Building Trust: Unfortunately, bank customer trends show a decrease in trust and satisfaction, while service expectations continue to rise. That may not apply to your bank but we do know that younger demographics represent a challenge as they consider expanding digital offerings. Leaders must put their focus on helping retail branches excel at deepening customer relationships by sharpening their skills of asking questions, listening, becoming a guide and a trusted advisor. All of these begin with empathy in sales, putting the focus on the client and working as a guide to help them uncover and achieve their financial goals. Do your frontline people have the skills and yes, the courage and desire, to expand into more meaningful conversations with clients? This all hinges on your sales team’s motivation to be different and memorable and have empathy in their selling approach. Do they care enough to ask the tough questions, listen closely and build that essential trust factor?

Managing Change: There has been a seismic shift in the community bank space this year and one of those shifts seems to be less of an interest in driving new clients through commercial loans and more of an interest in deepening current client relationships in the branch. To accomplish this, leaders must be ready to coach their bankers on a new, transformative approach to initiating distinctive conversations with their clients and prospects, building trust through meaningful relationships. What is at the heart of this approach? It is important to have a relationship building (sales) process to teach, coach and inspect. Not only does this give you a system to better understand how your team is motivated, it gives your frontline bankers a step-by-step process to follow to deepen their relationships. Following a stage-based process is one of the hallmarks of top relationship building bankers. Some may think of it as an art skill, however, there is also a science to becoming a trusted advisor, including ‘owning’ and being skillful at asking the right questions and guiding the client to make good financial decisions.

Now is an important time to take a look at your current people, how they are approaching their customer interactions and if they can transition to a more consultative role. An important component of deepening relationships will be the motivation and ability to be effective at outreach, calling current clients and initiating the conversation with thoughtful, caring, empathetic questions. This is a time to focus on questioning and listening skills, not product solutions.

• Over 90% results are probably coming from 36% of the sales team.
• The bottom 36% of the sales team is responsible for less than 4% of total sales.
• Of the last 4 hires - only 1 of them is doing better than the people they replaced.
• The company could eliminate the bottom 36% and increase profitability significantly.
• Many senior people are not performing nearly as well as some of the newer salespeople.

The challenge to most organizations is the answer to the question:  Are we growing and acquiring new relationships from existing clients and new clients?  If that answer is no or not enough, it needs to be addressed.

The Importance of Ongoing Sales Training

The importance of ongoing sales training can be substantiated by the data and analytics of your sales team noted above, but how does an effective leader and coach go about addressing these problems? Here are 3 methods to implement ongoing sales training immediately.

• Speed to failure – With new hires, sales managers must find out quickly if both of the salesperson and the manager made the right decision. In the hiring process, the sales manager making the offer must let the new hire know everything they are going to have to go through, what numbers they will be managed to and what is expected in the first 90 days and the following 6 months. That is the basis of ongoing sales training and coaching.
• Conversation is KING – Despite all the technology that is available to help salespeople create opportunities, nothing yet has replaced the value of quality conversations, sales coaching and training. Leaders must have a very high standard for training, practice and preparation before they put people out into the market. The importance of ongoing sales training starts at day 1 establishing regular one on one coaching sessions, demonstrating and observing the new hire in sales scenarios, prior to being in the field.
• Sales technology should make it easy for salespeople to communicate to suspects, prospects and clients.  It should be easy to use and provide extremely useful information for the sales manager as well as salespeople.  It should drive salespeople to consistently follow the company sales process and it should provide the sales leader with the sales data and analytics to coach that person to improvement. Sales technology is an important component of effective ongoing sales training.

Taking a close look at the data and analytics of sales and then implementing ongoing sales training, whether it is in house or with an external sales training firm, will go a long way to helping companies improve their sales environment and productivity of the entire team. 

Excerpt from Objective Management Group’s recent webinar on The Data Behind Sales Managers of Elite Teams. The third chapter of this guide addresses a fundamental question: What qualities matter most for building an elite team. Through a deep analysis of sales evaluations and coaching frequencies, we uncover the impact of consistent coaching on various aspects of sales performance.

In prior posts we discussed how to lay the foundation for a coachable sales team, and how frequently managers should provide coaching. In this segment we’ll explore what managers of top performing teams do differently and which manager qualities matter the most for building highly effective sales teams.

Based on extensive evaluations and predictive analysis, we identify three key attributes of an elite sales team manager:

1. Coaching their teams to get a prospect’s commitment to make a decision
2. Supportive coaching beliefs
3. Having a passion for coaching

We’ll delve into each attribute, explaining how they significantly contribute to the development of high-performing sales teams and why they are crucial for sales managers to cultivate.

We have examined the OMG Sales Evaluations of over 44,000 salespeople and their managers with a specific focus on which management coaching elements are associated with elite sales teams. First, we identified the top 10% of salespeople, ranked by OMG’s Sales Percentile. Then we ran their managers’ evaluations through a predictive decision tree analysis to see which management competencies lead to the greatest increase in high performing salespeople on a team. This is what we learned.

Managers who are effective at helping their salespeople get prospects to commit to a decision have +40% more top performers than managers who are ineffective at coaching on decision making. Why is this so predictive of success?

If your managers are helping their team to regularly get commitment, then they’re probably coaching on several supporting skills also. Getting a prospect to agree to a decision means the salesperson has uncovered a compelling reason to buy, thoroughly qualified the opportunity, and presented a need and cost appropriate solution at the right time. This takes active listening, many insightful and challenging questions, and the ability to pushback appropriately on potential stall tactics. These skills aren’t intuitive. They need to be drilled through repeat practice with a manager the salesperson trusts.

High performing teams also have managers with strong supportive beliefs relating to coaching. What are supportive beliefs? They are the assertions that sales managers consciously or unconsciously bring to their work.

Strong managers believe that coaching is important. They might believe that they’re responsible for their team’s daily activities. They understand the different motivational styles on their team and flex appropriately. They believe it’s important to debrief sales calls and help the salesperson understand what went well or poorly.

A manager’s belief system is so important that sales teams with managers who coach on prospect commitment and have supportive coaching beliefs have +70% more top performing salespeople than managers who don’t have supportive coaching beliefs.

Finally, high performing sales teams have managers who have a passion for coaching. Sales teams with managers who help their teams get commitment and believe coaching is important and have a passion for coaching have +80% more top salespeople than managers who don’t have a passion for coaching.

A manager can coach for the right skills (prospect commitment) and believe that coaching matters, but still not love coaching. What does passion for coaching look like? Simply put, it’s where the manager wants to spend their discretionary time. Think about a team where the manager is responsible for several salespeople and their own quota. When they have 15 free minutes do they use it to develop their own clients or to help their team practice their skills? Both are good options – but electing to spend extra time coaching shows a passion that can help the entire team reach their full potential.

Sales managers who do all three are a diamond in the rough. Only 9% of sales managers in OMG’s database of millions of salespeople are strong at getting commitments, improving beliefs, and coaching with passion.

Conclusion

The secret to enhancing sales performance and surpassing sales goals lies in fostering a coaching culture that starts with the right insights. It's not just about using the right coaching techniques and striking the perfect frequency; the foundation of an effective coaching culture is built on trust, offering frequent support, and taking a genuine appreciation in the needs of your team. By optimizing your approach to coaching, sales managers can make a real difference in their team's performance and establish a coaching culture that fuels continuous growth and success.

This blog article is based on a three-part blog series on Coaching found on OMG’s Research Blog. Anthony Cole Training Group is a distributor of OMG sales evaluation products.

Request a sales manager evaluation to find out if anyone on your team has these skills or the potential to develop them HERE!

Excerpt from Objective Management Group’s recent webinar on The Data Behind Sales Managers of Elite Teams. The second chapter of this guide addresses a fundamental question: how often should sales managers coach their teams? Through a deep analysis of sales evaluations and coaching frequencies, we uncover the impact of consistent coaching on various aspects of sales performance.

OMG clients often ask “I know coaching matters, but how often do I need to coach? And is there such a thing as too much coaching?” From our 30 years of sales evaluations, we know that some managers are extremely consistent coaches. Others tend to be more ad-hoc, letting their salespeople either come to them or addressing issues as they arise. Which style leads to better results?

To answer this, we’ve examined the OMG Sales Evaluations of over 11,000 salespeople and their managers with a specific focus on coaching frequency and how that relates to sales performance.

How much coaching is ideal?

Our data clearly show that any coaching is better than no coaching for salesperson development, and that high-frequency coaching has the biggest impact. Less frequent coaching – quarterly, monthly, or bi-weekly – all tend to yield similar gains over no coaching at all, often falling around a 2-5% improvement in Sales Percentile.

However, the real impact kicks in when coaching occurs weekly or several times per week, perhaps even daily.

• Salespeople who are coached weekly have +9% higher Sales Percentile than salespeople who are never coached. Sales Percentile increases +17% when the salesperson is coached several times per week.

What sales competencies does consistent coaching improve?

• Salespeople who are coached several times per week or daily show a +34% gain in Responsibility versus those who do not receive coaching at all, and a +19% gain in Motivation. Notable gains are also seen over those who experience on-demand coaching, +22% and +10% for Responsibility and Motivation, respectively
• Additionally, Sales Process improves +28% (over no coaching) and +11% (over on-demand). These salespeople are better at time management, achieving consistent results, following key sales steps, setting milestones, and tracking results using a scorecard.

What’s happening here? Managers who regularly coach their salespeople are modeling a clear sense of responsibility and commitment for their team. That approach sets expectations and creates a similar attitude for salespeople in their approach to their position.

What else does frequent coaching impact?

Beyond improvements in the salesperson’s attitude, frequent coaching also creates tangible gains in the salesperson’s Tactical skills. Most notably, salespeople who receive consistent, frequent coaching show +50% greater proficiency in using Sales Technology than those who do not receive any coaching, and +16% greater proficiency compared to those who receive on-demand coaching.

How often are sales managers coaching today?

While the ideal is an active manager-salesperson coaching dynamic, this rarely occurs. Only 10% of salespeople report being coached multiple times per week or more. In fact, a complete lack of coaching is reported almost as often (8% of the time)! Even weekly coaching only occurs 20% of the time. Most managers coach on-demand.

This blog article is based on a three-part blog series on Coaching found on OMG’s Research Blog. Anthony Cole Training Group is a distributor of OMG sales evaluation products.

Find out how your team rates on Coaching HERE!

This blog is an excerpt from Objective Management Group’s recent webinar on The Data Behind Sales Managers of Elite Teams. The first chapter of this guide emphasizes the critical role of trust between a manager and their sales team to ensure coachability. We reveal data that demonstrates how salespeople who trust and have a strong relationship with their managers exhibit higher coachability and overall performance.

Want To Make Your Salespeople More Coachable? First Gain Their Trust

Coaching is necessary, but alone it’s not enough. Sales Managers need to make sure their teams are receptive to the coaching that they receive. How can managers do that?

To answer this, we analyzed OMG Sales Evaluations of over 11,000 salespeople and their managers. The data clearly shows that how salespeople view the quality of their relationship with their manager has a profound effect on their performance. The heart of the impact, unsurprisingly, lies in how open they are to the coaching efforts of their manager.

What does it mean to be Coachable? And why does it matter?

OMG’s Coachable finding explains to what degree a sales leader should be able to coach a frontline salesperson. Salespeople who score low on Coachability are less likely to make the changes necessary to improve their performance. And being coachable does lead to better performance – our data shows that the most coachable salespeople have +13% higher OMG Sales Percentile than the least coachable salespeople.

OMG’s Coachable finding explains to what degree a sales leader should be able to coach a frontline salesperson. Salespeople who score low on Coachability are less likely to make the changes necessary to improve their performance. So, how can managers make sure their salespeople are coachable?

Salespeople are significantly more Coachable when they trust, respect, and have a relationship with their manager.

Each component of trust, respect, and relationship-building matters. Salespeople who trust their sales manager’s intentions score +26% higher on Coachability compared to salespeople who do not trust their managers. Similarly, salespeople who respect their manager are +20% more Coachable. Salespeople who have a relationship that is strong enough to withstand constructive criticism are also +20% more Coachable.

Trust, respect, and a strong relationship between a salesperson and their manager also improves the salesperson’s Outlook and Responsibility:

• +19%: Salespeople who have a relationship with their manager score +19% better on Responsibility than salespeople who do not have a relationship with their manager.
• +13%: Similarly, salespeople who respect their managers score +13% better on Outlook than salespeople who do not respect their managers.

What does this mean in practice? Salespeople who score well on Responsibility are more likely to hold themselves accountable for their results, rather than blame external factors like competition or the economy. Salespeople who score well on Outlook believe that they can be successful in sales. Combined, the two create a virtuous cycle for performance improvement - the salesperson acknowledges that their own shortcomings are impacting their results and believes that they can perform better. This opens the door for a trusted manager to begin a targeted, frequent training plan.

Find out how your team rates on Coaching HERE!