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!
