Fixing Sales Gaps with Better Skills and Product Know-How

Every salesperson tends to lack one skill or the other. One may be great at negotiating, while the other is great at upselling. In simple terms, no two sales reps are the same. Skill gaps are inevitable but not impossible to close.

As key decision-makers, you must ensure your average or below-average sales reps are encouraged and offered the right tools to improve their performance.

In this blog, you will learn how to bridge the sales performance gap and how to assess sales skills through various methods.

What Does a Sales Performance Gap Mean, and Why Should You Fix It?

A sales performance gap is a noticeable gap between high-performing sales reps and low-performing ones and is not exclusive to any business industry or size.

Here are some reasons why the sooner you discover and start measuring the potential gap, the better it is going to be from a performance perspective:

• Turning objections into opportunities: Fixing skill and performance gaps can be reflected in their objection handling ways. For example, getting low-performing sales reps up to speed in dealing with price or value objections can affect sales pipeline movements.
• Streamlined sales processes: The sooner you identify knowledge or performance inefficiencies, the less effort and resources you will waste.
• Prevention of revenue leakage: Discovering performance gaps early on exposes any shortcomings of your current sales strategies. This way, you can ensure you do not lose any more revenue to under-performing strategies.
• Better customer relations and insights: Mending skill gaps helps your team improve and manage customer relationships as they become more aware of customer insights and behaviours.

How Do You Effectively Assess Sales Skill Gaps Within a Team?

Since there is no one way to pinpoint skill gaps, here are 12 best methods to assess potential sales skill gaps within your team.

1. Performance Metric Analysis

You may have heard of the statistic that says 20% of your team brings in 80% of sales. Undoubtedly, these are your top-performing, skilled sales reps.

But what is a better way to differentiate sales reps' capabilities?

The best and most ideal way to compare performance is by measuring key metrics like conversion rates achieved, average deal size closed, and the sales cycle length.

Next, find your team's average numbers and compare them against individual performance metrics to see where each sales rep stands. Use this data to set benchmarks for improvement and growth.

2. Sales Activity Tracking

Are your sales reps spending more time on non-selling activities? Are they unaware of possible technical help to handle these activities? There is only one way to know: activity tracking.

Start monitoring each activity, such as the calls made, emails sent, follow-ups done, meeting schedules, and presentations given. Doing so will give you a better understanding of what each sales rep does with their limited time.

Use activity tracking sales software or CRMs to monitor sales activities without actually micromanaging your sales reps. Further, use the software's insights to coach low-performing reps.

3. Pipeline Review Meetings

Conduct weekly or bi-monthly pipeline review meetings with your sales reps to discuss their pending deals and task progress. Regular meetings also give sales reps opportunities to openly discuss their obstacles and get help tackling them.

Salesforce suggests running individual pipeline review meetings over team-wide meetings to better understand each rep's strengths and weaknesses, and strategising and problem-solving skills.

4. Observation and Shadowing

Let your sales rep know you plan to shadow them and why it is important for their development. Shadow them by listening in on their sales calls, meetings, and presentations.

Observe their techniques and skills, such as objection handling, product knowledge, closing deals, active listening, and overall communication. Take notes during the call to pinpoint coaching opportunities and provide on-the-spot feedback.

5. Role-Playing Exercises

Organise role-playing exercises where sales reps and managers simulate sales scenarios and interactions.

Some example exercises are:

• Role reversal: The sales rep assumes the role of a prospect, and the sales manager displays their closing skills and conversation tactics.
• Objection island: This exercise involves calling out a rep and asking them to handle an objection within a few seconds.
• Elevator pitch: Sales reps are asked to practise their elevator pitches, which can then be delivered on call and evaluated by their leaders.

These exercises help assess sales reps' abilities to engage prospects, uncover needs, overcome objections, and negotiate effectively.

6. Customer Feedback

After every deal closure or touchpoint, ask customers to provide quick feedback on how their interaction with the salesperson went and if they were satisfied with the service via surveys, emails, testimonials, or one-on-one interviews.

Their responses can be used as constructive feedback to assess your reps' performance and uncover training opportunities.

7. Skills Assessments and Tests

Skill and talent assessments provide bias-free, accurate data on sales reps' current skill levels and guide skill development. Some example tests include product expertise, sales process understanding, and sales techniques.

Assessment and tests are also ideal for HR managers looking to onboard quality hires and widen their talent pool.

8. Peer Evaluations

A sales rep's potential skill gaps may only be evident to their peers. So, it is best to encourage internal peer evaluations where team members provide feedback on each other's skills and sales performance.

For example, they can shadow sales calls and review their counterparts' sales scripts and outreach strategies.

9. Managerial Feedback and Coaching

Feedback and mentorship from crucial decision-makers like sales managers and leaders can motivate the sales team to sharpen their skills. Mentors can also help curate personalised development plans for each sales rep and set realistic goals.

10. Training and Development Programmes

Encourage the use of eLearning platforms to support continuous learning. Conduct sales training workshops, seminars, and webinars to improve your team's sales skills and maintain competency.

Group your sales reps based on their noticeable gaps and tailor personalised training programmes accordingly.

11. Sales Contests and Incentives

Engaging in sales contests can combat burnout. And providing incentives keeps your teams motivated and encourages healthy competition.

For example, you could run simple contests like the salesperson of the month and reward top performers each month by monitoring results and gauging individual performances.

12. Performance Reviews and Goal Setting

Regular performance reviews let you set the right expectations for each sales rep. Be clear about what you expect them to achieve.

Use the SMART goal-setting approach, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, for better clarity.

What Are the Most Common Sales Performance Gaps?

Some standard sales performance gaps you must be aware of are:

Pricing Discussions During a Sales Call

Top-performing salespeople typically discuss pricing during the latter part of the call, especially in the initial stages, when they assess prospects' intentions and learn about their requirements.

So, your average and below-average-performing salespeople may have a noticeable gap in understanding when to introduce pricing discussions.

Product Knowledge

Say your company released a new version of the product or service. The sales reps who understood the product earlier now find it challenging to learn the new technicalities of the offering. This is a clear performance gap that sales leaders must recognise and close through coaching and training.

Call Preparation

Most sales reps are known to jump between discovery calls unprepared. Since no two customers or prospects are alike, a lack of preparation can impact communication and trust, indicating an evident customer knowledge gap and slower pipeline movements.

How Do You Close the Sales Performance Gap?

Here are four methods to close most sales performance gaps.

1. Implement a High-Performing Sales Strategy

Sales performance management via a high-performing sales strategy is essential to closing persistent gaps in your sales team.

To implement and commit to a high-performing sales strategy, you must:

• Identify performance gaps and their causes, such as lack of business knowledge, lack of coaching, or not understanding the processes
• Create new business goals for reps with reasonable quotas
• A/B test strategies before committing to them
• Use CRMs to connect disparate data and use their insights for better decision-making
• Support efficient planning and analytics

Committing and activating high-performing sales strategies requires thoughtful research, planning, and execution. Ensure you add the right tools to your workflows. For example, Docket's Sales Knowledge Lake gives revenue teams a governed foundation of product knowledge, competitive intelligence, and enablement material that reps can draw from to build more targeted coaching plans and improve performance consistency across the team.

2. Deepen Product Knowledge

Understanding the product inside and out gives your sales teams the much-needed confidence to tackle customer concerns, objections, or product-related queries that come their way.

Apart from noticing the sales rep's confidence in selling, the prospects or customers will also appreciate speaking directly to someone who knows the product deeply.

The best ways to improve the product knowledge gap are:

• Getting your sales reps and customer-facing teams hands-on with the product
• Running training and knowledge transfer sessions as and when you release new product upgrades
• Using AI-powered knowledge tools to give reps instant, accurate answers to product questions during live calls so they never have to say 'let me get back to you on that'

Docket's Sales Knowledge Lake addresses the most imminent knowledge and performance gaps by unifying product docs, pricing, security material, call recordings, and enablement content into a single governed source of truth. Reps get accurate answers from approved knowledge in real time, without searching.

Demandbase automated 93% of their seller queries using Docket's governed knowledge foundation. Their Solutions Consultants, who previously spent significant time each week tracking down answers to technical questions, now operate from a single verified source.

"For technical questions, SCs were spending unmeasurable time digging up answers. We've got a lot of different products and a lot of different methodologies of tracking information, so finding the right answer was a huge time suck." - Jack Torlucci, Senior Director, Solutions Consulting, Demandbase

‍93%  of Demandbase queries automated using Docket's Sales Knowledge Lake

3. Identify the Root Cause of Performance Gaps

Every sales performance gap must be identified differently. The best way to do this is by recording sales activities.

If you are already using a conversation intelligence platform or recorded sales calls, allot some time to listen in on them to identify gaps.

For example, you may notice a sales rep who struggles to explain product features confidently or someone who struggles with closing deals. Once you identify the common gaps, the best action you can take is to coach or retrain your reps.

4. Focus on Proper Coaching and Training

Sales leaders and managers must spend enough time educating sales reps on sales processes and technologies, and there are no two ways about it. A lack of foresight in training and coaching fails to provide sales reps with a proper roadmap, leading to a loss of direction.

Ensure you never ignore sales training and coaching, as they are the ultimate key to enhancing sales performance.

Closing the Sales Performance Gap Is an Ongoing Process

Sales performance gaps are inevitable for every sales team. However, proactively identifying them and working towards closure can give your sales reps a meaningful advantage.

Do not view it as a one-time effort but a continuous development process that strengthens your team's skills, consistency, and confidence.

Docket is the Agentic Marketing platform for B2B revenue teams. Its AI Marketing Agent opens a real conversation, answers from your approved product knowledge, qualifies intent in real time, and delivers an AQL to your rep.

The governed knowledge foundation behind the AI Marketing Agent, the Docket Sales Knowledge Lake, is the same layer that closes product knowledge gaps for internal reps: one approved source of truth that every rep draws from, at any stage of the sales process, without hunting for the right document or waiting for an SE to be available.

Book a demo to see the Sales Knowledge Lake in action at www.docket.io/request-for-demo