Keep Doing
An important distinction in the financial advisory world is that when you “sell” something to your clients, you are, in fact, helping them reach their financial goals and financial security. This is a motivating and positive mindset that helps advisors do the necessary sales activities on a consistent basis, and in turn, helps them grow their business. But we need to make sure our salespeople stay on top of their priorities and activities. This is not always easy, and it sometimes takes courage.  To execute as sales managers, we must be keep having fierce conversations with our reps when activities aren't being performed. We must continue to manage our own activities and yet be strong and flexible enough to function as a team. We must keep encouraging each other when we have fallen behind. We must have the endurance to do this day in and day out. 

It’s easy to get discouraged and frustrated when sales activities don't lead to results immediately.  But, if your business plan is solid, your sales activity success formula is based on real data, and you review and manage these sales behaviors regularly, these good business practices will lead to the accomplishment of your goals. Keep doing them!

Start Doing
As a sales manager, you need to help your people start doing what they must do to be more successful at selling. Here are some activities that can lead to success in selling and to which you should start doing if you are not already:

• Determine specific goals and include personal as well as professional goals. Start with 100 goals, boil that down to the top 10 and then filter out the top 3 non-negotiable goals.  Remember, people achieve sales goals to reach personal aims, not company targets. Download our 100 Personal Goals Worksheet Here
• Advisors should have a specific plan to reach their goals. If they don’t have a plan, help them create one. The plan should include specific activities required for success and set “standards” for each of these activities and you must keep them accountable to those standards.
• Have a process of reporting activities and results; we suggest a weekly sales huddle as the venue. There is nothing as powerful as being part of a group. Peer pressure is hugely motivating.
• Be a life-long learner. Being in the business 20 years is not good enough. You and your advisors have to be better and more knowledgeable today than you were last year.
• Adjust to the marketplace. This goes beyond dealing with the volatile economic climate.  Today technology has changed how many people receive information and buy. There was a time when consumers relied on the salesperson to provide virtually all the information to make a decision. Now, most of the information (as well as the ability to make a purchase) is available online. Today’s manager role is to help clients identify their financial goals, make the right choices to reach them, and then implement the appropriate steps.

If you take the time to help your advisors analyze their business practices to identify what they need to do in order to be successful, you will have taken an important step toward accomplishing your goals.  So, start now. 

Stop Doing
Several years ago, I heard Verne Harnish, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, speak. As part of his presentation on the “1-Page Business Plan”, he challenged the crowd with the following question: “What will you stop doing?” Typically, when companies (or individuals) create a business plan, they focus on the things they are going to start doing when what they really need is to focus on what they will stop doing. 

I know that you can relate to this. We have worked with thousands of sales managers over the last 30 years, and the number one reason given for not spending sufficient time coaching their people is time. Their time is eaten up with other priorities, such as operations, paperwork, or meetings.  However, you have to rise above this. You must determine what you will stop doing.

To help you get started, here are some potential “stop doing” activities you should consider:

• Stop allowing your salespeople to make excuses for their lack of activity. Discontinue those lengthy conversations and refocus them on getting the activity done.
• Stop getting so immersed in operations and finance. Find the right people in your organization with the perspective to understand what they must do and what you must do to get the whole job done.
• Stop dropping and doing everything for your salespeople. Schedule a specific time for discussions with your reps and avoid those interruptive drop-ins. By doing that, you will help them to solve many of their own issues. Your door cannot always be open.

It’s your turn now to determine what you need to “Keep Doing, Start Doing and Stop Doing” in 2024!

How many of your people are really committed to sales success as it is defined above? Commitment requires strong personal desire to achieve personal goals. Companies continue to set sales goals for producers without ever knowing if these people are motivated to reach their own personal goals. This is a big mistake.

We must get commitment from salespeople, even top producers, to execute at the high levels necessary. And more importantly, we must get each individual’s commitment to perform the activities required to reach his/her specific personal goals. Without this customized goal plan, your company sales goals are destined to fall short.

Salespeople commit to what is important to them.  While they may understand the benefit of shareholder value increasing, this is not what will drive them to do the activities. What will motivate a salesperson is his/her own set of nonnegotiable personal objectives, goals and ambitions. As a sales coach, your job is to help each individual uncover these personal goals and help him/her understand that, if committed, how he/she will reach these goals.  

Next, we must help each salesperson discover his/her “current state,” or where they stand relative to these goals. When there is a gap, as when the personal income forecast from current sales pipeline and closing ratio will not be sufficient to buy the dream house, we must help the salesperson discover the pain and disappointment that will occur if he/she does not achieve this goal.

To do this, we must use a series of probing questions, questions that will illuminate what his/her future looks like based upon current production. This process is an important part of helping a salesperson stay committed to sales success and achieving their goals.

Once we have gone through this initial discovery and questioning process, we arrive at the salesperson’s ultimate desired outcome. In the case of a salesperson who is underperforming or failing to execute effort or skills, we must get him/her to agree, voluntarily, that failure to achieve the desired outcome is not an acceptable option. 

It is important that the salesperson desires and verbalizes this. It is not effective for him/her to answer a leading question that you might pose such as “You don’t want that to happen, do you?”  Instead, you must ask “Is that a problem? Are you sure that’s a problem? And is it compelling enough for you to make changes?”  Only after the salesperson verbally acknowledges that he/she wants to change and needs to change, can we move to the next step. Only then can we get the salesperson to agree to some form of disciplined structure around the necessary sales activity.

Once we have a salesperson’s commitment to fix a problem, we must get them to commit - to agree to do everything possible to succeed. At this point, we can implement a sales development program that will help him/her move toward their goals.

A disciplined sales development program will probably be harder on you than it is on the salesperson because you will need to inspect along the way. Example: If the disciplined program for filling the pipeline includes making phone calls every Thursday morning at ten o’clock, you will need to be there to hold the salesperson accountable. Or if you expect the individual to ask for introductions daily, you must inspect these reports at the end of each day. That is your commitment to their sales success.  

Do not ask for a salesperson’s commitment and fail to do your part. If you are to be an effective sales coach, helping your people to achieve their goals, you must make your own commitment to do whatever is necessary. A lack of consistent performance in sales coaching and management on your part will translate into a lack of commitment in your salespeople.

Much like a good sports coach, a good sales coach gets involved in all aspects of the job, including both the selling skills and the mental state of his or her salespeople. Certainly, the coach trains, develops and mentors their salespeople to become better at the role of selling. But the most important role of the sales coach is to help their salespeople achieve their personal goals. To achieve their goals, salespeople need both skill and knowledge – and someone to coach them to excellence. How good are you at coaching your salespeople to be their very best?

Here are 7 sales coaching best practices to master to improve your coaching:

 #1 Sales Coaching Best Practice: Debrief Effectively

An effective and proactive coach is in a constant state of debriefing their people. Whether their salespeople are returning from an initial appointment with a new client, presenting a solution to a new client, or renewing a current relationship, a coach must constantly have real time intel as to how the salesperson is performing. One sales coaching best practice is to have regularly scheduled debriefing times in their ideal week calendar. During the sessions, the effective sales coach will be armed with great questions to find out what happened, how things happened, and why they happened. Questions about the prospect’s compelling reason to take action, their willingness to invest, their ability to make a change from a current provider and the decision-making process are the questions that must be asked in addition to the technical aspect of the sale relative to product and service offerings. Based on the answers, the sales coach must begin to develop insight as to where the choke points are in a salesperson’s approach in order to coach them for skill improvement. 

#2 Sales Coaching Best Practice: Effective on Joint Calls

While on a joint call, there are roles for everyone. That is why doing pre-call meetings, before the meeting are so important. The sales coach has to make sure that his salesperson is prepared to conduct the perfect sales meeting and the coach’s role is to be defined as supportive in nature, not the main character. This means that when the coach is on the call and the sales professional is making mistakes, they must let them. and oddly, this is a sales coaching best practice.  An effective coach will not rescue them as they understand that is how they will learn.  Now a good coach will not let them blow the sale of a life time.  But they will not bail them out and rescue them when they forget to ask a critical question.  Once the call is over, the sales coach conducts the post call debrief with the sales person. The effective coach will first ask their sales person to tell them how they thought it went.  The coach can then compare comments made to their own observations and from that, share their insights as to how well the sales professional performed. 

#3 Sales Coaching Best Practice: Ask Quality Questions

Having a conversation with someone is much more pleasant then going through an interrogation.  This is important for the effective coach to remember if they are focused on asking questions.  After two or so questions, the sales person is going to feel like the coach is picking on them rather than coaching them to improve. Let’s say that a sales person has a tendency to miss finding out about the competition. The coach could ask them: “Did you find out about the competition?” or they could ask “When you asked them how they were going to undo the current relationship, how did they respond?” Which question is going to give better insight as to how the salesperson is executing on their sales system? Open-ended questions tend to make coaching sessions more conversational which why they are a sales coaching best practice. The open-ended questions will help the sales person identify the gaps between what is expected and what is getting done. 

#4 Sales Coaching Best Practice: Demonstrates an Effective Selling System

Great sales coaches really know their sales process and selling system. They know it so well that they own the content and process. The sales leader exhibits the sales skills expected of the sales team in everything they do. They ask open-ended questions. They help people discover the issues. They make sure that the other person wants to fix the problem. They check for the ability to invest time to fix the problem, and finally, they get commitment. An effective sales coach must demonstrate what they expect. This mastery of the system is what allows the coach to identify incorrect behavior when they observe their salespeople in a prospecting situation or role-playing session with peers. If the sales coach does not know, then you can’t possibly expect their salespeople to know.

#5 Sales Coaching Best Practice: Effective at Getting Commitments

Gaining commitment is a sales coaching best practice for the on-going development and improvement in a sales team. Even with top producers, a sales coach must gain their commitment to execute at high levels and discuss with them their personal goals, and their commitment to attain those goals, through committing to the required sales activities. Sales people commit to what is important to them. It may be important to salespeople that shareholder value increases, but as a sales coach, don’t count on that. What motivates most salespeople is their own set of personal objectives, goals and ambitions. The coach’s job is to help them discover the goals they are committed to and then help them discover their ‘current state’. And when there is a gap, (such as their current sales pipeline and closing ratio will not help them buy that new house they were hoping for), then an effective coach helps them discover the ‘pain’ of the eventual outcome of their current state and the change that must take place to achieve their goals.

#6 Sales Coaching Best Practice: Consistently Coach Skills & Behaviors

Most sales coaches do not understand the difference between performance management (discussing the sales activities, i.e.; the numbers) and coaching (how the activities are being executed). Coaching focuses on how someone did what they did. Every sales leader’s calendar should have consistent scheduled times for coaching their people. Effective coaching focuses on skills and behaviors, the how of what people do. Sales coaching should include the following:  asking questions, drilling down on those answers, getting commitments, helping salespeople overcome objections and helping salespeople with their own performance issues. Coaching is not about how to structure a deal. That is teaching. Coaching is rolling up the sleeves and getting into the art and science of the sale, rather than the mechanics of the product and service design of the offering.

#7 Sales Coaching Best Practice: Effectively On-board New Hires

On-boarding a new salesperson is critical as it will determine both the immediate and long-term success of new hires. Here are three sales coaching best practice on-boarding steps:

1. The sales coach must communicate their vision, objectives and expectations to the extent that if the salesperson was asked, they could repeat without hesitation and in great detail.
2. The sales coach must schedule weekly coaching sessions with their new hires to help them create and execute on their plan and learn, implement and inspect their effective selling process.
3. An effective coach can use their huddle data, pipeline growth and notes from pre- and post-call debriefing sessions to see if their new hire is exceeding activity and behavior expectations.  From that critical early data, they can begin to identify and teach and coach to the salesperson’s choke points.

Our coaching tip for you, the coach, is to select at least 3 of these sales coaching best practices and focus on them, improve your own skills and by doing so, you will help your salespeople improve their levels of performance. Let’s go, Coach!

Many leaders do not understand that the ‘game’ is the game of selling.  Managers and internal trainers must really understand the game of selling.  It takes strapping a headset on, making hundreds of dials, asking for introductions, getting rejected, selling big cases and starting with small sales, to really understand the game.  Otherwise, it is like taking flying lessons from a pilot trainer that did all their flight learning in a simulator.

Most sales managers end up in that role because they were good to great salespeople and the company was looking to:

1. Replace a manager
2. Find a way for professional advancement
3. Look for a way to keep a salesperson that is slowing down and has a ‘book’ of business

Rarely if ever does that person go through an intense, fully integrated sales management training development program to help them effectively execute the required skills of an effective coach. Nor do they have a good handle on “what” to do; the sales coaching best practices. The 7 critical coaching competencies from Objective Management Group, our sales evaluation partner and pioneer in the industry, are listed below. How effective are your sales leaders at executing these activities?

Peter Jensen is an Olympic coach from Canada and author of the book “The Third Factor”. Peter states that first two factors for success in anything are nature and nurture. The Third Factor, specific to coaching, is: You must have a coaching bias.

A strong sales leader must have the coaching bias and they must love to coach the game of selling.  They must have a love for seeing and hearing people develop into the best versions of themselves.  That is what it takes to be successful at coaching.  It must be about helping others gain the spotlight, success and financial rewards or a job well done.  It requires sacrificing ego and the need to be right for the other person to discover their path, develop their skills and become the expert.

The challenge for most sales managers or sales leaders is to have the ability to exhibit and execute these skills of being a strong leader:  Strong identity, self-assurance, credible authority, knowledge and a foundational vision, mission and goal orientation.  Strong leaders do not need to be in the spotlight, do not act like they know it all and ask questions instead of always providing answers. These are the important sales coaching best practices that drive effective sales coaching.

There are assessments in the marketplace to help people identify if they have what it takes.  We use Objective Management Group’s Sales Manager Insights Evaluation.  Three key findings are identified and scored:

1. The Will to Manage
2. The Sales Manager Sales DNA
3. The Sales Manager Tactical Competencies

The evaluation provides an index percentage that tells the evaluated sales manager how they rank against others who have taken the evaluation.  Our 30+ history has verified that most sales managers have less than 10% of the skills needed to be an effective sales coach.

In summary, most companies with a manager level in their organization fail to get their salespeople to perform for one of the following reasons:

• The manager doesn’t have what it takes- the skills to be effective at sales coaching
• The manager doesn’t take the time or doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle the job, maintain a book of business, take care of operations and anything else that might be in the job description
• There isn’t a consistent ‘Sales Managed Environment’ to execute to so day in and day out, it’s an inconsistent coaching process.

Do your sales leaders understand the game of selling and have the coaching bias that can make them and effective coach?

How does a company create an effective sales coaching program? Experience tells us that most companies are good at setting sales goals and measuring results, but the statistics around frequent, one on one coaching tell a different story.

Weaknesses of Sales Managers as Coaches

Let’s look at the weaknesses of most managers as coaches:

• Do not consistently coach and debrief.
• Ineffective at joint sales calls.
• Do not ask questions.
• Have a need for approval from salespeople.
• Rescue salespeople.
• Do not have a sales process.
• Ineffective at commitments.
• Beliefs do not support coaching.
• Do not have goals and a plan.
• Do not know what motivates salespeople.

Less than two percent of managers are adept at identifying sales coaching needs and coaching those needs. There are many reasons for this, but among them are: they themselves were not coached or they had a bad experience with coaching; they were elevated to a team lead or manager position based on their sales success and not their coaching performance; and they have not had any coaching training, either formal or informal.

There are some simple, concrete steps managers can take to initiate an effective sales coaching program. It begins with managers developing an understanding of what motivates their salespeople. Less than seven percent of sales managers know the personal goals for their people. Since most salespersons today are intrinsically versus extrinsically motivated, this is key in the manager-salesperson relationship as well as the salesperson-client relationship. 

Effective coaching occurs when a manager is proactively asking questions of their team members, giving feedback on a regular basis, and showing a genuine interest in the development of the salesperson.

Successful Sales Managers Should

To get started, managers should:

1. Set time aside for a personal goal discussion

This should be done in-person or via a video conference call so that there is eye “contact.” Salespeople are motivated first by their personal goals. The goal is the find out what drives the producer and what is important to them. Encourage them to dream big and free think about their life goals, including family and personal aspirations. No goal should be too big or too small. After that, goals should be translated into SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Based) goals.   

2. Set Professional Goals

Begin by asking the salesperson to consider how meeting their professional goals can help them reach their personal goals. Working with the salesperson, set professional goals that not only include targets for sales, cross-sell, and retention, but also what the salesperson has shared is important to them.

3. Set weekly check-ins

Establish a rhythm for follow-up and discussion about both the salesperson’s personal and professional goals. These check-ins should include managing activities identified in the plan, holding salespersons accountable to activity levels, helping to identify choke points, coaching how they are doing what they do, and asking for the opportunity to observe sales calls and encouraging de-briefs.

Developing an effective sales coaching program is ultimately about developing a meaningful human connection, a relationship. This has to begin with the sales manager and the salesperson before it can translate into a salesperson and client relationship. When this is accomplished—and it’s not a one and done proposition, but an art that requires regular attention—companies can develop a service to sales career path for its salespeople that leads to success for all.