved coaching and deliver the data required for more focused engagement with reps.

In Qstream’s case, our Sales Capabilities Engine analyzes thousands of data points from your reps’ responses to scenario-based challenges. Team performances receive a rating of strong, medium and weak, including the ability to drill-down for more information. It’s designed to highlight areas where teams might be struggling, or perhaps excelling.

The solution also generates highly targeted coaching actions for each individual on your team, easily accessible from your sales performance dashboard. The most critical part of this approach is that it effectively engages time-constrained sales managers in the process of knowing who, when and what to coach. It also helps managers avoid the trap of speculating on the “why” of a rep’s behavior: is it motivation or is it skill proficiency? With Qstream, there’s no more guessing.

Too often, sales analytics focuses on reporting the numbers, but fails to provide a full picture of the insights required to actually change them. Knowing the limitations, and the possibilities of this reporting, can make all the difference.

Get in touch and see how Qstream can show you who when and what to coach.