Training sales managers is not always the first thing that sales directors think about. Instead the focus seems to be on training the new sales representative. Yet the reality is if a new sales representative is supported and coached they are likely to sell twice as much as a representative who is not.

You only need to look at some of the most powerful sales teams in any organisation and you will notice that they normally have a highly skilled sales manager behind them.

The facts are that to become good at most things in life we all need some help and support. This is especially so in business where core business and selling skills are vital to an individual and companies success. A well trained sales manager will be able to help support teach and guide their individual sales team members to success.

A sales manager has a wide remit to what he or she needs to deliver. Generally they are responsible for delivering on a sales target, managing the marketing plan, reviewing the budget and staying within spending limits. In addition they also need to ensure that each of their sales team members is hitting their individual sales targets and quotas. This is an area that many new sales managers struggle with. It is OK signing expenses and managing the process part of the role, yet a focus on sales coaching will potentially produce even bigger results.

We all I am sure know the saying, ‘teach a man to fish?’ and it is a popular saying because it is true. If individual sales representatives are coached on their selling skills it will improve your bottom line exponentially. Sales coaching is a process by which your sales training managers can enable your sales team to become more effective in front of both existing clients and potential prospects. Sales coaching will work with both new and experienced sales representatives. Depending on their level of experience different styles can be used.

A new sales team member might need more directive sales coaching. As the saying goes you don’t know what you don’t know. Their level of experience in coming across the different customer scenarios will be different and here a sales manager can really help in making suggestions of how best to move forward and get a desired result. Making sales coaching align with your current selling skills model make everything work smoothly for all concerned.

When the sales representative focuses their interaction on achieving the outcome they have set, results happen quickly. In today’s new economy, selling is a definite process. If a prospect is new it is unlikely that they will place a huge order in the first meeting. Yet this initial interaction is vital to set the tone and possibility of the next one happening. Rookie representatives can be helped in the process if your organisation has a focus on training sales managers in the sales coaching skills that will deliver results for everyone involved.

So when you are planning the improvement of your sales force if you want to accelerate your results make sure you factor in training sales managers as well.

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Working under a competent, engaged business development manager can be rewarding both personally and fiscally.

On the contrary, working under a superior who is withdrawn, incompetent and who does not care about their subordinates’ well-being will prove to stagnate any career.

Either prior to taking a job or considering leaving your current sales position, here are some measurements you can use when assessing whether a particular sales manager is worth your professional time or whether they can headaches, aggravation and an unpleasant workplace.

1. What are the individual’s business development training methods?

Whether or not a sales manager is hands-on tells a lot about the person and tells even more about your future prospects working at his / her company.

Business development executives who do not train and are not committed to growing their subordinates are not worth your time as if you are not advancing in your career, what is the point of employment at the firm?

2. What do his / her superiors think about them?

What a sales manager’s bosses think about them will give you very strong insight as to what type of individual this person is.

Senior management of any company likes leadership. Subordinates in any company need leadership and direction.

Let senior management tell you if the sales manger has the ability to lead and whether they command the respect of those above them.

3. How good are they at selling?

The last thing you want as an employee is to be under a sales manager who cannot sell themselves.

To be a good sales coach and mentor, sales managers need to have solid business development techniques and need to be to help the sales force when they get into a jam or need additional assistance.

Sales managers who are not very competent at selling tend to be less secure than managers who are proven salesmen / saleswomen.

When you get a sales manager who is not secure in their selling methods, chances are likely that the manager will not get along with the more apt sales professionals in the group.

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“We do that” said Tim, “that’s part of the sales managers’ role”. I was going through a checklist of effective performance drivers with a client, a senior sales VP of a financial software vendor. We came to coaching the sales people.

Tim and his sales managers sincerely believed that they coached their sales people. I don’t think you would get a very different response from sales chiefs in most IT companies. In our experience, however, the reality is that sales management doesn’t coach their salespeople effectively. There’s a lot of vague thinking about coaching.

Depends What You Mean by Coaching – People tend to associate coaching with sport. The majority of the top professional golf and tennis stars have a coach. Occasionally, they fire the coach and go it alone. Generally coaches are credited with helping the sportsperson to improve their performance – in the fastest way possible. The hallmark of a successful sports coach is a one-on-one relationship, built on trust and dedicated to improving the “coachee’s” performance. A coach has the advantage of objectivity – being able to see and show exactly where the coachee can improve. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that coaching sales people, if done properly, really does produce improved sales performance. Some US research identified a 35% increase in sales just by coaching. Neil Rackham, founder of Huthwaite Research (the people who invented SPIN) says “no other activity has so positive an impact on the success of consultative selling… a strong coaching culture is the hallmark of success”

Sales Coaching – the Wasteland of Corporate America? Linda Richardson, President of the Richardson Company and a lecturer at Wharton Business School argues “Every organisation and every person has blind spots. The power of coaching lies in turning those blind spots into perspective”. She goes on to say: “The critical importance of coaching a sales force is universally acknowledged – as is its almost total absence. Sales coaching is the wasteland of corporate America”.

Lip Service to Coaching Working one-to-one with a salesperson is generally considered coaching. An example of this – reviewing the salesperson’s pipeline or progress with a particular opportunity. Let’s look at a typical example of what all too often passes for coaching. Suppose a salesperson requests help from his/her sales manager because they feel that they need some assistance with a big deal. They may have set up a meeting with a more senior person and want the manager along. Maybe I’m being too cynical but perhaps the salesperson feels that by involving the sales manager they are covering their backside. That way they can spread the blame if anything goes wrong! Who handles the call? The sales manager. How much learning takes place? Some – the ‘watch- how- I- do- it’ method of training has its place. This is thought of as coaching. But is it? According to Neil Rackham, there are two types of sales coaching – strategy coaching and skills coaching. Strategy coaching is a bit like the coach and the player poring over a map of the course in the club house discussing the way the golfer might play the course. Tactics could be likened to the coach observing play – perhaps noting the way the player positions his feet and suggesting a better stance. Similarly, sales strategy coaching might take place in the office – discussing what needs to happen to win a deal. Using something like Target Account Selling or Miller Heiman’s blue sheets is a form of strategic coaching. Even if the salesman sometimes feels that it’s a way of catching them out, this coaching is very valuable. What is largely missing, in our experience, is skills or tactics coaching. This may be because there’s never enough time. Or perhaps because sales managers like to think that they have hired salespeople who know how to sell.

What Happens Typically on Call Accompaniment Let’s revisit the sales manager out on a call with one of his sales people. More often than not little or no preparation gets done. A few words may be exchanged over coffee in the local Starbucks or driving to the call. Worse, (and I’ve done it) a few words are exchanged in the lift on the way up to the meeting!

Next, how often does the sales manager assume the running of the call? 95% of the time? Why does this happen? The sales manager is there for a purpose. He or she is there to help close the deal perhaps – and that generally involves, as they see it, controlling the meeting. If it’s an important deal the manager doesn’t want to see the call go wrong. Once the sales manager takes over the conversation, the prospect’s focus switches away from the salesperson. Result? The salesperson is sidelined; their authority shot to pieces. But our sales manager fondly imagines that he has coached the salesperson in how to do it. Whatever the outcome of the meeting, doing the call for the salesman isn’t developmental coaching any more than the tennis coach playing a shot for the player in a match would be coaching.

What Should be Happening? Sitting down with the salesperson to plan the call. Careful preparation is never time wasted. Question the salesperson about their objectives for the call. How is he/she going to handle it? What issues is the prospect likely to have? Is there any skill that the salesperson wants to improve and practise in the call?

The meeting should ideally be run by the salesperson with the manager saying as little as possible. (A useful accessory might be a large piece of sticking plaster for this to happen!) After the call, a formal de-brief should happen. The manager asks the salesperson about the extent that the call objectives have been achieved and listens to the salesperson’s answers. What does the salesperson think could have been done better? The manager should went wrong!

Ok, I know life isn’t like that and the relentless pressure to make the numbers can militate against doing coaching properly. But no sales manager can sell everything personally. The more he can develop and enhance the skill sets of his sales team the greater will be the improvement in their performance overall. The immediate sales manager is THE best placed person to improve selling effectiveness. Personal coaching is increasingly recognised as the best vehicle for him or her to accomplish this.

Tim and his sales managers plan to devote a proportion of their time to real coaching and not playing the shots themselves. They are developing some KPIs to allow them to measure individual performance improvement. Linda Richardson again: “The sales manager role is re-emerging into a new and vital role – from evaluator to developer, from expert to resource, from teller to questioner… it is a 180 degree shift from how most sales managers manage”

Author: Graham French, gfa Sales Improvement.

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If you are a sales manager, it’s a must that you coach your sales team so they can be more productive. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Identify areas of opportunities. The first thing that you need to do is to analyze the weakness of your selling processes and the areas of opportunities of your sales representatives. They might not have great communication skills, they maybe struggling when faced with objections, or they may not be persuasive enough to get people to buy. Knowing the things that you need to work on ahead of time can help you make your coaching programs more targeted thus, more effective.

2. Design coaching modules. Design modules for each area of opportunities. Include all the information that you need to share and all the activities that your trainees will need to perform in order to improve their performance or in order to overcome their issues during the selling process. Make sure that your modules contain all the answers to their questions and all the instructions on how they can properly deal with their issues.

3. Medium. Aside from doing one-on-one and group coaching programs, you can also use the internet or the phone when conducting coaching sessions. Every medium has pros and cons. Research and identify which one is more effective and use it. You can also run surveys to know the preferences of your target audience.

4. Feedback. Solicit feedback from your trainees after each training sessions. Ask them if they find it useful. Take each feedback seriously so you’ll know what you need to improve on to make your future coaching sessions more effective and more impacting.

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