Today’s sales tools make it easier than ever to effectively coach sales staff to get the results companies want.

That’s because it is easier than ever to get one of the key elements of a successful ongoing training program – performance data.

Any successful training program relies on consistently using two key elements: goal communication and tracking performance data.

Existing customer relationship management tools – which track prospects, leads and opportunities through the sales process – log all of the information that a manager needs to have a meaningful conversation about performance.

And, new tools – including sales performance management, quota tracking and applications that automatically recommend preferred sales actions — reinforce messaging.

But, most importantly, managers must still manage. These programs are tools, not replacements.

Here are the steps for a successful ongoing coaching program:

• Have specific metrics. You should consider compensating based on these goals as well. (To learn how to develop a plan with rewards that integrate with corporate goals, check out this webinar.)
• Track the success of your team on those metrics using a program such as Salesforce.com’s KPI dashboards.
• Focus your efforts on middle-tier performers (research shows neither the top nor the bottom of sales organization responds to coaching).
• Provide consistent, individualized feedback based on a sales person’s performance on the tracked metrics.
• Reinforce the messaging through sale rep guidance tools such as Salesforce.com’s sales coach app, which offers a customized recommended behavior to sales reps for each stage of the sales process.

If managers don’t know what behaviors are successful and can’t track if those behaviors are being used, they can’t begin to have a conversation on sales strategy with reps.

Fortunately getting quantifiable metrics on performance is as easy as using the tools you already have.