In this article, we focus on Sales Coaching for Sales Coaches.  Often, in sales, the sales manager is not held to the same standards as those on the sales force.  While sales people are monitored on their calls, emails, CRM activity, and follow-up methodologies, the same cannot always be said for sales management.

To fix the problem, organizations must take action by understanding the exact qualifications and skills they are looking for in sales management, using the Objective Management Sales Manager assessment tool, and having the systems and processes in place to execute a Sales Managed Environment.

When you Google "Sales Coaching", what you would most likely find is the following:

• Sales Rep Coaching
• Top 20 Sales Coaching Company
• 30 Minute Free Consultation / Increase Sales by 56% of More
• Sales Coaching Sales Coaching / Move the Needle with LevelJump

But this post is not about those things.  If you want information on how to effectively coach sales people go here:

Why is Selling So Damned Hard.

Instead, this is about coaching the coaches. Why would we focus on that you might ask?  Let me lean on my good friends at Objective Management Group and John Pattison for some BIG DATA information.  This is what they know, and by extension, what we know about successful sales management and successful sales organizations.

• When you have an effective sales coach, sales grow annually at an average of 26%.
• Only 18% of the 100,000+ sales managers assessed, have over 60% of the required skills to be effective at coaching.
• A much smaller percentage spends at least 50% of their time coaching.

Let’s do the math – if you have 10 sales managers, about 2 of them will be effective at coaching.  If you are looking for a sales manager and interview 10 of them, only 2 of them will be effective at coaching.

THAT is why I am focusing on Sales Coaching for Sales Coaches.

So, how and why do sales managers end up in the role, and why do companies continue to fail massively in an effort to effectively build and execute a sales managed environment?  Here are the answers to those questions, and yes they are in order of likely answers:

1. Career path – Most organizations promote sales people because that seems to be the logical career path for a successful sales person.
2. Great sales skills – The ‘career path’ sales candidates have great skills! Those include persuasion, interviewing well, presenting well and negotiation.
3. Candidates that have a ‘sales management’ resume impress Presidents, HR recruiters and hiring managers with great talk and expertise about performance management, sales metrics, the number of sales people they have hitting  sales goals, using CRM and pipeline management technology.
4. Companies don’t invest time money or effort to train and develop people to be effective sales managers. They assume that they come wired for success. This is kind of buying Salesforce out of the box – it won’t do the things you need it to do without hiring a Salesforce consultant to customize and build out the tool.
5. There is failure to hold sales managers to the same rigor of performance management and coaching that is expected of sales people. Sales people are required to report sales activities and enter opportunities into the CRM. With our clients, sales people are taken through a discussion about achieving extraordinary results and building a success formula to achieve that goal. Sales managers do not typically report on the number of:
   1. Joint calls conducted
   2. Pre and post-call debriefing sessions
   3. 1-on-1 sales skills and behavior improvement coaching sessions
   4. 1-on-1 sessions to review the business plan and update the success formula
   5. Prospect / recruiting meetings they had or networking events they attended to find new sales people
   6. Sales management classes enrolled in or books they’ve read to improve skills
   7. Data analysis reports they’ve run to determine how well the bottom 2/3 of the sales team is doing as compared to the top 2/3

To ‘Fix” the problem, organizations and current sales executives must do the following:

1. Understand the exact qualifications and skills you are looking for in the role and hire / develop the talent that can execute the skills necessary to get those outcomes
2. Make sure that you use the Objective Management Sales Manager assessment tool to determine if the candidate has the Will to Succeed in the role, the right Sales Management DNA, and enough of the Sales Management Competencies so that you don’t have a extend yourself and your team to develop what you should have hired
3. Have a system and process in place that clearly outlines the necessary tools, systems and processes to execute a Sales Managed Environment:
   1. Performance management and developing an no excuse sales environment
   2. Coaching for Success
   3. Motivation that Works
   4. Upgrading the Sales Force
   5. Recruiting talented sales people

Sales and marketing go hand-in-hand.  Without leads, salespeople will have a hard time selling.  Without marketing, salespeople will have a difficult time sharing their product and features with prospective clients.  

But how much is too much?  In this article, we discuss the difference between giving salespeople every lead and teaching them how to cultivate their leads to strengthen their pipelines and their careers as a whole.  

I’m sure a majority of people have heard the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

This, of course, means it’s more worthwhile to teach someone to do something (for themselves) than to do it for them (on an ongoing basis).

If you are not in the acquisition business, then you must develop your talent.  One of the keys to doing that is to understand how to drive sales improvement. 

You must determine what is really happening with your salespeople when they fail to acquire a new piece of business. 

Why is Coaching Important in Sales?

First, to address the importance of coaching in sales, sales coaching is an essential part of a successful sales team for many reasons.

Good sales coaching helps their reps improve their performance through feedback and repetition which means reps can work on improving specific areas of expertise that need more attention than others.

Also, good sales managers can pinpoint any progress or issues with process improvement projects in order to better coach their sales teams' needs.

What Makes a Good Sales Coach?

A good sales coach is able to build long-lasting relationships with their direct reports.

They demonstrate empathy, which in turn creates a more personal connection and sets the tone for success, and puts their rep's success and wellbeing above all else.

This in return, creates a deeper connection with your sales team and promotes a winning team culture that everyone can feel like they can succeed. 

And with that mentality, more sales and better performance are likely to follow.

What is the Key to Coaching a Successful Sales Team?

The key to coaching successful sales teams is focusing on the how not just telling someone what they're doing wrong. 

When a good sales coach goes beyond pointing out little mistakes and instead gives them tools for long-term success by highlighting their strengths as well as areas where improvement could be made, this will provide a more productive environment in which everyone can work together towards achieving sales goals.

5 Keys to Improved Sales Coaching

Here are the 5 steps you must take to help you determine if your people have skill issues or an excuse-making issue:

1. You must gain insight. You gain insight by using various data points. The data points you MUST use are: 
   • Observational joint sales calls – You do not run the sales call; you observe your RM
   • Data from your CRM or SAT program (SAT – Sales Activity Tracking)
   • Sales meetings – In all your sales meetings, you need to include a segment on skill development where you drill for skill, role play and conduct strategy development discussions
   • 1-on-1 coaching – Each week, you should have time set aside for 1-on-1 coaching with those people that are NOT in the 1^st quadrant of the “Where’s Walter?” matrix
     
     
2. Provide feedback. In advance of the discussion about lost opportunities, you want to provide your RM with the data you have – no ambushing.
   • You discuss – ask the RM questions about what they see in the data
   • You provide them feedback based on what you see and where the problems might be
   • You discuss what the future might look like if the current trends continue
   • You agree that there is a problem
     
     
3. Demonstrate – Once you identify the problem as either an excuse or a skill issue, you demonstrate to the RM what you expect them to execute.
   • If they are making excuses – ‘They didn’t understand the value of our offering” – You ask, “If I didn’t let you use that as an excuse what would you have done differently?”
   • If it’s a skill problem – “I asked them if they had a budget and they said yes.” “When you asked them what it was, what did they say?”  “They said they didn’t want to tell me.”  “When you asked, ‘why not?’, what did they say?”  “I didn’t ask that question.”
     
     
4. Roleplay – The scenario above allows you to now role play with you playing the prospect. You need to start with Drill for Skill and then graduate to the full role play.  Getting them to practice what you expect them to do takes patience and repetition.  Do not believe for a second that one role play will be enough.  You need to start your RM on a weekly coaching session repeating the required skills over and over again. 
   
   
5. Action steps – each coaching session must end with action
   1. Bill, so what I want you to do is call Mary and have this conversation we just role played.
   2. I want you to report back to me by end of business today what happened as a result of that conversation.

Companies are constantly trying to figure out how to drive organic growth by:

• Acquiring a revenue stream by buying a business or lifting out talent from a competitor
• Developing current talent

If you are not in the acquisition business, then you must develop your talent.  One of the keys to doing that is to understand how to drive sales improvement.  You must determine what is really happening with your salespeople when they fail to acquire a new piece of business.  (See LinkedIn Article: What You Don't Know Can Kill Sales Growth) 

Are your people just making excuses for failure or do they have deficits in the required sales competencies or will to sell?

To be successful in determining the real issues with your salespeople, you must have a system.

I read a blog the other day by Dave Kurlan.  We’ve had a strong business partnership with Dave and his company OMG (Objective Management Group) for most of our 24 years in business.  With OMG, we have the ability to determine the answer to the question – is it excuses or is it a talent issue?

Dave’s post  - 12 Reasons They Didn’t Like You Enough To Buy From You – helps address some of the issues associated with “not getting the business”.  It primarily focuses on the area of matching styles.

This got me thinking about the issue of “style” as it relates to talent, which relates to sales competencies and excuse-making.  The challenge for the sales manager is determining if the reason a salesperson did not get the sale was really a talent issue, or if they are just making excuses for failing to execute the skills or sales process of the organization.

To determine the root cause of the results, a sales manager must work more closely with the relationship managers and implement a process that Bill Eckstom calls “intentional coaching”.  This process of working closing with your RMs is addressed in our Sales Management Certification Program in the Coaching for Success Module

Implementing a process of gaining insight, providing feedback, demonstrating, role-playing and establishing action items will go a long way in helping your team discern the difference between making excuses for failure and the need for skill development.

Putting forth the effort to coach and motivate people, as well as hold them accountable to performance, requires no skill.  Therein lies part of the problem with growing your sales team.  Any sales manager can attempt to do this with their salespeople, but what systems and measured techniques do they have in place to ensure that it is working?  

Before reading this article, please download our free e-book "Why is Selling so #%&@ Hard" to better understand the effort required to guide and lead your sales team to extraordinary results.

As we approach the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, our own Walt Gerano shares his thoughts regarding the obstacles holding us back from experiencing the sales success we desire.

243 years ago, 13 colonies declared themselves as newly independent sovereign states and no longer a part of the British Empire. Instead, they formed a new nation—the United States of America.

Have you declared your independence from the things holding you back from experiencing the success you desire?

When you look at your business today, you might agree that you need to prospect more consistently, qualify better and know when to move on from a prospect. But you still have opportunities in your pipeline that are stuck. The question is why and what are you going to do about that?

Why don’t you prospect more consistently? 

• You don’t have enough people to call on.
  • When was the last time you asked for an introduction or spent meaningful time on LinkedIn?
• You don’t have the time.   
  • What activity is more important to the growth and success of your sales practice than prospecting? Schedule prospecting time first.
• You are fearful of rejection. 
  • Rejection is nothing compared to failure.

What about qualifying?

• Do you prepare with a pre-call plan for every call to make sure you know how you will get the answer to the question; “why am I here?” (First question you should ask on a call)
• Are you ready for the curve balls? Those are the annoying questions that you wish they didn’t ask.
• How and when will you deal with the incumbent?

Why are “opportunities” stuck in the pipeline?

• Does the prospect really have enough PAIN to move forward and make a change?
• Do they have the money to fix the problem?  Did you even ask about it?
• Are you meeting with all of the decision makers prior to presenting your solution?
• Have you dealt with the “return of the incumbent?”

There is nothing here that you don’t already know. It’s the middle of the year so take a few minutes and evaluate where you are and what you will do about it.

Claiming your independence requires nothing compared to what was sacrificed all those years ago. Let’s remember this week what was at stake and what an incredible gift their fight and sacrifice is to this day. God Bless America.