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

How To Prepare For A Sales Manager Job Interview

Some of you reading this will be sales managers others of you will want to get your first sales manager position. If it has been a while since you had an interview you can download a free report here.

Free Interview skills report.

Now that you have an interview, there are certain things you will want to do in advance to prepare for it. In this blog postwe will provide practical tips on how to prepare for a job interview. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so you’ll want to do you best on preparing for your sales manager nterview in advance.

1. Pick out what you are going to wear on your job interview. What you wear on your interview is an absolutely crucial part of how to prepare for a job interview. I know this sounds shallow and trust me thius can make a huge difference:-)

After you choose your outfit, make sure it is cleaned and pressed and you have the appropriate accessories and shoes to go with it. It doesn’t hurt to try the outfit on ahead of time, just to make sure everthing fits and you look great. Then put your outfit aside for day of your interview and have it ready to go. NOw that you have this crucial step out of the way, you can concentrate on the rest.

2. Practice greeting your interviewer. You should always greet your interview with friendy smile and firm handshake. If you do this right, you will set off the right energy and the chances of the interview going well will increase. This is a small and simple step that you should always to do to prepare for your interview.

2. Study your resume and know everything on it. Any work experience or skills you have listed on your resume are fair game to talk about during the interview. Your resume is all the interviewer has to go by in order to get to know you. They may pick things out from it and ask you to elaborate. Even though you may have a previous job listed that was many years ago, the interviewer may ask you to explain what you did at that job and your are responsible for providing an answer. This is one step you absolutely won’t want to skip on how to prepare for a job interview.

3. Practice your answers to the most common interview questions. If you don’t know what these are, do your research and find out or see one of my other articles. You’ll want to have your answers ready and practice them. You should always be able to answer “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you think you would be great for this job?” The employer doesn’t know, so it’s up to you to sell it.

Don’t completely memorize your answers so they come out rehearsed, but have a clear idea of what you are going to say. When you are asked, you want your answer to come out intelligently and natural. Be open to other questions as well and really know what you can offer to the company.

4. Research the company and the job position you are applying for. Write down any questions you may have about either so you can ask during the interview. If there any requirement of the job that you are unsure of, you should definitely ask during the interview. It always looks nice when you go into an interview with intelligent questions. It shows you put effort in preparing for the interview. However, never ask questions just to ask questions. The interviewer will see right through that. Your questions should be genuine and relevant.

5. Find out the type of interview you will be going on. There are several common types of interviews such as one on one, group, and behavioral. You shouldn’t assume you will get a certain one. Don’t be afraid to ask your recruiter what kind of interview will have if you don’t know. The interview will be more beneficial to both parties if you are prepared.

6. Print out the directions to the interview and be on time. Allow enough time to get there and anticipate traffic. It’s ok to be up to 10 minutes early, but no more than that. Otherwise, the interviewer may not be ready for you. Bring the phone number of your interviewer just in case you get lost or are going to be late. If you are going to be late, call to let the interviewr know.

Follow these tips and you will successfully know how to prepare for a job interview. Interviewers can tell whether or not a candidate has prepared for it or not and they will appreciate it if you did.

To You and Your Interview Success

Denise and Sharon

How Do You Deal With Customer Rejections?
By CJ Ng

Practical Tips for Sales People:

How do You Deal with Customer Rejections?

Here’s the situation. You had made your sales pitch, and you believe you did a good job. From the customer’s responses, it seems to you that they really like you.

A few days later, you find that there’s no response from the customer. They didn’t reply your e-mails, and seemed not to have time for your follow-up calls.

Then, the bad news came. They’ve chosen someone else, despite the fact that you really felt that you were the best possible solution for them.

The question is: what do you do next, and how do you deal with this rejection?

No matter how good or how experienced you are in sales, you will still have customers who will say “no” to you. In fact, if you haven’t had a rejection by a customer, you probably haven’t done any selling.

However, as human beings, we would like to be accepted rather than be rejected by others. When someone rejects us, we feel hurt. And the more time, energy and effort that we put into a deal, the greater the hurt if that someone or some company rejects us. Ouch!

The worst thing you can do, in response to that hurt, is to be a sore loser. That is you tell the customer that it’s their loss and they had missed “a great opportunity” for not working with you. Even if they have below-average intelligence, they know you are crying “sour grapes”.

The other thing you shouldn’t do is to commit too much time to try to win back the deal. As a sales person, you job is to influence the customer BEFORE they made the buying decision. The moment that decision has been made, it’s unlikely that they will change easily. It’s better to commit your time to win the next deal.

So is there just nothing you can do to soothe the hurt of the rejection?

If you have lost the deal, here’s one way to lose graciously. You can tell the customer:

“I’m glad that you found a more suitable vendor. If there’s one thing that we should have done better to make us more suitable for you next time, could you tell me what would that be?”

Most customers will not even reply to this question. Others may just reply politely without telling much about how you should have done better.

However, doing so leaves the door open for future possibilities. If the customer knows that you can be humble, and are willing to take suggestions, they are more likely to give you more chances in future.

While overcoming the hurt and disappointment of the rejection, you are also better positioned for the next deal with this customer.

By c.j. Ng

c.j. is the trusted sales advisor who have helped international companies achieve quantum improvements in sales profits in China and beyond. He is also the 1st-ever sales trainer and consltant to speak at the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) International Convention.

Visit http://www.psycheselling.com/page4.html for more details.

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By: Jim Domanski

Do your field and inside sales team work harmoniously with one another or do they operate unto themselves in separate kingdoms?

Unfortunately many inside and outside sales teams exist in open conflict with one another vying over accounts, sales and territories. The time and effort it requires to handle the subterfuge is simply not worth it. Not only does it impact the morale of your reps (and your company), it affects the relationships and perceptions of your customers and prospects, not to mention your sales revenues.

Inside sales and outside sales can and should work in unison to produce stellar results. Here are 10 ways to bring these two powerful sales teams together and maximize their results.

1. Report to a Single Executive

If the field sales team reports to a sales executive and the inside sales team reports to a customer service or operations executive (as it often does), conflict is inevitable. Each department has different priorities and there are bound to be clashes. But the moment a single sales executive is made directly accountable for the results both teams is the moment that the squabbling ends and entire department begins to fire on all cylinders.

2. Develop Blistering Clear Plans & Communicate

The biggest battle with inside and outside sales teams is ‘who handles this and who gets credits for that.’ While there will never be perfect division of accounts and territories take the time to think and plan your approach. Marginal, inactive and geographical remote accounts are perfect for your tele-sales team and will force you field sales team to focus on priority accounts.

Explain the rationale in writing so it is indelible to them and to you! If accounts are given up or traded, reduce sensitivities by paying double commissions for three or four months. This step will save you hours of needless conflict and help make the transition smoother.

3. Compensate and Motivate in Like Manner

You do not have to pay your inside sales team exactly the same as your field sales reps but you must pay in ‘like’ manner. If your field sales comp program includes base, commission and bonus so too should your inside sales team on a proportionate basis. This strategy reduces the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ mentality.

If there is a sales contest, make certain inside sales is an active participant and ‘mind the gap.’ Avoid the temptation of offering lavish rewards (e.g., the trip to Vegas or Hawaii) for field sales and offering pathetic rewards (toaster ovens or movies passes) for inside sales. If the recognition gap is so vast- and it often is- it sends a resounding and discouraging message to your inside sales team.

4. Create an In-to-Out Career Path

One of the best strategies is to develop a career path where you inside reps can be promoted to outside reps; a farm system. This will do several things. First, your inside team works harder and smarter for a chance at achieving an outside sales position. Second, the cost of recruiting and selecting a field rep is reduced dramatically. Third, the customer barely notices the transition because they get an experienced, knowledgeable rep. Finally, once the inside rep becomes an outside rep, the integration process becomes much more complete.

5. Attend Conferences, Trade Shows and Other Event, Together

Tension, frustration and confusion are reduced dramatically when the sales teams meet together at the same events, conferences and trade shows. Typically they have to work as a team on the trade floor. They begin to bond at lunch and dinner. They ‘play’ together in evening. It works if for no other reason then they get to know one another.

6. Attend Sales Meeting Together

This is so obvious that it is very often overlooked. Integrate inside and field sales by having them attend the same sales meetings. Have them participate, present results and be held accountable to one another. If the team is geographically spread out, have a conference call so that communication is fostered. If you have a sales rally or president’s club, make absolutely certain that both attend.

7. Train in Exact Manner

If training is required train the teams together. For example, ‘boot camp’ training is a great way to get reps to bond together from the get-go. If you have skills or knowledge training sessions throughout the year, pull your teams together. Do NOT train inside and outside teams separately.

8. The Day in/Day Out program

Here’s one of the best tips to pull your teams together. Every quarter or every six months have the outside reps spend a day on the phone with the inside rep. Have the inside rep spend a day on the road with the field rep. In short order, each rep will have a great appreciation of the job and one another.

9. Do Not Tolerate, Excuse or Permit Saboteurs

Here’s the cold hard truth: depending on your situation and environment, you can expect that some reps will seek to sabotage the efforts of others. A saboteur is a rep who subconsciously and often consciously, seeks to wreck, dilute or cheat the policies you have established. For example, a field rep might say to customers, “I can’t deal with you any more. You’re stuck with an inside rep” and thus taint the entire program. Equally, an inside rep might remark, “Your field reps never visited you in the first place, so I’m your new account rep” which simply shows the customer that your sales team is on shaky ground.

Sentiments like these will lose you customers in a heartbeat. Deal with these saboteurs quickly, efficiently and if necessary, brutally. Stick to the policies. Do not tolerate belligerence because it will fester and spread.

10. Be Vigilant and Keep Your Word

Continuously monitor the integration of your teams. If you get wind of dissension, act fast and deal with it. Get your managers together and talk. Don’t ignore the situation.

Above all, keep your word. Beware the temptation to change the rules as you go because it will have a significant impact on sales results, morale and customer satisfaction. Walk the walk.

How To Measure Sales Success is the question on most sales managers lips at this moment in time when every sales is vital, alongside measuring those who are delivering in your team.

Companies most likely to thrive are those that scrutinize their strategic sales-management plans, from forecasts to pipelines. They look hard at the cost of sales, percentage of market share, salesperson-effectiveness ratios and customer lifetime value. Conversely, companies that struggle often lack such blueprints.
Effective plans require combining an organization’s goals with the individual salesperson’s business plan with a set of metrics designed to gauge everyone’s progress in meeting those objectives. The fundamental metrics to include in “dashboards” for measuring sales team effectiveness:

Accuracy percentage for monthly forecast, by salesperson
Dollar or pound value of pipeline by stage; number of opportunities by stage
Dollar or pound value of pipeline ratio to future monthly quotas
Actual sales activity compared to a defined set of standards
Average order value
Win/loss percentages by salesperson

Beyond the Basics
As you continue developing your dashboard, consider additional metrics such as:

Value of net new account sales as percentage of total sales for month and year to date
Existing account sales as percentage of total sales, month and year to date
Salesperson profitability to sales volume
Revenue per current customer per year as percentage of total sales
Cost per lead by source
Sales-cycle time from initial contact by salesperson to decision
Number of days with sales outstanding, goal vs. actual
Blended billing consultant rate, goal vs. actual
Realization consultant rate, goal vs. actual
Utilization consultant rate, goal vs. actual
Consultant backlog days, goal vs. actual
Direct sales expense as a percentage of volume, margin and quota

Looking Ahead: Leading Indicators

Leading indicators are activities or ratios that can predict revenues at least 60 days out. While simply looking at future pipeline values can provide a similar forecast, these indicators are also useful. In most cases, certain events early in the sales cycle are most likely to lead to high-percentage sales opportunities. If these begin to fall, future pipelines and revenues will probably do the same. Potential leading indicators include:

New-prospect calls made per week
Face-to-face sales calls made per week
Subject-matter expert or pre-sales tech-support calls made per week
Discovery calls made per month
Demonstrations and executive presentations made per month

Graphs comparing these numbers to dollars booked or margins generated help salespeople see the relationship between indicators and results. Finally, the ultimate goal is improving ratios and results each month and each quarter-not simply tracking them. That’s the real reason for developing a dashboard and the real route to success.

Ken Thoreson, Acumen Management president, is a recognized sales management thought leader with more than 20 years of software/technology experience, including 17 in niche market distribution with emerging and high-growth national companies. The sales management strategist is regarded worldwide as an expert in sales execution, channel management, revenue generation, sales analysis, forecasting, recruitment, and training within the sales function. Prior to founding AMGL, he led development-stage, entrepreneurial, and $250-million national vertical software sales organizations as vice president of sales.

Ken is a frequent speaker and keynote presenter at major industry conferences, including Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conferences, Cisco Systems Worldwide Partner Conference, Sales and Marketing Executives International Conference (SMEI), CA World, TechData/TechSelect Member Conferences, Ingram Micro’s XChange Conferences, SAP Partner Conference, SolidWorks World, Gartner IT Visionshare, CompTIA BreakAway, and NASBA Management Academy. He has authored two books and many articles spanning a variety of sales management topics, which have appeared in Personal Selling Power, VARBusiness, Reseller Management, Business Products Professional and SmartReseller. He is currently a columnist for Redmond Channel Partner Magazine.