This app can make sales coaching more collaborative and transparent

If you’re just cutting your teeth as a sales rep, odds are you’re familiar with ride-alongs, role-plays and pitch practices.
Depending on who’s managing and coaching you, the time it takes to truly develop and sustain your new sales skills can vary.
For example, let’s say you’re at a two-day workshop series with the rest of your sales team. At the end of the series, you go through a certification process to get your official sales cred.
“Within 30 days, what you learned [at that workshop] declines by 60 percent, and some say 80 percent,” said John Royer, managing director at InSiteHub. Based out of 1313 Innovation, the company develops sales training workshops and digital learning strategies for the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare industries.
Now, Royer is leading the charge as InSiteHub launches its interactive sales coaching platform, ConnectHub.
The app has several interactive features that enhance the coaching and assessment process between sales reps and their managers.

• Pitch Practice: This feature allows for one-on-one mentoring via real-time video and document sharing.
• Coaching Corner: This is where managers can assess and test their reps. The coolest part? Reps can go in and check their progress. Instant feedback.
• Knowledge Center: A repository for all shared content. “This is where we integrate with management systems, Microsoft SharePoint or CRM tools,” said Royer.
• Performance: This is where you can find data surrounding bottom lines, as well as measurements surrounding coaches’ evidence of impact.
• Group Chat: “It’s this live, interactive space,” said Royer. He compared it to Slack and Google Hangouts.

“The rep has visibility into what their manager is saying about them, input into their coaching sessions and a custom development plan,” Royer said. “The manager gets the opportunity to really have accountability in what they’re doing with the reps. They can see if the rep opened something and how long they spent on it.”
According to Royer, ConnectHub sits right in the middle of a quadrant of management tools — CRM, telemanagement, content management and learning management. “We can aggregate all that information,” he said.
Royer said reps and coaches will be able to see and utilize kinds of data they haven’t seen before. “Those metrics are going to be really important,” he said. “It creates a different conversation.”
ConnectHub’s stores all user data with Parse, a cloud service that has allowed Royer to focus on developing his features. For those, he enlisted the help of some old friends. “They’ve built what’s today’s MapQuest,” he said. “If you’ve ever been in a Hertz car you’ve used their mapping technology. They’re one of Intel’s handful of preferred app developers in the U.S.”
He said it took about seven months to build most of ConnectHub’s technology. And there are more features coming. Soon, Royer said, users will be able to print reports directly from the ConnectHub interface. They’ll also have the ability to have individual, archived text conversations in group chat.
“I think there’s a lot more value in live collaboration and still being able to do that,” said Royer. “It’s a powerful tool.”
ConnectHub will formally launch May 15.