You have just finished making the case for purchasing a sales coaching and training platform.
They loved your presentation and gave you the go-ahead to move ahead.
You celebrate your win -- and now, to begin identifying which solutions you want to consider.
Or…
You have not yet made the case and are seeking information to both make the case and begin to understand the options available.
In either case, with so many great platforms on the market, how do you know which is the best sales coaching tool for your business?
We wrote this article for you.
In this article, we will:
- Explain why sales coaching is important
- Discuss the standard coaching tool capabilities
- Share thoughts about Lessonly
- Provide information about Saleshood
- Educate you on Brainshark
- Explain Bigtincan Learning
- And leave you with a few final thoughts
- Why are sales coaching sessions important?
Sales Enablement and Sales Coaching has never been more vital. Gone are the days of throwing a new sales rep into the deep-end and hoping they can hit their sales targets. Not only is such an approach foolish and more than a bit cruel, but it also doesn’t work.
The statistics in favor of enabling salespeople through proper training, coaching, and education are irrefutable. For example, 42% of sales reps feel they don’t have enough information before jumping on a call. Sales Enablement can solve this “lack of information” problem.
Perhaps the biggest eye-opener for sales enablement was this visualization by Cirrus Insight that shows that the average salesperson spends only 39% of their day engaged in actual selling! Almost 20% of their remaining time is wasted searching for and gathering information (content and training).
What makes a good sales coaching and sales enablement tool?
A great sales coaching tool should integrate with your entire sales tech stack, including your sales enablement platform.
Sales enablement puts all the elements in place that are necessary to improve your salespeople’s ability to close deals. These elements include:
- Sales-related content
- Team sales coaching
- Personalized sales coaching
- Engagement Statistics
- And more.
The ideal sales enablement platform doesn’t merely furnish sales content, sales training, communications sales engagement capabilities, and scheduling features. It should also provide personalized sales coaching based on the sales rep’s current needs and performance improvement objectives.
Critical Sales Coaching Statistics
| Percentage of leading companies who believe that coaching is the most crucial role that sales managers play | 74% |
| Improvement in sales objectives in companies who support coaching development | 19% |
| Percentage of sales reps who believe coaching by their sales manager is one of the best ways to reinforce sales skills | 46% |
| How much more likely is it that salespeople will leave their jobs if their manager is a poor coach? | Over 60% |
| Average ROI for investing in sales training (source) | 353%
(that’s not a typo) |
| Percentage of improved sales training effectiveness in companies that have a dedicated sales enablement function | 29% |
| Percentage of sales managers who believe their company offers the right amount of sales coaching | 15% |
Let’s take a look at some of the leading sales coaching tools to see how they compare with each other.
What is Lessonly?
Lessonly is a learning management system (LMS) that allows companies to create their lesson plans and content to share with learners. The primary appeal of Lessonly is that it is designed with simplicity in mind.
Although Lessonly was not initially promoted primarily as a sales enablement tool but rather as a general-purpose learning tool, its acquisition by Seismic will likely narrow its focus to a more sales-centric approach.
Using Lessonly, trainers can prepare learning content in the form of:
- Videos
- Flip cards
- Question and Answer
- Images
- Documents
Once prepared, trainers share training and coaching with learners who can access it via their browser or Chrome extension.
Lessonly has built in a few features to give trainers insight into where their lessons need improvement. It has a “Search Terms” metric in its “Insights Tab” that trainers can use to see which terms users are searching for the most, but also to see which terms they are searching for that render no results. This insight should signal a red flag for any trainer and tell them to put up some content for that search term as soon as possible.
The system also provides a “Learner Satisfaction” metric that furnishes info about how learners view different types of content, allowing trainers to improve the content that learners don’t find helpful.
What is SalesHood?
SalesHood offers a comprehensive range of services to empower salespeople to do their jobs better.
SalesHood is a Sales Enablement Platform that provides, among other things:
- Sales content
- Sales coaching
- Buyer engagement metrics
- On-ramping and onboarding tools
In all these respects, SalesHood does a good job.
Like all good LMSes (Learning Management Systems), SalesHood allows trainers to create bite-sized content that sellers can consume easily and quickly.
SalesHood also offers leaderboards as a primary gamification feature.
Its sales content section is better structured than many other learning tools. Many sales enablement and sales coaching tools don’t make it easy enough to find content. SalesHood did a good job in this respect, integrating well with the most popular cloud storage providers.
Team leaders can provide regular updates that show up on a learner’s feed, and these have been structured much like a social media platform where users can comment on or rate the update.
What is Brainshark?
Brainshark offers a plethora of sophisticated sales-learning features. The company has won several awards for its sales enablement and readiness tools, including the “Top Sales Enablement Technology” award in the Eighth Annual Top Sales Awards.
Sophisticated sales coaching software
From its earliest days, Brainshark has pushed the envelope on Sales Learning and Sales Coaching. It offers cutting-edge content-authoring features, allowing coaches and trainers to easily create entire courses and multimedia learning materials.
One element that sets Brainshark apart is its attractive microlearning feature, and how it gives users the ability to practice via role-plays. These role-plays are analyzed through AI, and managers are quickly alert to any sellers who need help.
Readiness scorecards
Brainshark introduced “Readiness Scorecards” in May 2020. Scorecards are an advanced analytics feature that gives sales managers insight into what skill gaps might exist at both the individual and team levels.
Sales managers and leaders can then prepare content or personalized coaching sessions to narrow these skill gaps.
Focus on sales coaching and learning
Brainshark has always primarily been a sales coaching and learning platform, and in this respect, it has genuinely excelled.
Content-authoring features
Brainshark implements sophisticated content-authoring features that make it easy to create consumable content from almost anything.
Brainshark coaches can quickly transform PowerPoint presentations, Google Slides, PDFs, screen recordings, webpages, and other items into immersive, voice-enriched presentations. Attachments, embedded hyperlinks, interactive polls, and surveys can be added to enrich this content.
Content is easy to update so that sellers always have access to the latest information.
Brainshark’s integrated video-recording tool is designed specifically for learning. Coaches can record themselves only, or they can add slide content to the recording for context.
All content can be accessed on a mobile phone so that users can learn anywhere.
Practice
Learning is just the first step. Sales reps must ultimately achieve a sense of confidence through regular practice.
Brainshark makes this easy through its built-in practice module that can scale to any organization’s size.
To begin, coaches assess user skills through video or text-based coaching activities. Users can share their videos with peers before submitting their videos to coaches for review.
Machine-learning and sophisticated AI offer coaching tips directly to users, thereby saving coaches time.
Coaches can share example videos with the team easily so that learners have a standard to emulate.
Onboarding made easy
With all of Brainshark’s learning features, onboarding becomes a piece of cake. On-demand content means new sales reps can instantly access information on areas they are weak. Anyone can access this content from any device.
Coaches can design courses and curriculums, replete with due dates and quizzes to verify comprehension.
And machine-analysis of "Practice Pitches" helps sales reps stay on point and message.
What is Bigtincan Learning?
Bigtincan Learning is one product in Bigtincan’s turnkey suite of multi-award-winning sales enablement and coaching tools.
The primary focus of Bigtincan has always been to provide sales reps with everything they need to close more deals, which is why every product in the suite integrates seamlessly with any other, empowering sales reps at every step.
The true strength of any sales enablement platform lies in its ability to feed training analytics data back to coaches after live pitches so they can provide personalized coaching.
Mobile learning platform
Bigtincan Learning works on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones, with its ease of use, and content fidelity, being maintained in all cases.
All sales training and coaching materials are immediately available on any device, ensuring users can access that content from anywhere at the time of need.
Sophisticated conversational AI and voice analysis
Powerful AI is used to create adaptive learning paths, and powerful voice analytics ensure that the words that you use, and the manner in which you use those words, combine to create impactful experiences.
Gamification
Bigtincan Learning has implemented best-practice gamification technology to encourage healthy competition and a sense of teamwork. When one player makes it, the whole team makes it.
These in-app gamification features include incentives such as milestones, points, and progress reports. These capabilities keep learners invested in their progress and make the learning fun.
Microlearning
Microlearning is a powerful new way to train employees in a world that operates at breakneck speed. It is a way to educate people in short bursts to get their training in, even if it’s just by doing a few minutes on the subway to work.
Microlearning integrates deeply into every facet of Bigtincan Learning. By engaging in microlearning—bite-sized videos and materials designed to consume quickly—sales reps stay connected to their learning materials, always progressing a little bit each day.
It is often said that the way to learn something—whether it’s a new instrument or a new language―is to do a few minutes every day rather than just one large chunk a month.
Blended learning
A rapidly changing world means that learning courses need to be able to adapt. Bigtincan makes it easy to pull material from anywhere on the web and integrate it seamlessly with the platform.
Trainers are also not limited to web content. In-person video coaching sessions and even live events can be organized, coupled with recorded videos or just a quick presentation.
Quizzes and assessments track learner progress, and trainers can pull charts or images from anywhere, integrating them easily into their presentations.
This blended learning approach, where everything “just fits,” ensures that learners constantly have access to the latest materials without any limitations.
Because Bigtincan Learning then receives feedback from its sales enablement platform, coaches will quickly see which learning strategies are paying off the most and so push those out to the rest of the team.
Lessonly vs. SalesHood vs. Brainshark vs. Bigtincan Learning—which is the best platform?
Lessonly is an excellent learning management system overall and is likely to add more enablement capabilities now that Seismic owns it.
SalesHood is a great tool and worth consideration.
Brainshark is an excellent learning tool with many top-notch features. It is a true leader in the field of sales-readiness.
Bigtincan Learning and Bigtincan Engagement Hub offer a turnkey solution that covers every single base in sales empowerment. They are a sophisticated, all-around solution that leaves no stone unturned.
