Real-time call coaching is crucial to outbound sales.

Prior to COVID and the industry-wide shift to remote work, real-time call coaching was an essential piece of the fabric that made in-person sales floors fun and engaging.

With the shift to remote work, SDRs are disconnected from each other in a way they weren't before, forced to make calls alone, isolated, and without support. Real-time call coaching is frustrating at best, and impossible at worst.

But, giving up on real-time coaching, despite being remote, is not an option.

The benefit of real-time coaching is that feedback loops are relevant, timely, and actionable for the SDR on the receiving end - a must in today's selling environment.

Other remote cold call coaching methods including reviewing call recordings are effective, but coaching is hands-off and feedback isn't delivered in real time.

Ask any sports coach if they would rather watch game films of their players and share written feedback with them, or if they'd prefer to be on the field with that player while they are in action.

You know the answer: coaching is best done hands-on.

As we've all adapted to the remote sales environment, technologies have adapted too, providing various ways to facilitate real-time call coaching.

Real-time call coaching methods can include:

• Live call monitoring

• Zoom power hours

• Replicating in-person salesfloors

Live Call Monitoring

Most dialers these days provide the option for a manager to tap into an SDR's live conversation, aka "eavesdropping", allowing the manager to listen to exactly what the SDR is pitching so that they can provide the rep with live feedback while the conversation is going, or once the conversation ends.

Salesloft's Live Call Studio is a pretty robust example of how managers and reps may benefit from this type of synchronous coaching.

The main pro of live call monitoring is that reps are getting real-time feedback from the managers who are listening in.

Cons of live call monitoring include the fact that a manager can only coach one SDR at a time, and there is no ability for peers to listen to each other's conversations or listen to their calls while they are dialing themselves.

Orum has partially solved that problem with their live call floor, allowing teammates to listen in on each other's conversations at will, however, there is no face-to-face interaction with this tool, and no native channel to provide feedback to teammates while they are on a call.

💡 Coaching Tip: If you are using live call monitoring to provide real-time call coaching to your SDRs, be sure to keep your feedback concise and focused on one or two improvement areas at a time. It's easy to overwhelm our reps with too much feedback!

Although it's time-consuming and feedback is limited between a rep and manager, live call monitoring can be an effective way to provide real-time coaching in a remote setting.