The EDGE Sales Coaching Framework

We recently hired a few new salespeople. It’s no secret that it takes a while to feel confident selling in the custom installation world — often a year or more. There’s an incredible amount to know. We’re expected to be intimately familiar with some or all of the following:

Audio
Video
Security
Video Surveillance
Access Control
Networking
Home Theater
Lighting and Electrical

Sales Training — Illustration by Hasan As Ari/Getty Images

Depending on where the conversation goes, we need to be instant experts in any of these areas. It’s a tall order. A career in sales here requires two kinds of education: technical and sales.

Thanks to our partnership with IntegrateU, we’ve got both covered. Our training center at Livewire (IntegrateU’s facility) is co-located inside our HQ. Between online and in-person options it’s the largest training offering in our industry (I’m a co-founder of IntegrateU). There’s no excuse for our sales team not to be well-trained.

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On top of that, IntegrateU teamed up with a few integrators, including Hive and Livewire, to develop the Sales Playbook. It’s the first roadmap for onboarding a new salesperson in CI. So again, training isn’t the issue.

The nuance is in the onboarding journey. The Scouting program has a training framework called EDGE. How do we know when someone is ready to move from Explaining to Demonstrating? From Demonstrating to Guiding? From Guiding to Enabling?

I surfaced this with our director of sales & business development after learning one of our junior reps went on a customer visit solo. I said something like, “He doesn’t have a badge and a gun yet. Why is he on a consult?” That kicked off a great conversation about mapping IntegrateU’s skills to our own framework using a checklist that could be understood by both manager and employee. This checklist should be able to show at-a-glance how far along the salesperson is and how much further they have left to go. That’s where EDGE comes in:

Explain

This is the foundational level. We’re asking:

Can they articulate Livewire’s value prop and core services?
Do they understand the customer journey from first inquiry through post-install support?
Do they know the stages of our sales process?
Can they explain residential vs. commercial vs. retrofit vs. new construction?
Do they know the basic system types?
Have they shadowed three full sales cycles?
Have they completed CRM training?
Have they shown curiosity by finishing all the Sales Playbook modules?
Have they passed Technician I and II standards?

Each item is scored from 1 to 5:

Unaware
Aware but needs help
Can do it with guidance
Can do it independently
Can coach others

Demonstrate

Here we’re looking for proof that they can apply what they’ve learned:

Participated in three in-person discovery visits
Observed live demos and can explain the value
Run a mock discovery meeting
Presented a quote with supervision
Observed two proposal walkthroughs
Understand gross profit, labor pricing, and scope creep
Can explain how projects are handed off to ops

Once their average score for a stage hits 4 or better, they move up.

Guide

Now we’re seeing signs of leadership and independence:

Runs discovery visits with minimal support
Joins networking groups and committees
Owns weekly prospecting commitments
Works daily sales tickets
Runs live demos with minimal support
Buddy checks discovery visits for complex scopes
Can collect design retainers
Sells “Cave of Pain” services (24/7 remote support, security monitoring)
Closes 3+ jobs with coaching
Handles objections and escalates when needed
Delivers at least two clean handoffs
Demonstrates gross profit awareness to project management
Keeps CRM current
Hits sales KPIs

Enable

This is where they’re firing on all cylinders and working with very little direct supervision:

Closes at or above gross profit targets (45 points for residential or 37.5 for commercial)
Meets or beats the average deal size benchmark
Keeps net promoter scores and Google reviews high
No rework friction post-sale
Drives 20% or more of business from repeat and referral clients
Mentors junior reps
Collaborates with design and engineering
Offers feedback to improve the process

We finished putting this together and looked at each other, wondering aloud, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”

Hopefully, a framework like this can help you, too.

What are you doing to move your salespeople from Explain to Enable?

Stay frosty, and see you in the field.