In common with training and management, coaching is unregulated, and therefore anyone can call himself/ herself a coach, and they do.

There are four distinct levels of coach and as you move from one level to the other, the need for skill and experience increases commensurate with the complexity of the coaching process.

LEVEL 1 (L1) – CAREER COACH AND LIFE SKILLS COACH

Level 1 coaching is typified by the coaching process being in the hands of the person being coached, which means that they drive the agenda rather than the coach. This is where most of the coaches in existence (up to 80% of the coaching population) operate. The focus of the coaching effort tends to be on life skills and career coaching. There is a significant gap in experience, knowledge and skills between coaches operating at this and the other levels.

LIFE SKILLS COACHES

Life Skills Coaches will have arrived in the coaching role from a variety of routes; some from training; some from a period of redundancy; in fact – just about anyone, from just about anywhere. They do not need any specialist knowledge, or experience. Some will have been trained; a few will hold a qualification; most will have picked up their coaching knowledge and skills from books or from attending a short course.

Some are very dangerous. They will be self-taught psychoanalysts and can often be found exploring people’s deep routed emotional problems without the ability or experience to know when to stop. They seek to advise people how to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. Most will certainly not be wealthy. Others might be healthy. Significant numbers are blissfully happy to have anyone to listen to them.

Some will have bought an expensive franchise offering untold wealth; most will be earning below average incomes. Some will be advertising themselves as Executive Coaches (Level 4); most will never actually engage in anything close to Executive Coaching.

They represent 90% of the coaching population at Level 1. You will encounter them at each and every networking event, in increasing numbers.

The coaching process is open-ended, meaning that providing the person being coached is able to pay the fees involved, it will go on indefinitely. There is rarely a definable, measurable goal.

CAREER COACHES

Career Coaches are usually to be found in-company; sometimes employed from external sources; often they are in the HR Department. In the same way as the Personnel Department became the HR Department, ‘Jack and Jill from personnel’ – became ‘Jack and Jill, the Career Coaches’.

Career Coaches will be probably be annoyed that I have placed them at Level 1, implying that they don’t need specialist knowledge or experience. Nevertheless, it is true. That said, many internal Career Coaches will have undergone various levels of formal training; some via the CIPD route; some will use career preference inventories to help them add a pseudo form of credibility to their efforts.

As with life skills coaching, career coaching is often disguised as executive coaching although it bears little resemblance to the executive coaching process described at Level 4 here. Career coaching offered to senior managers is usually a precursor to sending them on an expensive study programme in a European Business School which for many has no outcome other than an attendance certificate. No one fails. The only time career coaching is offered to lower levels of employees is when redundancy follows and the expense of providing career coaching is seen as an unavoidable cost in order to mitigate industrial disruption and employment appeals.

LEVEL 2 (L2) – SALES COACHING

Level 2 coaching is where Sales Coaches operate – in theory.

The coaching process at Level 2 is focussed on business outcomes and is driven by the coach. This is why a significant number of coaching initiatives in companies have failed, and continue to fail. The reason being that the people involved in being a Level 2 Coach are either only being trained at Level 1 – which is not a lot; or not trained at all.

A lot of companies who they say their managers have been trained as coaches, have invested at best two days, and at worst half a day in training their managers as coaches. In addition, the coaching models being used begin with the employee’s agenda, not the manager’s, and not the organisation. A classic example would be the use of the GROW model, which begins with either

– What is the Goal?

– What are you trying to achieve?

– What is your Goal?

– What are we trying to do?

The last type of question is meant to show inclusivity – i.e. we are all in this together.

Beginning with the salesperson’s agenda is an abdication of the Sales Coach’s role in ensuring that the organisation’s aims are placed firmly at the front of the queue.

Sales Coaches should have some experience of sales. Not from the perspective of specific knowledge of the product and/ or service being sold, but of the emotional pressures associated with being in a sales role. Salespeople are very sceptical of coaches who do not have sales experience. Whether this is right or wrong is immaterial. The reality is that you will tend to get on better with the target audience if you understand about selling from experience. And getting on with the salesperson is important. Sales coaching in this form works because the coaching relationship is built on trust. Trust from the salesperson of the coach; that performance short-falls and experimentation to improve will not be criticised, even though any lack of effort might. Trust from the coach of the salesperson that the latter is trying to improve and not just pretending.

The Sales Coach does not need a significant amount of knowledge about the product and/ or service the salesperson is selling, but it could reduce the amount of time needed to help the salesperson focus on improvement solutions. On the other hand, often, prior in-depth knowledge of the product and significant experience of the actual sales role can often be a barrier to effective sales coaching. Quite often, the less you know, the better the coaching questions are.

In sales coaching there has to be a clearly defined sales process – the Game Plan. Without a clearly defined game plan, the Coach will be working at Level 1. A game plan focuses both the Sales Coach and the salesperson on what has to be done, and how it to be done, in order to elicit an outcome – the performance. If performance is low, then either the game plan doesn’t work and needs to be changed or the salesperson is not following the game plan – and might have to be changed. Once you have a game plan, it can be enhanced in order to enhance performance but not in one day and not all at once. This brings me to the last point in Level 2 Sales Coaching – timescale.

Many people, when asked the question, is sales coaching short-term or long-term, will opt for long-term. The correct answer is short-term. By this I mean that the focus of each coaching session is on a short-term activity. In football, you often hear the cliché – ‘we take it one game at a time’; and so it is with sales coaching. The football coach may have a long-term goal to win the league, but slavish focus on winning the league is fraught with failure, without the focussed activity of working out what it will take to win the next game. In this way Sales Coaches work on one thing at a time. Taking one piece out of the total sales process and working with it until it is improved. It is called whole-part-whole. By taking a small part of the whole process and improving it, the knock-on effect is to improve the whole.

The Sales Coach should be the line manager.

LEVEL 3 (L3) – METACOACH

The MetaCoach is the Coach of the Coach. In a sales or a business environment this should be the line manager but it can also work by using either internal trainers as the MetaCoach or external MetaCoaches provided there is a significant level of interaction between the MetaCoach and senior management. If the MetaCoach is not the line manager, then the MetaCoach needs to have direct and regular access to the senior line manager, and preferably to the manager above them.

The agenda is driven by the organisation. The MetaCoach should have management experience. As with the Sales Coach, there should be clearly defined sales management process, but there rarely is. One of the main reasons why MetaCoaching fails to materialise in most companies is the lack of a detailed management process. Just as it’s vital to have a game plan for the sales process the same should apply to the management process. We already know that the greatest influence on sales success is management. In the same way, the greatest influence on the success of sales managers is the senior manager they report to.

The MetaCoach does not need either product knowledge of the products and services being sold, or specific experience of the sales or sales management role, and the lack of these is often an advantage. Some management experience however is desirable in order to have empathy with the difficulties of line and senior management.

The timescales involved in MetaCoaching is medium to long-term improvement in management performance and behaviour.

MetaCoaching should be provided by senior management, but rarely is, and therefore external coaches are often used, when the budget allows, to provide coaching to line sales managers. The difficulty is that external coaches have little or no authority and surprisingly (given the cost) minimal interaction with senior management. MetaCoaching by external coaches tends only to work effectively if it is combined with Executive Coaching for the senior manager.

LEVEL 4 (L4) – EXECUTIVE COACHING

Executive Coaching is almost exclusively provided by external coaches to senior management as either a development tool, a career advancement process, or sometimes simply as a way of spending an allocated budget without any particular end game in mind. It should lead to the provision of an opportunity to engender some blue-sky thinking on the part of the senior manager being coached and in some environments it does work. It depends on how experienced the Executive Coach is, why they were engaged in the first place, and where the outcomes of the coaching sessions are reported.

Executive Coaches should have some senior management experience and should be able to use this experience to be upfront in declaring whether the coaching provided is having any effect or not. True Executive Coaches should be charging enough not to be concerned about telling the truth when it is needed, whether palatable or not. Unfortunately there are a number of people who call themselves Executive Coaches who should really be working at Level 1, not Level 4.

Executive Coaches work with senior managers helping them develop leadership skills and behaviours. The instance of executive coaching being provided by internal coaches is rare. In any event, the best coaches are often frustrated by the manner in which coaching is viewed by the organisation and the constant introduction of the latest training fad; and they leave to set up their own coaching consultancies.

THE DILEMMA

The most effective type of coaching in business is sales coaching. However, the budget for developing line sales managers as true Sales Coaches has to be agreed by senior managers, and senior managers have to become involved in regularly supporting their Sales Coaches by the provision of MetaCoaching. Unfortunately because of the proliferation of Life Skills Coaches operating at Level 1, many budget holders believe that coaching exists at only two ends of the spectrum – Level 1 which is generally ineffective as a business tool, and Level 4 which is expensive and reserved for senior management. Regrettably that belief means that many sales organisations miss out on the significant positive impact that sales coaching can have on revenue improvement.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Frank_Salisbury/4756

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Kathy has just been promoted as Sales Manager of her team, and she just found that being a Sales Manager is quite different from being a Sales Person. More importantly, there seems to be tons of people issues that she would have to help resolve through coaching.

For instance, there’s Sam, who’s a new sales person and showed a lot of promise during his initial training with the company. When he went on his work, he also put in lots of effort. Still, after 3 months, there wasn’t any results generated.

Then there’s Susan, who’s one of the better sales persons in the team. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been producing much results lately. When asked about her performance, she replied that the customers just need a little longer time to make the decision this year..

And there’s Simon, whom had been in touch with a prospect for quite some time. He had seen their decision makers, technical buyers and even end-users. While responses were positive, there was no further progress in the customer’s buying process.

To make things worse, Kathy hadn’t even received much coaching from her former manager when she was a Sales Person, and hence don’t even have a role model to emulate when she needed to coach her team. The good news for Kathy is that coaching for Sales People is not as difficult or as daunting for newly on-boarded Sales Managers. The concepts are simple and easy to master, although it will require some practice to get the best results!

Where You Are, and Where You Want Your Team to Be

The approach that most Sales Managers take when coaching team members is that they tend to look at low-performance incidents sporadically and just give advice on how their team member needs to do to correct that behaviour. This action is what is known as “Corrective Feedback”, which could be part of coaching, but is inadequate to equate it with coaching.

To make coaching really deliver desired results, we can borrow concepts from the Six Thinking Hats to formulate an effective coaching strategy. Here are the first steps:

1. Blue Hat – What do you want your team member to become, and how you want to go about achieving this.

2. White Hat – What current information (e.g. sales results, prospecting effectiveness, selling prices etc.) do you have about your team member? What other information do you need so as to really understand where he/ she stands right now?

Conveying Your Coaching Message

Although coaching your sales team is really about what you want your team member to become, you will need that team member to agree to your goals and objectives for him or her. Coaching is a 2-way street, and hence if your “coachee” does not agree or buy-in to your goals, the coaching will fail.

As such you will need to communicate your Blue Hat with your team member clearly, and be open to feedback if there are any disagreements or modifications to your original plan.

During your coaching session, you will need to communicate the following:

1. Yellow Hat – Give affirmation on the strengths and positive contributions of the team member. Coaching is as much about helping team members to correct mistakes, as it is about helping them to strengthen or improve on their existing strengths. In any case, team members ALWAYS feel good when their bosses tell them something nice about them.

2. Black Hat – Let your team members understand which are the areas that need correction or improvement. One thing to be clear in such communication is to make sure the team member understand that you are not picking on their mistakes. Instead, they have to be clear that you are helping them achieve better results.

3. Green Hat – Instead of telling them what they need to do to get better results, invite and engage them to suggest creative suggestions to help improve their own performances. You will be surprised by the ingenuity of the suggested solutions, and best of all, since your team member suggested the solution, you will get the full commitment of that team member to implement the solution that he or she suggested!

4. Red Hat – At suitable intervals, find out how your team member feels whether he or she is OK to continue with the coaching, or if he or she is comfortable with the conversation between the two of you. If at any point of time your team member feels uncomfortable, that could be a sign that the coaching is moving in the wrong direction. You may then want to stop, and re-strategise for a different coaching session the next time.

Despite your best efforts, not all coaching will turn out in the way you envision it to be. But that’s OK. What is more important is that you adapt different coaching strategies to different team members based on their:

* Desired behaviours and performance;
* Current behaviours, traits and performance metrics; and
* Temperaments and communication styles of each individual.

Achieving Sustainable Results

While MOST sales managers agree and believe that training and coaching team members is very important for boosting the team’s performances, FEW actually took systematic steps to train or coach their team members.

The key word here is “systematic”. Coaching your team members, while very important, is usually NOT urgent. That is, if you don’t coach your team members today, nothing catastrophic is going to happen tomorrow. Hence, with the heavy workload and the number of more urgent matters to attend to, most sales managers keep on postponing the required coaching for their team members until it’s way too late.

Hence, to achieve sustainable results with your coaching, you will have to:

* Schedule the appointment with your team members and everybody will have to treat it as important and urgent as a key customer meeting;

* Put on your White Hat prior to the coaching session to gather as much information of your “coachee”, and also make a list of questions for the information that you would like to know;

* Put on your Blue Hat at the end of each coaching session to set mutually-agreed action plans on what behavioural changes that your “coachee” needs to make; and

* Listen to the feedback given by your “coachee” and determine what changes that you need to make too!

The steps to being an effective sales coach are simple. The difference between a good sales coach and a mediocre one boils down to: practice. Just like any new skill, the initial practice is going to be awkward. However, with more practice, you can be an expert sales coach real soon.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/CJ_Ng/131282

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Infield sales coaching is the term used to describe when a sales manager coaches a sales person in their sales territory. This can be a geographical or market segmented sales territory. Sales coaching is an ongoing process and not a single event. The process is designed to achieve a purpose and that is to assist every salesperson in the salesforce to reach their full potential. By providing challenges, encouragement and guiding them in continued professional growth, sales performance can be improved in a sustainable manner.

Attributes of great sales coaches

Sales coaches work with their salespeople in the area of strategy, targets, expected outcomes and potential sales call obstacles. Often the missing link is how these are to be achieved. Sales coaches also ask for feedback to ensure their salespeople understand. If the salesperson does not understand it’s up to the sales coach to show them.

Great sales coaches use the following tools:

• Standardised formal sales process to create common understanding
• Active listening and questioning skills so they can replicate a sales situation
• The ability to shut up and let the salesperson lead the sales call even if they are failing
• The ability to role-play the salesperson’s part of the sales call
• The ability to uncover and question everything they hear
• The ability to remain in the moment and not become emotionally involved
• They don’t need to seek approval so they say, ask or do whatever is necessary to get the salesperson to the next competency level
• Patience so they can take small steps to clarify a situation
• Their hands on experience
• Their wisdom based on years of experience
• Their sense of humour by keeping it light
• The respect of their salespeople
• The trust of their salespeople
• The relationship they have with their salespeople.

Adapted from Dave Kurlan ‘s Understanding the Salesforce:

What do you need to focus on when coaching your salespeople?

Focus on three areas:

• Sales strategy

This relates to the customer and potential customers, selecting the right products or services and pricing

• Facts

These include ratios and percentages such as the sales call to order ratio and sales margins. When this information is linked to the sales process facts can provide an indicator of future activity and sales results

• Sales behaviour

Notice what your salesperson does before, during and after the sales call. Do they understand what they are doing, have they followed the sales process, have they applied skills correctly and can they self correct? If not, what competency gaps are there? What do you need to show and demonstrate?

• Sales coaching styles

Every sales manager has a sales coaching style. Do you know what yours is? Do you know why you are a compatible sales coach with some of your salespeople and find it difficult with others?

Your salespeople want to know how you can help them become successful.

By developing your coaching style and competence as a sales coach your salespeople will want to learn and work with you. Your job will also become more enjoyable. You will find they will want to follow your example and grow professionally.

How to allocate your time to maximise results

Within a salesforce there are 3 categories of salespeople that determine where you should spend most of your time in order to maximise sales performance:

1. The concern category

These are the consistently low sales performers. Unfortunately most sales managers spend a great deal of their time working with these salespeople in an attempt to improve sales. These salespeople tend to rely heavily on the support of their sales manager so time is consumed with additional coaching sessions and often providing answers to problems.

Action –If you have this category of salesperson then you will need to cut back on the amount of time you give them. Start by asking them what they think the answer is to a problem rather than you providing it. Reduce your infield sales coaching time and replace it with a phone call. Set a realistic sales target and time frame. If the sales target is not achieved you will need to take action. The salesperson may be better suited to a different role in the company?

2. The top performer category

It is not uncommon for these salespeople to feel neglected because they receive minor or no sales coaching from their sales managers. This can affect their attitude and result in their being difficult to manage. They usually outsell the combined efforts of the average players in their salesforce so sales managers think they don’t need further development. Some sales managers who are not very competent in selling avoid their top performers for fear of being shown up

Action –Seek the top performers’ input as to the number of sessions and the objectives. They usually only need minor skills refinement which then further enhances their sales performance and motivation. If they have qualified for Level 6 – The Professional status they will more than likely want to develop sales coaching skills and pass on their expertise to other salespeople.

Introduce them to sales coaching over a period of time by allowing them to take on the additional responsibility as well as continue to manage their sales territory. This will give you the time to evaluate their performance as well as the performance of the salespeople they coach. The top performer will also have the opportunity to see if sales coaching is a career they would like to pursue full-time.

3. The average category

The majority of salespeople are in the average to above average range in terms of their sales competence and sales results. This category is ideal for the top performer to begin developing their infield sales coaching skills. There is usually at least one salesperson in this category who has the potential to become a top performer.

Action –Schedule regular sales coaching sessions for this large category and identify the salespeople who have achieved Level 4 or 5 Sales Competency. Assess their talents and strengths and outline a fast track sales development plan because they will provide you with the greatest single increase in sales. It will also motivate the more junior salespeople to work harder and achieve a higher level of sales competence.

To consistently improve sales performance is no easy task. By coaching and leading by example in their world is your greatest opportunity to really get to know them. This in turn will help you to increase your salespeople’s sales competence, motivation and sales results.

If you want more information about this subject or have any sales performance issue you would like to discuss please contact Kurt Newman direct on 0412 252 236. Alternatively email sales@salesconsultants.com.au

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When Am I Coaching?

Corporate climate surveys and interviews repeatedly indicate that employees feel they are not coached enough, that they are not clear enough about expectations, that they get too little feedback. Consultants, academics, human resources professionals, some senior managers, and almost all corporate training departments press continually for managers to dedicate more time to coaching. Yet neither managers nor their direct reports can reliably tell you when “coaching” is taking place and whether anyone has been coached.

Why? There is no shared definition. Sales managers, sales people, and trainers describe coaching based on what they’ve experienced, in terms of activities, among them:

• Expectation setting
• Coaching disciplines
• Feedback about results
• Pushing for skills to improve
• Lots of short interval feedback and management

The resulting gumbo mixes old athletic coach models with new-age mumbo jumbo, academic research, and training program models to produce frustration and confusion. Since business leaders and sales managers have precious little time for any task, we need definitions of “what’s a sales coach” and “what’s sales coaching” that experienced managers can use.

Define the Coaching Context

To begin, coaching is a process, not a thing, not an event, not a single type of discussion. The coaching process serves a purpose; you coach to reach an objective. The coaches we’ve met begin thinking about coaching by answering three questions:

• Why am I coaching? What’s the objective?
• What are the circumstances? How much damage is done if we don’t achieve the goal?
• Who am I coaching? What do they need from me in order to fulfill the purpose?

Their answers to these three questions help them set priorities in terms of their commitment of time to coaching, the frequency and extent of coaching conversations, and their coaching focus.

Specify Your System

Successful sales coaches have developed “systems” that work and that they can teach so that other people can successfully reach meaningful goals. The primary responsibility of executive-level sales managers is to define (or have others define) the “success path” or “system” which will enable their reps to be successful.

Watch any successful team manager, from sales to symphonies to soccer fields, and you’ll see a system. Dig into any successful franchise operation; you’ll find a system that enables ordinary people to produce extraordinary results repeatedly. The system defines performance in detail:

• The correct activities,
• Done at the correct time,
• At the correct frequency,
• In the correct manner.

People who are serious about reaching a particular objective flock to good coaches because they know the coaches have systems to get the job done and that, if they use the coaches’ systems, they’ll be successful.

In sales, this means having a “pilot’s manual” that describes how your company and your team, and everybody on it, does business. The manual documents your business development and sales management process in detail – the correct activities, the correct timing, the proper frequency, and specific methods.

For example: When do you meet with your sales reps for coaching? What topics do you cover? What does an acceptable proposal look like, how many of them should someone submit in a year to be successful?

If you can’t define the optimal performance system for your sales team, you’re not well positioned to coach.

Work the System on Three Levels

When developing and implementing their systems, coaches work on three levels:

Strategic – the game plan. In sales, this includes establishing a mission for the team, profiling target customers, choosing products or services to emphasize, and deploying sales resources to customers.

Statistical – the relationships between activities and results. This means connecting data about sales process (i.e. steps activities) to sales results so you can prioritize activities and predict results.

Behavioral – what people do and how. This includes sales call behaviors, internal and external communications, and personal management.

The more senior the sales executives, the more attention they should pay to the “strategic” and “statistical” aspects of the system and implementation of sales team strategies.

When executive sales managers meet with their direct reports (regional, district, or sales team sales managers), they should coach at all three levels:

• Observe performance at all three levels (strategic, statistical, behavioral).
• Note gaps between what you see and what your system says you should see.
• Communicate observations to sales managers.
• Where necessary, instruct sales managers as to what to do, when to do, or how to do strategy implementation, activity management, or specific sales behaviors.

Executive sales managers’ expectations, coupled with feedback and consequences, change sales management behaviors. The changed sales management behaviors drive sales activities and sales results. Sales managers who are directly coaching individual sales people should work through the same three levels of coaching with their sales reps.

Do You Get Style Points

Style is important. As a coach, you have to connect with your team members to communicate. You have to enroll them in your vision of what is possible for the team and why it’s worth getting up in the morning.

At the same time, remember what they want from you. They want to know you can help them be successful. If you can demonstrate that your system works, you’ll tend to attract people who want to work for you… and the people who work for you already will be more willing to adapt their styles to yours because they know, in the end, they’ll reach their goals if they follow your coaching.

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You may recall that it was recently written about an international study which reported that if Sales Managers were more frequently and better trained and coached, their sales teams achieved higher performance and results. In no other type of sales training was a more positive correlation found between frequency of training and sales performance. This article is dedicated to the importance of sales coaching and what you need to do to be an effective sales coach.

Despite popular opinion, the sales profession is very skillful with many technical and interpersonal skills that need to be continuously honed and developed. Despite this, most sales people are given no formal training or coaching rather they are often left to work out for themselves how to be effective at sales.

Even if they are able to attend sales training, most sales people do not realise their full potential because nothing was done post the training session to get people adapting their behaviours, skills and performance to the new standards.

Why sales coaching matters

• Without systematic, on-the-job coaching post a sales training program 87% of skills that were covered in the sales training program are lost within 30 days
• With systematic, on-the-job coaching post a sales training program the return on the sales training program is four fold.

Lesson: Sales training without coaching is a cost liability rather than an investment. 

Is sales coaching just linked to sales training?

In a word, no. Whether or not coaching follows a formal training program, it is recommended that at least 40-60% of a sales manager’s job should be dedicated to coaching their sales people.

Yet, sales coaching still remains an area that is poorly executed and often ignored.

What is coaching?

Coaching is a process which allows for an individual to strive for excellence in any endeavour through personal insight and purposeful action. At a broad level, the process involves three key elements:

• Feedback: without feedback a person is unaware of the opportunity for ‘change’
• Reflection: relates to what a person thinks about the feedback received; as well as the range of actions they can undertake as a result of receiving the feedback
• Purposeful action: those activities the person may undertake and either adopt the provided feedback or alternatively explain why they will not address the feedback provided.

Coaching usually focuses on two key areas of development to achieve excellence: skills and performance. Excellence in performance is knowing the right processes to apply in the right situation, coupled with the personal insight to know how to apply them wisely.

So, how do we get the best out of our sales coaches in order to be our best?

1. Train your sales managers to be effective sales coaches
2. Supply them with proven tools and frameworks to coach successfully
3. Provide ongoing coaching to your sales managers to be better sales coaches (usually external coaching support works well here as it provides an agenda free focus on coaching only)
4. Make sales coaching a necessary part of the sales manager’s job performance criteria
5. Encourage a coaching culture in your business across all levels.

What do you need in your sales coaching tool box?

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I recently heard a fascinating story from a Sales Coach who told me how he succeeded in overcoming some major challenges when he was recruited as a rookie sales manager for a major-brand forklift dealership in the late 1990s. Despite the brand name and the brand’s reputation for quality and excellent resale value, the dealer’s sales record for new, reconditioned, and used forklifts was abominable and had been lousy for quite some time.

At this Sales Manager’s request, I’ve agreed to keep him anonymous, so for our purposes, I’ll simply refer to him as George.

George had been the number one salesman for a southern California forklift company selling more units in his territory in a month than most of his competitors sold in a quarter. George was fairly well known throughout the industry so a failing dealership in the northwest desperately needed to sell or die, so management went after George like the hare chasing the tortoise.

Well, this was nothing new for George. He’d been recruited for years by dozens of other dealers all over the country. But the dealership the northwest was something else. Sales had been slipping for several years, market share had plummeted to historic lows, and the service and parts departments were experiencing a serious revenue shortfall due to the cumulative, drop-off in overall new, reconditioned, and used forklift sales. So, the dealer principal called George and literally begged him to meet for dinner so he could offer him tons of money and complete freedom to run the sales department anyway he saw fit.

George is anything but dense. So he looked at this opportunity for what it could be, not for what it seemed to be. The new job would undoubtedly be tough challenge with lots of inherent risk of failure. On the other hand, it could be an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When he looked at the new job’s potential, George realized he had nothing to lose. Not really. After all, if he could turn this company around, he’d be able to write his own ticket with anyone, anywhere. On the other hand, even if he failed, he could always hit the road and earn six figures selling forklifts for any dealer, anywhere.

So, he looked the dealer principal in the eye, shook his hand, and accepted the position.
George inherited seven salesmen and two saleswomen with his new job. The only producer in the entire sales department was a mid-forties lady we will call Jasmine (not her real name). Now, Jasmine had only been in the industry for about five years, yet she was selling forklifts like there was no tomorrow. None of the other eight salespeople seemed to have the experience, training, motivation, or the character necessary to focus on much of anything beyond a draw, driving a company car, and taking paid holidays.

Morale had dropped as low as sales, profits, and the infrequent commissions check.

George immediately sat down individually with each sales person to talk about what was really going on. He promised to keep each conversation confidential as he asked each sales person to talk about why they weren’t generating more sales and profits. He was disappointed but not surprised to hear the usual excuses for poor performance he’d heard from salespeople for years: “There’s no business in my territory because it’s saturated with forklifts” and, “Our competitors outsell us because their prices are lower and I can’t compete” and, “The economy is slowing down and no one is buying” and on and on.

Within 3 months of George’s arrival in the sunshine, all those excuses faded like memories of last year’s Grammies, and the sales department was selling new, reconditioned, and used forklifts like never before.

So, what happened?

What did George do to change things around so dramatically?

Well, here’s what he told me:

GEORGE’S 7 SECRETS

George’s 1ST Secret – Do nothing: For the first few weeks after he became Sales Manager, George did nothing at all. He didn’t make any changes; in fact, he didn’t even make any suggestions.

The sales crew was delighted because they began to believe that George would never be as good a sales manager as he had been a territory salesman. There were two reasons for this unlikely attitude. First and foremost, the sales crew didn’t want things to change, not really, because they didn’t believe change would do anything but make them work harder for less. Secondly, they’d heard all about George’s heavy hitter reputation, thought it made them look bad, so they secretly rooted for George to finally fall flat on his behind.

Given the severity of the sales situation, the big question floating around the company was why isn’t George doing anything? Is he just lazy? Is this the Peter Principle in action? Is George simply not up to the job? Or, is he too much of a wimp, too scared to tackle this huge, long-term problem head-on?

Not hardly.

George did nothing because he was too smart to move too quickly, too soon. He knew that before he could institute changes to increase sales and profits, he first needed to invest some serious time and patience learning to understand the dynamics that had killed sales for so long at this particular dealership.

This time and patience thing took more than a little courage on George’s part. It was tough for a results oriented guy like George to overlook caustic comments from Senior Management and pass off the disappointed stares flashed his way by the few people in the sales department who really did want change. Nevertheless, he stayed focused on gathering information, analyzing sales records and call reports, talking with sales people, managers, department heads, and customers, digging for the root causes of the only problem that really mattered: Not Enough Sales!

GEORGE’S 2ND Secret – Build Relationships with Sales Players: After George analyzed management support, financial resources, company image in the territory, facilities, equipment, customer service, parts and service support, product quality, and the company’s relationship to its factories, he concluded that he was right about the root cause: The sales team was simply incapable of doing its job. Sure, like any warm body, each sales person was capable of taking an order for a forklift, but nine of nine sales people weren’t trained in the skills they needed to sell significant numbers of forklifts. Eight of the nine obviously lacked confidence and direction and had never experienced any consistent success . . . so they had no positive history to fall back on. Nine of nine sales people worked – when they worked – only for themselves because not a one of them had a clue about the collective importance of working together as a team. Last but not least, since Jasmine had always been off doing her own thing, completely disassociated with the rest of the group, her colleagues had no role model to emulate.

George made it his business to continue to get to know each sales person, both as an employee and as a person. Each afternoon, he would invite one of the nine to come to his office early the next morning for 15 minutes or so before the switchboard opened, just to talk. He provided fresh coffee, hot chocolate, and a variety of pastries to please any taste. Discussions were friendly, casual with lots of give and take. Over time, each individual came to learn that George wasn’t a threat and, at the same time, they began to believe in George as a leader and as a coach who could and would help them sell more and earn more, more often.

GEORGE’S 3RD Secret – Create a success role model on the team: If you’ve heard the term “Stepping Up”, you probably heard it in the NBA or NFL. “Stepping Up” means that a top performing player assumes a leadership role on the team. Because Jasmine was the only real performer in the sales department, George decided to help her “Step Up”. He trained her thoroughly on the ins and outs of the Sales Coaching concept to help her realize that despite years of separation, the team really needed her to become a Success Role Model. George knew very well that the best way to transform eight below average producers was to get them to emulate the one strong performer.

George also realized that if Jasmine’s sales began to drop – for any reason – she would lose credibility with the rest of the team. So, he worked to coach her, subtly and quietly, because he didn’t want to offend her sensibilities as a top performer. He worked with her consistently because he wanted to keep her numbers strong. In George’s second month as Sales Coach, Jasmine was able to generate nearly 200% of budgeted new, reconditioned, and used sales in her territory. And, senior management and others around the company began to drop their doubts about George’s abilities.

At this point, we asked George why he didn’t simply set himself up as the team’s role model. After all, his sales history was nothing to sneeze at!

His reply?

“I felt that my example wouldn’t be as meaningful as the example Jasmine could set,” he said with a smile. “After all, even though these sales people weren’t particularly friendly with each other, they knew Jasmine well enough to respect her abilities as a top-notch sales person and would therefore be more likely to emulate her strategies and tactics.

“We started slowly at first. In Sales Practices and Team Meetings, I’d ask Jasmine to talk about her week was going. She’d tell us who she sold to and why. It was just casual conversation. No lectures, no pressure. After a couple of weeks, I began to encourage the others to interact with Jasmine, to ask questions, to talk about their successes and failures. And, in no time at all, we had our Success Role Model working to help the team sell more, more often, with no resentments and no resistance.

“Over time, I realized that Jasmine had become Sales Coach in Sales Practices and Team Meetings while I had become the moderator. Gotta tell you, I couldn’t have been more pleased that my plan worked out so well, so quickly.”

GEORGE’S 4TH Secret – Clearly communicate performance goals: George refused to waste time with mealy-mouthed platitudes. Because he felt obligated to turn the company around as quickly as possible, because forklift sales people work in an incredibly competitive business, George refused to take anything for granted. He believed that he owed it to Senior Management, to himself, and especially to Sales Players, to come clean and communicate his expectations to everyone concerned.

So, George established the following three categories of Performance Goals for the team:
Activity Goals, Behavior Goals, and Results Goals.

An ACTIVITY GOAL, for example, requires each Sales Player to send out a minimum of 25 mailers per week with telephone follow up calls within seven days of each mailing.

A BEHAVIOR GOAL requires each Sales Player to provide a customer quote within 24 hours of the initial contact.

The RESULTS GOAL that got the most attention requires each Sales Player with at least one year in a territory to sell a minimum of $100,000.00 in sales of new, reconditioned, and used forklifts each and every month.

GEORGE’S 5TH Secret – Set your standards high: No matter how effective you are as a Sales Coach, George says, no matter how hard you and the company work to support the sales department, there will always be someone who won’t step up to the plate. George doesn’t hesitate to confront poor performers because he refuses to tie the team’s performance to the lowest common denominator. He focuses on the only thing that really matters: Consistent, profitable sales! If a sales person can’t or won’t generate enough in profits to exceed the company’s cost in payroll, commissions, benefits, etc., George recruits a replacement and immediately cuts the player from the team.

If a Sales Player is a marginal performer but is willing to admit the shortcomings that need to be fixed, George, Sales Coach, works to bring that person to the point of making the “Final Decision” which means they either ‘decide’ to join the team, immerse themselves in the Sales Coaching process, and start selling or they ‘decide’ to leave the company . . . immediately.

George told us that that the only thing worse than someone who quits and leaves is someone who quits and stays . . . so he never allows anyone to quit and stay.

Author’s comment: Sensible approach . . . no wonder this guy’s a winner.

GEORGE’S 6TH Secret – Emphasize dignity and respect for all: Look, George says, after the dust settles, we are all just people. We are fallible human beings who make more mistakes than we care to admit. So, George makes it his business to firstly admit his own mistakes, no matter how tough it may be to do so. Because he agrees with Dr. Phil when he says you can’t change what you won’t admit, George expects Sales Players to accept responsibility for their own shortcomings. Irrespective of performance failures and character flaws, George constantly reminds the team of his expectation that everyone – Sales Players, senior management, department heads, key personnel and, of course, the coach – will treat everyone else with complete dignity and respect.

George promotes this aspect of his Sales Coaching effort by taking the entire sales team out of the office once a month – every month – for a fun dignity and respect building group activity – go-karting, golfing, dinner, lunch, breakfast, something.

GEORGE’S 7TH Secret – Coach hard, play hard, and win: George believes that his job as Sales Coach is just as important as Joe Gibbs’ job was as Coach of the Washington Redskins. Like any winning NFL coach, George recognizes that he has to stay close to the action. To be an effective, credible coach, he has to be visible to Sales Players, customers, prospects, senior management, department heads, and key personnel in the company. So, like any good coach, George spends a great deal of time each week talking to people, on the phone, in meetings in his office, traveling with Sales Players, in front of prospects and customers, asking questions, and observing how sales plays are won and lost.

As a result, George has gained incredibly accurate and timely insights into his performance, into the performance of the Sales Team, and into the real needs of customers and prospects. These insights of course have helped George set realistic team goals, reward winning Sales Players, supply real customer needs, and thereby triple sales within 12 months.
You can do the same and more . . . if you really want to.
Right?

RATE YOURSELF AS A WINNING SALES COACH

Take time now to discover just how good you can be by taking time to understand how good you already are!

Respond to the following scenarios using five basic scales. A quick way to score this test is to simply use a highlighter to hit the number that most closely matches your response.
Your responses will not only help you determine where you stand on the following five critical elements of Sales Coaching, but will also help you prioritize those areas you may need to improve:

1. GOAL SETTING SKILLS: My goals are realistic, clear, compelling and support our company’s complete sales success in our territory. I discuss Sales Goals with Senior Management and with every Sales Player, individually and collectively, on my team. I supply lists of Sales Goals to Senior Management and Sales Players on a regular basis for their review, discussion, and final approval.

NEVER. . . [5] RARELY. . . [10] OCCASIONALLY. . . [15] USUALLY. . . [20] ALWAYS. . . [25]

2. COMMUNICATION SKILLS: I communicate often, easily, and quickly. I double-check to make certain each person I speak with understands my position and I also double-check to make certain that I understand the other person’s position. I place a greater emphasis on listening than I do on speaking.

NEVER. . . [5] RARELY. . . [10] OCCASIONALLY. . . [15] USUALLY. . . [20] ALWAYS. . . [25]

3. JOB SATISFACTION AND PERFORMANCE: I enjoy my work. I make a solid contribution to the bottom line with my Sales Coaching skills. I take good care of myself, physically and mentally, so I remain capable of performing at the top of my game.

NEVER. . . [5] RARELY. . . [10] OCCASIONALLY. . . [15] USUALLY. . . [20] ALWAYS. . . [25]

4. PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS: I work to maintain a sense of balance between my position as Sales Coach and the responsibilities of my superiors and colleagues. I consistently challenge myself to improve my performance as Sales Coach, as a colleague, and as an employee. I constantly search for newer, better ways to expand my skills and the skills of my Sales Players. I am willing to delegate wherever necessary and I freely share coaching responsibilities with Assistant Coaches and role models.

NEVER. . . [5] RARELY. . . [10] OCCASIONALLY. . . [15] USUALLY. . . [20] ALWAYS. . . [25]

5. TEAM BUILDING SKILLS: I stay in close, daily touch with each Sales Player to coach, motivate, and help in any way I can to increase sales and profits. I am quick to praise Sales Player successes and I never publicly criticize anyone in the organization.

NEVER. . . [5] RARELY. . . [10] OCCASIONALLY. . . [15] USUALLY. . . [20] ALWAYS. . . [25]

RATE YOURSELF AS A WINNING SALES COACH

What does this test mean? How did you score? Add up the total number of points and consider the following score analysis:

TOTAL POINTS – 125-115: EXCELLENT. You are doing a great job. Your goal setting skills, communication skills, job satisfaction and performance, professional relationships, and team building skills are well thought-out, realistic, and viable. Pat yourself on the back and keep up the good work.

TOTAL POINTS – 110-95: GOOD. You are performing well. Your scores tell you which areas need improvement. Prioritize objectively; select the single most critical area to work on first and take immediate positive steps to develop the skills you need. Put your ego aside and ask your Assistant Coach(s) and Sales Players for suggestions.

TOTAL POINTS – 90-80: FAIR. Review your responses. Pay special attention to high scores and low scores. On reflection, do your responses accurately portray you as Sales Coach? Would you change any response? If you wouldn’t change any response, change your behavior relative to the lowest scored scenario. A tip: The most critical scenario is number 1, Goal Setting Skills. If you didn’t score well on number 1, jump on the problem and get all the help you can . . . immediately.

TOTAL POINTS – 75 or LESS: TIME FOR A CHANGE? If you are not suffering some sort of temporary setback (domestic problem, health problem, personality clash at home or on the job, short-term financial crisis, etc.), stop what you are doing and discuss your situation with someone you trust. If you’re unable to immediately change your responses to these scenarios, you should seriously consider stepping aside in favor of someone else in the organization who is better equipped to perform as Sales Coach.

EPILOGUE

This team thing is nothing new. We all play our lives out on a variety of teams . . . the team at home with our families, the on the job team with colleagues, the team we play on with good friends and close neighbors and on and on.

Some of us stand on the sidelines, watching and cheering . . . we are called receptionists, sales coordinators, service and parts folks, truck drivers, and senior managers. Some of us take the field and compete . . . we are called Sales Players. And a crazy few of us do it all: we watch, we cheer, we train, we cajole, we motivate, we even play . . . we are called Sales Coaches!
As Sales Coach, your primary responsibility is to create a Winning Environment in your company, an environment that comes about only when you:

*Identify precise goals . . . be clear and very vocal about what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it and colleagues & friends will hold you to your goals!

*Clearly communicate winning ideas to your team

*Transform winning ideas into winning realities

When you clearly communicate your goals to individual Sales Players, they will begin to adopt your goals as their own. And, when your Sales Players understand the value and significance of your goals, they will play harder to help you achieve them.
And that’s how you play the sales game to win.

Copyright © 2008 by l.t. Dravis. All rights reserved.

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