Some sales managers believe that coaching means helping salespeople with pricing and technical questions on an ad hoc basis but these discussions, while valuable, do not focus on skill development. Effective coaching involves scheduling multiple coaching conversations with salespeople each week to improve their skills and help them win more sales. This is called Intentional Coaching and is the path to building a sales coaching culture.

The good news is that there are concrete steps managers can take to initiate high-touch coaching that will help develop the necessary sales skills in their salespeople and contribute to a coaching culture that will lead to sales team excellence. These must be executed well and consistently of course, to make an impact.

1. Consistent and Frequent Coaching executed well, will lead to improved skills and bottom- line impact.
2. Effective Debriefs on a regular basis, focusing on why they got a particular outcome and working backward to uncover the causes.
3. Asking Enough Questions and understanding the importance of not dominating the conversation, by frequently asking questions.  Just as in selling, successful coaching requires frequent question-asking.
4. No Need for Approval from your salespeople, meaning you aren't overly concerned with whether your salespeople like you, which allows you to coach them to be more effective.
5. Able to Stay in the Moment while selling, you may find yourself becoming emotionally involved in situations, causing you to listen to your own inner voice instead of the customer. By improving this tendency, you will be able to more effectively coach your salespeople.
6. Having and Coaching to an Effective Sales Process will help you address areas for growth in your salespeople.
7. Passion for Coaching is possibly the most important component and as a coach, you must have a true inner passion to develop others to perform at their very best.
8. Beliefs Support Coaching meaning you strongly believe in the role and importance of coaching.
9. Uncovers Compelling Reasons to Buy while selling, you have been effective at uncovering prospects' compelling reasons to buy. As this is a critical factor in Consultative Selling, this makes you a more effective coach to your salespeople.
10. Knows How People Buy involves developing a strength in getting prospects to tell you how they will reach a buying decision which allows you to coach your salespeople to be more effective.
11. Doesn't Rescue the Salespeople means you are willing to let your salespeople fail giving them the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
12. Effective at Getting Commitments means you are adept at getting your prospects to agree when they will make a decision. By improving your personal skills in this area, you will be able to coach your salespeople to be better at it as well.
13. Handles Joint Sales Calls Effectively means you go on joint calls, avoid heavy participation in the call and instead observe the call and then provide coaching feedback.

Here is the unfortunate truth. New sales managers, as well as the companies who promote them, believe that the very things that made them successful salespeople will make them successful sales managers. Then, continuing that belief into a sales manager’s tenure, sales managers don’t ask for and aren’t offered sales management training and coaching which emphasizes how to coach salespeople. As a result, new and growing sales managers must rely on the sales manager they reported to when they were in a sales role for what sales management is supposed to look like. That of course leads back to the beginning of this article that states the problem, less than 10% of a sales managers’ time is spent coaching their salespeople. To achieve sales team excellence and build a coaching culture, companies must put specific coaching activities in place consistently, and provide development opportunities for their sales coaches to achieve excellence in their role.

• Driving Accountability – working with your leadership, they can determine the critical sales activity and behavior that must be tracked. A Fractional Sales Manager will keep your people on track weekly, uncovering the how and the why and providing sales ideas at each weekly meeting. Just this one step of establishing more accountability will help your company see an immediate lift.
• Coaching Opportunities – acting as their dedicated sales coach, the Fractional Sales Manager will help your people prep for important opportunities so that they are ready to put themselves into a winning position. Pre-call and post-call will be part of their ongoing role to help upgrade the pipeline and develop skills. They will train your salespeople in this important sales skill preparing for a meeting so that it becomes a sales habit.
• Improving Results – make sure to work with an organization that has a history of helping companies manage their sales teams and has a proven history of driving revenue growth. Talented Fractional Sales Managers have years of personal sales and sales management experience and draw from their experience of working with salespeople in your industry. They come with the built-in skills you need to help your team achieve goals.

Speaking of results, here are some real comments made by salespeople coached by one of our Fractional Sales Managers. There are advantages to working with a skilled coach outside of your company as they bring experience and expertise to your table. These are the kinds of results and testimonials your company should look for as they consider a Fractional Sales Manager.

Fractional Sales Manager Testimonials

• Once I asked "What would have to go on in this meeting for you to feel like it was a good use of your time?" 5 minutes later he asked his office staff to give me all the policies to look at. It is an Oct. 15 renewal about $140,000 in premium. Thank you for your help.
• Just wanted you to know that I just bound that client we spoke about and made $11k! AND they just sent an account to me from RT for the renewal. Hard work and the methods you have taught me are paying off!!
• I just wanted to thank you for your time and help a couple of weeks back. I have had several conversations with prospective clients, and your approach has proven to be very effective.  I have been able to establish parameters and have started binding business with a couple of the new clients. Of course, the job is never done, and I will continue to prospect and use your approach.  
• I have capitalized on some HOT introductions from some existing agents. It amazes me who people know in other states or other parts of this state (not competition to my clients) that they will gladly give an introduction to.  
• It is great to have someone like yourself who cares and is willing to invest their time to help.

Hiring a Fractional Sales Manager is not forever. The goal is to enhance your organization, create effective sales strategies, systems and practices, and help your company gain momentum, setting up your sales team for future success. And a Fractional Sales Manager can make a huge impact for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full time person.

There are assessments in the marketplace to identify the strengths needed for sales leadership and we recommend and utilize the Sales Management Insights from Objective Management Group. These assessments can be used to screen candidates to see if they have the skills needed to lead your team to achieve the revenue growth goals of your company.  But sometimes, it is very difficult to find quality sales management candidates.

What is a Fractional Sales Manager?

Simply stated, a Fractional Sales Manager would run the sales management activities for your organization without being an employee. They would become well-versed in your company’s sales systems and culture, but they spend part of their time with your organization and the rest of their time working with other companies, so hence the “fractional” title. And of course, your company pays a fraction of their cost. They are part of your company, not part of your payroll. Something to consider as you evaluate your options:  We know from 30 years of data that: Salespeople reporting to a sales leader with strong coaching skills tend to have 28% more close-able late-stage opportunities.

Many companies do not have strong sales managers and struggle with finding the right person for that critical position.

Your Company Might Consider Hiring a Fractional Sales Manager if You:

• Have a team of less than 10 salespeople
• Are tired of trying to find the right sales manager
• Don’t have the budget for a full-time sales manager
• Senior leadership is not equipped to coach and drive accountability
• Company does not have a consistent sales process
• Sales team is lacking motivation and are not driving leads
• You need to drive revenue and grow!

What Activities Would a Fractional Sales Manager Perform?

Every company is different and has nuances that they must address and therefore, they have varying needs, so it is important that you are able to select from the custom components and activities that a Fractional Sales Manager would perform. Here are the activities that you could consider for a customized Fractional Sales Management program:

1. Robust Sales Meetings – Your Fractional Sales Manager will schedule and run sales meetings, establish standards, and keep your salespeople on track. These meetings are the ideal time to provide sales ideas and track the results. An experienced Fractional Sales Manager (FSM) will uncover new motivation in your salespeople.
2. Weekly Huddles – A Fractional Sales Manager will make sure your salespeople are focused on the right activities and report on the metrics that matter, mobilizing the team and adding a competitive tone.
3. Monthly Pipeline Review – The Fractional Sales Manager will dive into your pipeline details, continually upgrading your prospects and coaching your people on the quality of leads, which is an essential component to driving results.
4. 1-on-1 Coaching –Each individual on your team needs personal help to drive skill improvement and optimize calls. Your Fractional Sales Manager will spend the time needed to get to know them, their sales goals and provide 1-on-1 time to help them close more deals.
5. Updates with Leadership – Your Fractional Sales Manager will keep the leaders updated and report on accountability measurement improvements.

Let us know if we can help your company with a Fractional Sales Manager. We’ve been doing this for over 30 years- 30 years of experience developing sales leaders to more effective levels of performance management and coaching. Our Fractional Sales Management program is targeted and strategically aligned with the companies we work with, so there is an immediate lift in productivity and revenue.

1. Your current sales process is perfectly designed for the results you (or your team) are getting today – if you are not closing as much as you believe you should, then there is something in your process that must change.
2. That change starts at the beginning – the phone call to set up the appointment.

The quality of the phone call will always determine the quality of the appointment. If your salespeople must have better initial calls, then they must improve the quality of the phone call. 

To get you started, here are 4 rules to share to help your salespeople have better initial calls:

1. How you say what you say is more important than what you actually say. You must ask questions and then really listen. If you tell stories, use metaphors and analogies. You need to have appropriate eye contact and body position, voice inflection, and background especially in today’s virtual world.
2. Nobody really wants to talk to you – this seems like a harsh rule- but if you know this going in, that will help you be better prepared to nurture the discussion.
3. You have 10 seconds to make a GREAT first impression. If you show up late for the zoom call or meeting, you’ve already lost. If you don’t have compelling and CEO-like questions to ask that really engage your prospect, you are behind the 8-ball. If the prospect cannot connect with you in the first 10 seconds, everything is downhill from there.
4. Finally, practice and record your opening dialog. Listen to it. If you were someone you’ve never met before - would you engage? (Sales coach, you should listen and provide feedback that is helpful to your salespeople)

Salespeople must have a strategy or plan for success going into the meeting. Not a plan that is developed in the car during the drive to the appointment, but rather one that is thought out in a pre-call strategy session. Here are your two objectives:

• The overall objective should be to have a go or no-go at the end of the meeting – that doesn’t mean buy or don’t buy, it just means that you move to the next step or don’t.
• The secondary objective is discovering as much as you can about your prospect’s motivation to meet and have the discussion you are having. Normally this involves a pain they want to eliminate or an opportunity that they want to leverage. Find out their compelling reason to take time out of their schedule.

One thing we know for sure, prospects don’t take time out of their schedules unless there is an underlying reason. A salesperson’s job is to find out what that reason is.

Motivation Activities to Drive Sales Team Excellence

Let’s break this definition down into activities that have been identified by the assessment that as a sales leader, you can utilize to help motivate your people. If you want to be an effective sales leader with a strong motivating competency, you will:

• Know What Motivates Salespeople - By learning what uniquely motivates your salespeople, you will likely find that they will work harder and more effectively because their actions will support their goals. 

• Give Recognition - By more regularly praising your salespeople when they are positively performing, you can raise their self-image and may find that they are more effective.

• Run Effective Sales Meetings - By making a conscious effort to include motivation in your sales meetings, you can help ensure the motivation of your salespeople does not wane and protect against negative sentiment.

• Beliefs Support Motivation - Some of your beliefs related to sales management may be misaligned with the role and importance of motivating your sales team. In other words, to be effective, you must believe it is important!

• Have a Good Self-Image - Your strong self-image helps you be brave while selling, and it also helps you motivate your salespeople. With both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors in play, it is often difficult to understand but you must have the courage to get personal and build relationships with your salespeople. 

• Develop Strong Relationships - By addressing areas for growth in the Relationship Building Competency, you will be able to build stronger bonds with your salespeople that will provide insights into how you can motivate them. More on the Relationship Building Competency in our next post in this series.

• Take Responsibility - Your tendency to consistently take responsibility helps motivate your salespeople, as they know that you will not blame them for negative sales outcomes.

• Won’t Accept Mediocrity - You have high expectations for your salespeople and don't except mediocre performance, even if that makes your salespeople unhappy with you.

• Have Goals and a Plan - By improving your personal goals management system, you can also motivate your salespeople to be more goal oriented.

Take a moment to review and rate yourself on these 9 competencies of a successful motivational sales leader. It has been stated that motivation is an inside-out job meaning that as a sales leader, you must understand what motivates your people internally in order to help drive the external results – more clients, more sales, larger average accounts, more network, etc. You cannot create motivation in your people, but you can become better at understanding how they are motivated to tap into what it takes to drive their individual inspiration. One by one, taking the time to more fully understand these motivational factors for each salesperson on your team, will help you get closer to achieving sales team excellence.