Episode 93: Evan Carlton on What Good Sales Coaching Looks Like Sales Enablement PRO Podcast

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs.

Today, I’m excited to have Evan Carlton from the Sales Development Coach join us. Evan, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.

Evan Carlton: Yeah, thanks, Shawnna. I appreciate you having me on. So, I am the founder and principal consultant at the Sales Development Coach. I provide sales development advisory and coaching services to businesses requiring more strategic advisory services.

Perhaps their existing sales developing organization needs to improve its performance or efficiency, or perhaps they don’t have an internal sales development organization and they need to start generating more pipeline. I also provide tactical coaching services for sales development leaders, as well as SDRs and practitioners who are looking to, again, enhance the performance of their teams, perhaps improve their career growth, or just make a ton of money and smash quota next month.

SS: Fantastic. And you also come with a sales enablement background, which is fantastic because I think that you can speak to the importance of sales coaching from both perspectives, both on the sales enablement side, as well as on the front lines. So, I’d love to hear from your opinion, what makes a good sales coach?

EC: Well, there are so many factors that play into that, right? I think the biggest thing is often the same thing that makes someone an effective teacher, which is one, making sure that you really are keeping up to date on the best practices, advancements, et cetera, right? You can’t be just preaching best practices that worked when you were selling copiers in the nineties. You need to be keeping up to date with current events.

So, that’s probably the first thing, but then also understanding the way that each of your ‘mentees’, if you will, learn. So, taking the time to understand how they’re motivated, what their learning style is, how they respond to feedback and coaching.

Because the way that I might coach the same scenario with two different SDRs is going to depend on those factors. So for me personally, I respond to strong leadership. So, you know, if my manager gets in my face or is really pressing me, you can bet there’s going to be a change in my behavior off that. For other people, that can actually do more harm than good, right? So just knowing what style of coaching, the mentee is most receptive to is really important

SS: Now, in addition, because you have quite a vast background, you mentioned that you’ve been a sales rep in the past, both on the sales development side for new business, as well as actually closing a lot of those deals. How has that background influenced your approach to coaching and developing other sales reps?

EC: That’s a great question. I had an unusual trajectory of my career in that I actually ran my own business before I got into tech sales, where I had 20 employees. I was one of four co-founders and partners and so I got a lot of good management leadership experience from that. Also, another unusual part in my path was that I was a closer before I was an SDR, which is also unusual. I was an account manager doing 360 sales at Century Link before I went to NetApp where I was an SDR.

I think having appreciation for the full sales cycle really cannot be understated in the value that can have for an SDR or an SDR leader. Oftentimes I see SDRs rise through the ranks, smash quota, get promoted to SDR manager, but then they kind of hit this glass ceiling in the org because they don’t have closing experience. And so they can’t really advance past that SDR manager position or outside of the SDR organization. Maybe they even make it to senior director, but the