There are few responsibilities in life more important than being a coach, whether for a sports team, teaching mastery of a musical instrument, or serving as a sales coach. Consider the impact a coach has on their students: helping them uncover problems, discover opportunities, enhance their approach, improve their skills, and achieve success. This also makes coaching one of the toughest roles, as those responsible for it often juggle numerous other tasks daily, including operational, administrative, and development needs for the company. How does a sales coach find the time and motivation?
Eloquently stated by Howard G. Hendricks:
“The measure of you as a leader is not what you do, but what others do because of what you do.”
This mindset of developing others is the hallmark of great leaders and effective sales coaches. How does that translate into actions and behaviors? An effective sales coach monitors the performance of their salespeople to identify areas for improvement and reinforces behaviors that lead to success. They also build confidence in representatives by providing them with the tools, skills, and training they need to succeed. This is what they do, but the importance of sales coaching lies in the how of coaching—helping a salesperson discover for themselves what is hindering their success by asking insightful questions and providing feedback at critical times. Practicing for upcoming calls, offering feedback on potential questions and challenges they may encounter—these are integral parts of the coaching process.
Here is a short list of opportunities a sales coach has to support their team, illustrating the importance of sales coaching:
- Make sure they have written goals.
- Help them follow those goals with a plan.
- Encourage them to take responsibility for their behaviors and success (no excuses).
- Provide tools and training to build strong self-confidence.
- Help them understand and develop supporting sales beliefs.
- Encourage them not to shy away from tough questions due to a need for approval (desire to be liked).
- Support their recovery from rejection.
- Provide opportunities to practice and get comfortable discussing money.
- Help them understand their own buying cycle and how it influences their sales process.
- Improve effective listening and questioning skills.
- Offer tips for building rapport and bonding early with prospects.
- Help them get comfortable uncovering budgets and price tolerances.
- Guide them in understanding why prospects buy.
- Increase their win rate with qualified proposals and quotes.
- Teach them the importance of reaching the decision-maker for decisions.
Much like a salesperson follows a stage-based sales process, a sales coach is more effective if they follow a coaching process.
If a sales coach does not provide insights, feedback, demonstrations, or encourage role-play, the salesperson may practice on clients without the chance to improve before critical calls. Sales coaching is all about helping salespeople get better at asking questions, listening to understand, drilling down, discovering motivation, securing commitments, practicing skills, refining strategies, and demonstrating effectiveness in qualifying, presenting, and closing situations. It is a daunting responsibility, but also highly rewarding when coaching leads to improvement and success.
Tips to ensure the most effective coaching approach:
- Determine specific coaching needs.
- Coach consistently with planned repetition.
- Keep sessions short.
- Determine the content or agenda in advance (pre-call plan).
- Prepare (the sales rep should practice the pre-call plan).
- Always agree on outcomes and actions to take.
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