Skill-sharing is an important aspect to consider in the workplace. The experienced employees can transfer valuable knowledge to junior employees. This gives the juniors a chance to ask for assistance and guidance whenever they need it. They eventually become industry experts themselves in the end.
Skill-sharing is an important aspect to consider in the workplace. The experienced employees can transfer valuable knowledge to junior employees. This gives the juniors a chance to ask for assistance and guidance whenever they need it. They eventually become industry experts themselves in the end.
One of the best ways to enable skill-sharing among employees is through mentorship programs. A mentorship program pairs an experienced professional in a given field with less experienced ones for training and skill transfer.
As a business leader, you can leverage mentorship programs in sales as well. A sales mentorship program aims to connect experienced sales professionals with newly hired reps or junior sales employees. It allows these mentees to learn the ropes of the industry using a practical approach. In the process, the mentors can develop leadership skills as well.
How do you set up and run a sales mentorship program effectively? Follow these tips:
Goal-setting is always the natural first step for every venture. Whenever people ask questions on how to start a business, the first answer always has to do with setting business goals. Likewise, your sales mentorship program needs clear goals to govern its operations.
Begin by looking into what your company seeks to achieve through the sales mentorship program. Are you grooming employees for promotion or is the mentorship part of your onboarding process for new sales reps? Do you intend for it to simply boost employee engagement? It can even be part of your SaaS marketing strategy, to reel a wider audience in by providing them with value sales support.
When deciding on your general goals, think about your target mentees as well. Will they be just your new hires? Or will they be current sales employees who have worked for long in the company, maybe 10 years?
Once you have your general goals, develop SMART objectives that will help you achieve them. Assume your sales mentorship goal is to get select sales staff promoted. One of your objectives could be to get them to sell five products within the one-month duration of the mentorship program. Another objective could be to get them to make ten successful cold calls during that period.
These goals and objectives shall serve as your guide as you run your mentorship program. The mentees can also use them to effectively track their progress throughout.
You’ll need to develop an effective sales mentorship program outline that specifies these goals and objectives. The outline also incorporates other important details of your mentorship training. These details include:
In your outline, you can also indicate the milestones and the timeframes within which you hope to achieve each. See this sample outline below:
The more detailed your outline, the better. If you don’t have time to write an outline, you can use generative AI. Just insert the right prompts and you’ll have your comprehensive content in no time.
As a final tip, bear in mind that while your outline is structured, it’s also flexible. A structured outline ensures mentees know what to expect and allows them to have productive mentorship sessions. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be adjusted when needed. What if, because of unforeseen circumstances, the sales mentorship sessions fall behind schedule? Your mentors might need to adjust the set mentorship duration in the outline. If they stick to the original duration, they’ll end up cramming many topics into one session. That can negatively impact learning outcomes.
Most mentors will naturally find their way around creating a thriving relationship with their mentees. However, as a business leader, it will be better to provide a bit of guidance to make the sales mentorship program even more successful.
The guidance you can provide doesn’t have to revolve around sales skills since mentors already have those. Instead, you can teach mentors how they can become good teachers. Why not teach them to recognize mentees’ learning styles and adapt accordingly? Researchers have identified over 70 of these learning styles. You can help mentors discern when to assist or when to let the mentee figure things out on their own.
Teach your mentors the best practices to follow during mentoring, too. Mentoring Guide said these include listening actively and building trust.
Equipping mentors with the skills to use the tools they’ll leverage throughout the mentorship program is key as well. If they’re mentoring online, you’d need to teach them how to use your chosen video conferencing platform for their sessions, for example. You’d need to do the same if they’re using a learning management platform.
You can have a fixed schedule for your mentor training session. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them valuable and relevant mentoring advice once that training is done. Giving mentor support should be an ongoing process.
Let’s assume your sales mentorship program is up and running. Your job doesn’t end there. Set aside time to meet your mentors and their mentees. It’s the best way to know whether the sales mentoring program is working (or not) for them. You want to get first-hand feedback from the people involved in the program.
Include an open forum session in the meetings to allow the participants to air their views and ask questions. Create an accommodating environment for them to feel free to speak up. But if you see that some participants still don’t talk much, offer them an option to give their anonymous feedback in written form instead.
During these meetings, any issues between mentors and mentees - such as mismatches and incompatibilities - can be identified early. You’ll need to address them accordingly.
You don’t have to hold these gatherings every day. If your mentorship program lasts for a month, holding meetings once every two weeks, for instance, can do the trick.
Also, make sure you manage time and don’t keep participants for too long during these gatherings. Many of them are busy people who probably have lots of work to do for your company’s growth. Be efficient in tackling the meeting agenda and participant questions.
It is key to recognize every achievement - however small - the sales mentor makes. Mentorship is a big responsibility placed on their shoulders. They don’t just spend a fair amount of their own time teaching junior sales employees. They also exert a lot of effort to help mentees hone their skills.
There are several ways to reward your sales mentors for their achievements and show them that their hard work is appreciated. These rewards can be either monetary or non-monetary. For instance, you could give:
It’s also a good idea to acknowledge your high-performing sales mentors publicly. Why not recognize them on your social media channels? That’s not just a great way to motivate them to do even better. It’s also an excellent strategy to generate Instagram likes and Facebook comments for your company, courtesy of the employees whose lives these high-performing mentors have touched.
Remember to celebrate the top achieving mentors while providing additional help to those who didn’t perform as well. This will incentivize the high-achievers to keep working hard. It will also allow the lower performers to remove any stumbling blocks hindering their optimal performance as mentors.
At the end of the mentorship program, you’ll need to evaluate your sales mentorship program. Ask yourself, were the goals and objectives you set previously met? The metrics you’ll check to assess your program results will depend on these goals and objectives. However, here are some traditional metrics typically monitored:
Another way to measure program performance is to ask the mentees which areas they feel best suited to handle after the sales mentorship program. For instance, if they are now more comfortable with cold calling, then it means that that area of mentorship was well tackled.
Ultimately, with an evaluation of your sales mentorship program performance, you can identify what areas need to be tweaked for the program to improve.
A sales mentorship program can be beneficial to your company in many ways. But you need to set this up and run it the right way.
For a successful program, start by setting goals and objectives. Develop an outline for your sales mentorship program. It should guide sales mentors and mentees through the process.
Also, train your mentors to handle mentees effectively. Meet participants regularly to hear their views and identify areas of improvement. Don’t forget to motivate your mentors with incentives. Finally, track the sales mentorship program’s results so it can yield better results the next time you run it.
Follow these six tips and you’ll have your winning sales mentorship program in no time. Good luck!
