Why you do this session / potential triggers
Without regular coaching on daily admin, reps often lose focus and drift. It can lead to wild swings in what they are working on, for example they may end up only prospecting and working leads and then end up with their opportunities being neglected or vice versa.
These sessions are a chance to help a rep who feels overwhelmed to reset and restructure so they have clarity on how to do the right thing at the right time.
What you need to prepare as a manager
Before the session, it helps if you can do a review of their activities, metrics and calendar to identify a possible root cause for their issues. You might want to store those in the private notes area to prompt your discussion during the session.
You should have a report from your CRM showing the rep performance against the metrics defined. Ideally you’ll use a dashboard in the CRM with live data, but if not a spreadsheet will work.
What the rep needs to prepare
The rep should prepare their own notes about what they struggle with and what they think the potential issues are.
What you’ll cover
Here’s some guidance for each talking point in the notes template:
What triggered the need for this session
At this stage you can talk through the general issues that you identified as part of your prep work.
Recap: why admin is valuable
Here’s where you step back from specifics and discuss the value of good admin and how it helps them close more business and helps you/their colleagues support them.
Review metrics around admin
Based on the report or dashboard, you can review each metric to discuss what they need to work on.
Review rep calendar
Look at the rep’s calendar:
Are they overloading themselves with appointments?
If they work opportunities in different timezones, are they using periods where the customers are closed to work leads?
Are they being pulled into unnecessary meetings?
Does the calendar reflect the actual use of their time?
Rep input: challenges / blockers
This is an opportunity for a rep to raise specific questions or ask for advice on anything you haven’t already covered.
How can the rep develop based on this?
To make the session valuable for the rep, there should be some action for them to take to make an improvement based on what they’ve learned. This section of the notes is a reminder to add those as actions so you can follow up later.
Some example actions might be:
“Block time in your calendar every morning for admin“
or
“Split time on your calendar so you work leads first, then opportunities”
What next?
Remember to share the notes and actions once you’re done.
Based on how the session went, you might want to update the rep profile with an update or a change in their skills profile.