Sales Coaching? 3 Reasons Why You Don’t Do It?

I saw this Article some time ago and it made me think back to when I was first a sales manager in the pharmaceutical industry. So often fear gets in the way and we are all full of Ego admit it ??

The thing is now we have to manage a team and if we don’t work with them they will never hit the heights to pull in the big numbers.

So have a read of this. If you are really series have a look at our sales coaching product that is less than the price of a pizza for 2.

Sales Coaching

Reason 1. They’re Focused on Selling, Not Coaching

Because many sales managers rose through the ranks to become the “uber” salesperson in their company, their instincts are always to go after the big deals. They have never been trained on the sales management skills needed to develop an elite sales team. So they do what they feel comfortable doing and what they have become very good at: selling. They see something going wrong (or at least not going well) in a sale and they step in to “fix” the problem for the sales rep.

This fix-it-myself mentality may solve an immediate problem (no guarantee) but even if it helps close one sale, it has serious downsides in the long run.

It undermines the salesperson’s credibility with the customer when the boss intervenes. Why would the customer ever want to do business with the salesperson knowing that the real power lies with the boss.
It undermines the salesperson’s self-confidence. Not good.
It does nothing to help the salesperson improve their skills. “Sales interference” from the sales manager just makes it more likely the problem will recur the next time around.

As a sales manager, one of the kindest things you can do for your people is to not be there for them. If a rep asks you a question, respond with a question: “What have you done about it so far? What do you think ought to be done?” Involving your salespeople in solving their own problems is what will break the cycle of constant need. That is what will help them develop their own skills so they become more accountable.

In short, stop seeing yourself as a problem solver, and start seeing yourself as a solution facilitator.

Reason 2. They Under-appreciate the Need for Coaching

A lot of stellar salespeople are building on natural talents and instincts. They needed only minimal coaching to reach the elite levels. When they become sales managers, they don’t pay much attention to coaching because they never needed (or received) much coaching themselves. They leave inexperienced sales people to sink or swim on their own, expecting their reps to pick up good techniques through osmosis, just like they did. They don’t recognize that coaching could be a way to break an experienced salesperson out of a slump or rut.

Think about how you spent your time over the last week, the last month. How much of it was spent helping your reps develop their skills or think through what they need to do to move a client forward in the buying process? If you can’t answer at least 50%, you are mis-spending your time as a manager. (See the next point.)

Reason 3. They Don’t Have the Time

Recently I was retained by a Fortune 500 company to examine their job description for the sales manager position. Fully 85 percent of the duties were directly linked to coaching salespeople. (I’ve reviewed many sales manager job descriptions over the years, and this was one of the better ones.)

I then conducted face-to-face interviews with a number of the sales managers and found that less than 5 percent of their time was actually spent on coaching. Five percent! Another way to say this is that sales managers were spending 95 percent of their time focused on 15 percent of their job responsibilities. Why such waste?

One big reason was that these sales managers were spending three hours each day responding to about 150 emails, virtually none of which came from their sales team. And that’s not counting all the meetings, paperwork, and fire fighting. The list of “urgencies” for sales managers today is endless.

With all the distractions sales managers face, the first thing to go out the window is developmental coaching-time spent helping their salespeople improve their skills (not just closing one sale). They haven’t observed the salesperson selling, or intervened at key points of the sales process, so when a sales rep is 75 percent of quota, they’re not sure why.

The solution? Start by stopping unproductive interruptions. Make a list of the top five interruptions you experience and come up with specific steps you’ll take to minimize their disruptions to your workday. Maybe it’s turning off the your Smartphone, or closing your office door, or simply ignoring that little “you’ve got mail” sound from your computer. Maybe it’s a salesperson who is “Needy.”

Next, take just 30 seconds to quickly write down your top three goals for your sales team. Then take a few minutes to identify the six tasks that you as a manager need to be doing, day in and day out, to help your team achieve those three goals? For lack of a better label, let’s call this your “3-6-No List.” Carry this list with you throughout the day. If anything comes up that’s not related to what’s on this list Just Say No. Yes, that’s going to be hard at first. Most sales managers are unwilling to say no. But you need to spend the vast majority of your time working on either sales development or business development tasks, and anything that eats into that time is a very low priority.

High-Leverage Coaching

Based on my contact with thousands of sales managers over the past 30 years, one of the most common mistakes I see is sales managers who spend most of their time with either their poorest performers or their top producers.

Focusing on the poorest performers is misguided. Suppose your coaching efforts result in a 10% increase in production amongst your bottom-producers. How much better off are your numbers? Not much.

Focusing your one-on-one coaching time on your top performers also is misguided. How much of a difference can you really make in their sales effectiveness? Should you talk to them about their career goals? Absolutely. Recognize them for their valuable contributions to the team? Yes, for sure. But don’t spend all your hands-on sales coaching time with them because they have less room for improvement.

The solution is to steal a lesson from the medical profession and “triage” your sales team. Chances are, your peak performers and highly experienced/tenured people will survive regardless of how much time you spend with them. Praise and recognize them – continue to motivate them – but don’t spend precious hours with them in the field conducting one-on-one coaching sessions.

The same is true in reverse with your bottom performers: chances are they won’t make it, so why give them all of your time. (Come to think of it, why are they still on your team?) But you can’t ignore them. It’s the middle performers who have potential to become high performers that deserve most of your attention.

Therefore, the high-payoff strategy is: Spend group time with your bottom producers. Spend most of your precious one-on-one field coaching time with your “emerging contributors” – those salespeople who have the best chance to develop into peak performers, if they could learn what you know.

This strategy of focusing on your emerging contributors can pay you multiple benefits in your sales management career. You may start to see emerging contributors sprint past your senior salespeople! Another benefit is that you’ll have more top producers, so the gap to the bottom producers will widen. The bottom producers who are committed to survival will fight harder to pull up their production.

No More Excuses

There are many similarities between selling customers and coaching salespeople. Both require understanding another’s problems, diagnosing the cause of that problem and helping the other person to understand the complications/ripple effects if they don’t solve the problem. Sales managers already possess many of the abilities that they need to become a great sales coach-but habits or misconceptions have prevented sales managers from utilizing these skills to develop an elite high-performance sales team.

For those sales managers who want to become a better sales coach, the implication is clear. You can’t achieve that simply by learning how to coach. Your solution must also solve the obstacles that prevent proactive, hands-on sales coaching from actually happening.

Best Wishes

Denise and Sharon

By Carl C. Henry

#1. Great Sales Managers Set Goals:

They are also masters at goal setting. Like top producers, they see an outcome and focus on it daily until it’s been reached. This shouldn’t be surprising. After all, nearly all-great sales are a result of having a great system, and working it consistently to hit targets. They know that small targets can turn into bigger targets, and that the only way to hit bigger goals is to hit all the smaller ones along the way. By manipulating their daily and weekly goals, they can guide producers to healthy and increasing annual figures.

#2. Great Sales Managers Know The Process:

Great managers understand the sales process, and know that each step is useful. Ask any of them, and they’ll tell you that you can’t skip any steps on route to a sale, and that to try means wasting time and energy. Without prospecting, you have no one to sell to. If the qualifying stage is rushed, you’ll meet resistance when you close, and might experience problems after the sale. Closing itself must be done patiently, working with the client to overcome any fears or objections. For a sale to be made, all the pieces must fit. A strong manager will help his or her producers to keep this in mind, so that they aren’t tempted to try to shortcut the selling process.

#3. Great Product Knowledge:

Another trait of top managers is that they understand the market for their products. They know where what they’re selling fits in terms of price and quality, and use that knowledge to show clients the best options for a given situation. They can tell you anything you’d need to know about a product in their catalog, along with its price and perceived strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition. This sort of thorough knowledge gives them the ability to coach their producers through presentations, as well as preparing them to counter objections.

#4. Great Sales Managers See Training Is An Investment:

Great managers know the value of expanding sales skills. They are always advising those under them to read another book or go to another seminar. They understand that training is never finished. Whatever you’re selling today, somebody else is out there training to sell it better and to more people. You can’t rely tomorrow on the same skills you used today. You have to keep learning or you will become stale. A strong supervisor will remind producers to keep training their minds and always be improving.

#5. Great Sales Managers Have Clarity & Focus:

Another trait they have in common is focus. Have you ever noticed how sales managers are always focused on their quarterly numbers? That’s not an accident. Simply put, great supervisors don’t get distracted by what’s going on around them. They know that they have a job to do – usually to help you hit a certain production goal – and will do whatever they can to help advance you to that point. Everything else should point toward that aim, and they’ll try to be sure that your activities reflect that.

#6. Great Sales Managers Have Patience:

And finally, they have patience. Most of them have been in sales long enough to know that there are going to be ups and downs. Being on top today doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily be in the same place tomorrow. Likewise, a bad week, a bad month, or even a bad quarter can happen to anyone. Like coaches, they’ve seen the wins and losses, and know that quality work will succeed over time, and that the lazy and noncommittal will eventually wash out. They emphasize doing the right things every day, because they know that over time, you’ll be successful that way.

By Dr. Jim Sellner Ph.D.

My point is this…

If you don’t want people to run screaming in the opposite direction when you have crucial conversations with them, you have to be able and willing to get “real” use “ordinary speak” and connect with people – on their “mind turf.”

Be respectfully honest, compassionately brutal and authentically devoted to their betterment. You are going into the room for improvement to have a conversation — one human being human with another.

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines is a master at this.

Talking to engage isn’t just about using with the “proper” words. Its not about the technicalities of words, its about the emotion in the message. Its about the intention behind the words you are sharing. You want to connect with people on an emotional level.

Making them value you.

Making them want to sharethings with you.

OK, fine — now you might ask, “How the heck am I supposed to do that?” Well, glad you asked!

This is not rocket science. The rules are quite simple.

1. Talk with a specific person or team about a specific goal or task you want improved – one task or goal at a time. Think of it this way.

2. Talk the way you talk. Don’t go “rap” and use street slang and shorthand. But if you can’t say what you need to say without stumbling and tripping over our tongue – you’ve gone too complex. Practice what you’re about to say preferable with a colleague who will be brutally honest with you.

Use simple words – not stupid, simplistic words. Most people have a grade school comprehension level. Some will be at college level. Very few will be highly skilled.

Most everyone, in a crucial conversation, in which heightened blood pressure clouds the mind, can only listen in 6-7 second word bites. Simple, easily understandable, delivered in small chunks makes it easier for people to digest the message. You don’t want them throwing up on you.

3. Tell a story, make it funny. Here’s one I like that one of my managers told me when I was being resistant to his instructions.

A motorist was mailed a photo of his car speeding through an automated radar post. An $80 speeding ticket was enclosed. Being a bit of a smarty the motorist sent the police back a picture of $80. The police mailed back a photo of handcuffs.

I got the point.

4. Relate to the person or group. Get into their shoes. What is their context? Use words that let’s them know you understand their world, and that you’re just as human as they are. People like that, they will then tend to like you. When they start thinking you’re a threatening alien you’ve lost their trust.

5. Make yourself easy to understand. Big, long speeches with long, run-on sentences send your audience screaming out of that room for improvement. Break it up, even use occasional word pictures or real pictures to help break it up. Ask for their input to engage people more.

6. Sleep on it before you deliver it. If you go for it when your rushed or under pressure it’s a sure bet you’re slap happy or exhausted and that 10-minute diatribe is nowhere near to being as impactful as you are deluding yourself into believing it will be.

7. Relax! Say what you’re passionate about. Say what you expect. Make it an invitation to improve.

8. Use the four keys to getting people to open the door to the room for improvement — Why? What? How! and “What if?

There you have it.

8 ways to not repulse the person or your team.

Are you able and willing to manage people with genius, to stop treating them like idiots or dummies — to engage, respect, and show that you’re interested in them becoming better?

I’d appreciate to hearing from you.

Human Principle #2: We behave in our best interests when we:
Increase our competencies;
Are aligned with our personal and business values; and…
Choose to be engaged.

By Marc Weiner

Beginning in the early 1980s, organizations and well-renowned establishments such as the Harvard Business School, The Gallup Organization, the Chally Group, the Xerox Corporation, among others, began studying outstanding salespeople to identify the competencies – also referred to as the vital behaviors – that contribute to their extreme levels of success.

Two of the most surprising discoveries – and these are very important because it doesn’t matter what product or service you are selling – are as follows:

1. 39% of a customer’s buying decision is based on the salesperson’s competence.

2. Only 1% of salespeople utilize all the essential competencies. Furthermore, only 0.3% of actual sales forces and sales teams achieve what is considered to be world class status in the customers’ minds.

The vast majority of sales teams and companies will enjoy a tremendous competitive advantage – whether it’s a single sales person, a coach or a solopreneur, or a complete sales team – if they make even the slightest improvement in the required competencies.

Essential Sales Competencies

1. I use a partnering approach with my customers.

In all my years of working with people in sales training, every time I have asked the question, “Does anybody like to be sold to?” no one has ever raised their hand and said, “Yes, me.” No one likes to be sold to. Instead, you must become a partner with your prospective customer.

2. I am motivated by a compelling personal mission.

People are attracted to the passion we bring and the belief that we have in our products and our services. They may not understand every single process, but they can feel, touch, see and want the passion behind it. When they relate to you not only as a sales person, but a deliverer of those services, they become motivated by your compelling personal mission.

3. I use a listening/probing style with customers.

This is critical. If you’re not listening, you’re selling and you’re pushing. People want what you have, but only as it relates to them and if it can take them where they want to go. This can either be eliminating a source of pain, attaining a source of joy or achieving something of value to them.

4. I adapt my relationship style to various customers.

There are actually four quadrants in our behavior relationships. Each of us has pieces of all quadrants, but we always have a predominant quadrant. Some of us are analytical, some drivers, some amiable, and some are expressive. It is important to understand your behavior style, and to understand your potential customer’s style as well.

5. I build trust readily.

You’ve probably heard this before. We buy from people we know, like, and trust. Trust is especially important.

Think of a situation where you have purchased from, been involved with, or worked with someone you didn’t fully trust. It is not a comfortable relationship. Remember we started off by saying we use a partnering approach with our customers and my clients. Trust is a core component of partnering.

6. I express empathy well.

Empathy links to listening skills. In order to be empathetic, you must have the ability to understand what someone is going through. It doesn’t mean you judge them. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily agree or disagree with them. What it does mean is that you are listening and feeling their emotions to the best of your ability. It is the skill of viewing the world from their emotional perspective and unique set of circumstances.

7. I apply a higher level of thought and strategy in dealing with customers.

Do not simply shove something down somebody’s throat. Elevate yourself to a higher level in thought and strategy. This ties into operating with a partnership approach as well as listening and empathizing with your customers.

Your aim is to become not only a sales person, but a consultant, an advisor, a friend. Together you figure out how to work together, and determine the next step to positive action.

8. I hold myself personally accountable for achieving my customers’ desired results.

If you are simply selling a product and you really don’t care if it brings them their desired results, you will have less passion for what you are doing and you will not build trust with your customers. Hold yourself personally accountable to help that customer or client achieve what it is that they’re trying to achieve.

Evaluate these eight core competencies of top achievers and make sure you’re applying all of them in your own business to get the results you want and deserve.

Even incremental improvement in these core sales competencies will help you close more sales, build your business and improve your relationships with current and future customers and clients.

By Sam Manfer

Active Networking

For salespeople to be effective lead generators, they must have both active and passive marketing programs. Now (1) their marketing program must be their own – not the company’s (although the two can be in sync with each other), and (2) they will do both, halfheartedly or not at all unless you the sales manager shows them how and holds them accountable. Accountability means setting goals, actions and measurements. Then, review progress on a regular schedule to give meaningful feedback and motivation to reach agreed-upon metrics.

So here are some sales management training tips for managing an Active Lead Generation Process.

Active marketing is networking (a) up and out within existing accounts, (b) into competitors’ and lost accounts, and (c) new markets.

For existing accounts do your sales people have 100% of their existing accounts’ business? Do your sales people what it will take to steal accounts from your competitors? Do your sales people have a method to introduce and integrate your products into new markets? Probably not.

Now, the easiest way to get more business is to spread like a virus through all accounts, focusing on eventually getting to the C-level and/or profit center leaders and their immediate staffs. Your goal as a manager is to keep them focused on connecting with more and more people to learn their problems and potential opportunities that relate to your solutions portfolio. Then, with their gleaned knowledge, develop suggestions and strategies that these leaders find helpful. Try not to concentrate at first on the purchase, but rather on learning and then their buy-in to your suggestions. Learning their thinking will show what it will take to get buy-in. With buy-in comes support, and with support comes networking to those with the power to mandate changes, create budgets and to authorize purchases.

If your sales people stick with their one or two main contacts, their ability to discover opportunities and make suggestions that lead to purchases is severely limited. Therefore, you must insist upon an Executive Relationship Chart. The elements of such a tool include:

1. Who are all (up and out) involved people by name and title in that organization?
a. The powerful — C-Level, Profit Center Leaders and their immediate staffs.
b. The influential, the functional and the impacted.
c. The administrators — purchasing agents spec writers, engineers, and controllers.
2. Where does your sales person rank on the credibility pyramid for each of these people — 1-low to 6-a resource/consultant?
3. What actions is each taking to improve his or her position with each decision maker?
4. When will these actions be completed, and
5. How will you know it’s complete and how will you measure it?

Obviously, if your salespeople are a 5 to 6 on the credibility pyramid with the powerful, they will have access to new opportunities, which they have helped create. Conversely, if they are stuck with low-level administrators and functional people, they will be just another one of the bunch of competitors.

Your job for helping your people create quality leads is to keep them networking, learning from each individual and offering-up ideas. This process will take time, but once it catches-on, it will produce an ongoing flow of leads from new divisions, for new products, and more and more. This applies to existing and lost customers, competitors’ accounts, and new markets as well. My rule is 50% of sales people’s prospecting time should be spent on existing accounts, 30% on lost and competitors’ accounts where they have contacts, and 20% in those accounts where they have no contacts.

So start creating Executive Relationship Charts for each of your existing accounts and those accounts you would like to penetrate. These charts will yield your networking plans and the actions your people will take to improve their credibility with the powerful and influential. From these actions will emanate the leads that generate sales.

However, I guarantee your people will not do this without your pressure and your help.