It’s this simple:  If you want great barbeque ribs, brisket or chicken, the key is low temperature and slow cooking. Having said that, if you want maximum flavor and tenderness, make sure you sear or char the meat first, then go low and slow.  This is an undeniable truth.  Just read the Science of Cooking and discover all the neat things you can do to improve the outcome of any meal.

EXPERIENCE DOESN'T GUARANTEE FUTURE SUCCESS

20 years in sales does not guarantee future success.  Just ask anyone that has lost a sale at any time in their career.  Something always happens just a little bit differently.  If there isn’t an adjustment, a lesson or some learning as a result, then the salesperson is prone to repeating the sames mistakes or errors over and over again.

When you effectively coach your people, they will get better.  When they get better, you will close more business, more quickly at higher margins.  This is undeniable as well.  Just look at the information provided by The Sales Management Association.  **FYI - it’s also undeniable that a lack of coaching has a negative impact on sales success and talent development!

(Bob Rotella – coach to PGA Tour Players – Author – How Champions Think)

THERE IS ALWAYS TIME TO COACH

In our Sales Management Certification Program, we discuss 5 Keys to Coaching for Success in our coaching module. These 5 keys cover what to do and how to do it when you are face-to-face with your salespeople. Many managers, before going through our certification, complain/tell me/make excuses that there isn’t enough time to effectively coach their people.  I don’t buy it. There are several opportunities for coaching without adding to an already busy schedule:

1. Sales meetings
   1. Segment on sales training
   2. Role-playing phone calls to get appointments
   3. Role-playing conversations to get appointments with internal partners
   4. Role-play how to position financial planning
   5. Overcoming objections
   6. Appropriately dealing with questions, and stalls.
2. Pre–call strategy sessions
3. Post-call debriefing sessions
4. 1-on-1 intentional coaching sessions
5. Ad-hoc moments when they ask you if you have a minute
6. Every time they give you an excuse for lack of effort or execution
   
   

IN-THE-MOMENT COACHING VS. COACHING FOR SUCCESS

Coaching does take place today, but most of it is in the moment. Kind of like when a coach calls a time out in a game. The team is gathered around the coach and a strategy is developed to take advantage of the “in the moment” opportunity. Normally, that’s the type of coaching that takes place in sales – in the moment.  That type of coaching helps close a sale, get an appointment, and/or move an opportunity through the pipeline, but it does nothing to change behavior or improve skills!

Do you find yourself or your sales managers constantly covering the same ground to close deals, improve effort or refine execution?  Are opportunities getting stuck in the pipeline in the same spot for the same reasons over and over?  When you look at the performance (effectiveness and productivity, not just the results), do you see actual improvement in sales ratios like average size sale, conversion ratios from opportunities to closes and average production for each quintile in the team?

Those are the types of metrics that determine if your coaching is effective!  Failure to collect that data leads to failure of the effectiveness of your sales manager and your sales team.  Collecting the data and then doing nothing about it leads to lackluster enthusiasm for entering data, thus limiting the integrity of your forecasting.

THE 5 KEYS FOR COACHING SUCCESS

So, let’s assume for a second that 1) you are collecting data and  2) you are creating opportunities to coach people.  We can now discuss The 5 Keys for Coaching for Success.

1. Gain insight from data points: Your data points have to include data (numbers representing leading and lagging indicators), observational opportunities via joint calls, and observations made during role plays in meetings.
   
   The data points you have should not be a secret to your people. Share with them what you know and what you’ve observed.  Prior to meeting with them, call them to set up the coaching meeting. Tell them that the data you have indicates there might be some problems with them hitting their established extraordinary goal.  (Remember the extraordinary goal discussion?) Then tell them that you want to meet with them during your established coaching hours. Set the appointment.

2. Provide feedback: Now that you both have the date, you don’t have to ask the worse possible question in your meeting, “So, Joe, what’s going on?”  Instead, you acknowledge that you’ve looked at the numbers and they’ve looked at the numbers and then you ask a question about the problem that you see.
   
   Let’s pretend that you see a choke point where his conversion of conversations isn’t leading to the assumed number of appointments. All the other assumptions look good, but - because the conversion is off - the number of appointments isn’t meeting the goal.  Without this information, the only coaching you can do is to tell Joe that he needs to see more people. But, with all the data, you see that the effort is there – the dials and discussions – but that effort isn’t leading to appointments.
   
   Instead of pointing that out, you ask Joe what he sees when he looks at the conversation ratio compared to the model in the success formula.  Assuming Joe sees the same thing as you, you are now in a position to ask further questions.  The key here is that both parties must agree as to what the problem is.
   
   
3. Demonstrate what you expect to be done: In this case, you would listen to Joe’s approach to converting conversations to appointments.  You would identify areas where he might need to change or improve his approach and you demonstrate what that would look/sound like.
   
   
4. Role–play: Now that you’ve demonstrated what you expect, you role-play various situations with Joe giving him several different responses.
   
   

3. Action step: It is critical that every coaching session ends with an action step.  An example of that would be to agree to a number of calls that Joe is going to make over a short period of time (i.e. by the end of the day or week) and then instruct him to report back to you (on a specific day and time) the outcome of his effort.

(Click here for 9 critical coaching skills)

STOP WASTING YOUR MONEY ON SALES TRAINING

Understand that this might be an ongoing process for Joe, and you may have to take a more disciplined approach to his coaching and execution of the skills he is struggling with.  At the end of the day, the key is to recognize that improvement is vital for sales growth.  You cannot expect to grow sales without improving effort and/or execution. If you want to improve sales, invest your money in developing your sales managers and stop wasting money on sales training until your managers can and will coach.

Additional Resources:

Demo online Sales Learning Module

Sales Managed Environment® Certification Module – Free Document

When a new president of a company takes over a company or when a new sales manager takes over a sales team, you can imagine what happens, right? There were already people there as a result of the previous administration(s).  Those people, inherited by the new leader, chose to stay based on the previous leadership and characteristics of that leadership. (HBR book on leadership).

2 QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN “INHERITING” A SALES TEAM

Now, what happens when new leadership “inherits” and takes over a previously established sales team? Chaos, push back, dissension and political jockeying - sound familiar? I imagine it does, but that isn’t the point I want to make now. The point I wasnt to address here is that, when you find yourself in this situation, there are two questions that need to be immediately asked and answered. 

1. What happens to productivity, growth and stability when there is a lack of teamwork?
2. How do you fix it?

IGNORING EXECUTIVE ORDERS… WHAT?!?! 

Every POTUS comes into the office hoping to make a significant positive contribution to our country and citizenry.  No one takes the oath of office with the intent of doing harm or “screwing it up”.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it doesn't happen and no President evert goes unscathed or un-criticized by those who didn’t vote for him/her (Hillary would have made that statement end with her!). 

Trump’s Executive Orders to restrict immigration from certain countries and the resulting backlash puzzles me.  Not because of the opposing views on the executive order but because of my lack of understanding of how our federal and state governments work and/or don't work together.  I had no idea that a judge in Washington could weigh in on such a matter as an executive order and declare that the state of Washington could ignore not just this executive order, but any executive order. 

Presidents and number of executive orders in my lifetime:

Since I became an eligible voter, I had not previously heard of any judge at any time weighing in on executive orders.  I admit that I may have missed them. And so, what I’m really admitting to is that I don’t know how the whole thing works.  What I do know is that, for any organization to win more than it loses, it needs people that have a strong sense of teamwork who are willing to sacrifice their own personal agendas for the good of the team.

Teams work or don’t work, win or don't win based on the following:

• Strategy
• Effort
• Execution
• Performance Management
• Motivation
• Coaching
• Talent Acquisition

 
SUCCESS REQUIRES EVERYONE’S SUPPORT

In order for a team to succeed, the strategy for the company has to be supported by the entire company.  There has to be alignment and support!  The middle manager in Washington cannot decide to not put forth the effort or choose to not execute the strategy simply because they disagree with the strategy.  If that’s the case, then that middle manager can no longer be part of the team.

To avoid this type of problem, the company's hiring strategy has to consider cultural fit.  In the case of government, teams and companies, one of the components of cultural fit to be considered is the Team Player.

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUALITY OF A TEAM PLAYER

A team player is one that sacrifices their personal agenda for the betterment of the team.  They are willing to do everything possible (assuming legal, ethical and moral standards) to assist the team in winning.

Linda and I recently attended the Sycamore Athletic Boosters Hall of Fame Induction dinner.  Our friend, John Traub, was one of the inductees.  John Traub, a former wrestler and current teacher’s aide at Sycamore High School, holds several school records in wrestling, has coached state champions there and was instrumental in establishing the youth wrestling program in our community. 

Also, on the list of inductees, was Bailey Su.

While at Sycamore, Bailey Su played tennis and lacrosse. She went on to college at Northwestern where she played on the 3 time NCAA National Championship team.  She recalled that her coach taught her about teamwork, the value of the team and how you have to sacrifice your own interests for the benefit of the team. She shared a story about a time when she and a team mate decided to donate blood. This left them tired and lethargic for practice. When their coach questioned them about this, he became enraged at their selfishness.

I know this sounds strange and I assure you that everyone in the audience was uncomfortable with the story about the coach, but Bailey insisted that it was a very strong lesson for her. She indicated that she could have accomplished the same thing another way without doing harm to the performance and goals of the team.

SCREEN FOR SKILL AND WILL

Do you have players who think that way… or do you have people on your team who are all about themselves and only think about their own needs?  Do you look for the team mentality when you are interviewing candidates? What else are you looking for to make sure there is a fit?  How well do you screen for those soft, emotional intelligence, cultural characteristics and behaviors that may cause you to think 6 months down the road that this wasn’t a great hire because of fit?

I recently wrote an article about making sure you always assess candidates for “skill and will” before you start the interview process.  That step is just that – a step.  And even that step must be put into perspective.  You need to make sure you have a scorecard that clearly spells out what it takes to be a successful team player IN YOUR ORGANIZATON, not just on how to be a successful sales person.  That scorecard must include “team player”.

Super Bowl LI was something special to watch - unless you are a Falcons fan and then it was a disaster.  You could see it happen right before your eyes. The Patriots struggled in the first quarter while the Falcons had complete control of every aspect of the game.  And then… it happened.

Depending on what expert you listen to, there are a variety of plays in the game that you could point to and declare, “That was the turning point!” Even though I played a lot of football (13 years), coached a lot of football (6 years) and watched a lot of football (50+ years), I’m no expert – but I believe the play below was the turning point in the game.  (Click to view on Youtube.)

In my opinion, it happened in the third quarter.  As you can see in the upper left hand corner of the picture, it’s 3^rd and 8 with 4:49 left in the quarter and the Patriots are down 28-3.  So far in the game, they hadn’t had much success at all.  In their five possessions in the first half, they had punted 3 times and had 2 turnovers.  On this play, with no one open to throw to, Brady did something he rarely does – he ran with the ball.

Brady’s record shows that he had only run with the ball 28 times in 12 games.  That’s a mere 2.3 rushes per game with a total of only 5.3 yards per game.  His longest run in 15 years accounted for nearly 25% of the total yards he gained the entire season… and he fumbled once.  If you were going to run the ball to gain 8 yards for a critical 1^st down, the last guy you would call on to do that would be Tom Brady. If, however, the game is on the line and you needed to call on someone that wants the ball when the game is on the line - and you want a guy that will get the job done again as he has in the past - then you would call on Tom Brady.

Why Tom Brady?  Well, in the words of Beth Mooney, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Key Bank, it boils down to this – The Shadow of the Leader.

The jobs of sales management (video) are many, but when it comes down to it, the primary roles fall into three categories:

• Lead for Results
• Manage Activities
• Coach Behaviors

These roles make up the cornerstone, so to speak, in our Sales Managed Environment® Certification program.  Everything that you do or need to be doing day in and day out as a manager should be an activity that supports one of these three contributing factors to sales growth.

• Lead for Results – This requires that your vision for your team supports the overall vision of the organization, but it is also a vison that your people support and are motivated by. Yes, we know by using the Objective Management Group Sales Force Evaluation that close to 70% of all sales people are motivated internally, but that internal motivation is often tied to the place where they work.  They want to feel like the work they do is meaningful. They want to be recognized for their accomplishments. They want to feel that they are making progress personally and professionally. They rely on work to make their personal dreams come true. They need someone – you – to lead them to places they don’t think are possible and to lead them when the odds seem to be against them.  (Down 25 points with 20 minutes left in the game.  No team in the Super Bowl Championship has ever overcome even a 10-point deficit!)
• Manage Activities – These activities get the results you want. Everything starts with belief and belief controls your activities.  At half time, according to Tom, the discussion was not about “What do we do now?”  The discussion was about “This is what we’ve done.”:
  • We’ve moved the ball.
  • We’ve controlled the clock.
  • We’ve allowed them to move the ball the full length of the field for a touchdown.

We’ve been doing a lot of things right.  And we’ve made a couple of mistakes, but it isn’t like they are stopping us or completely running over us.  Let’s stay the course, do what we do best, control what we can control and - when the time comes - we’ll make the plays we need to win.

• Coach Behaviors – There wasn’t a whole lot of “in-the-moment” coaching going on during the game. Yes, there were a couple of situations where Tom made a motion for a receiver to break his route and run deep and then Tom delivered the ball for a long gain. Yes, there were adjustments made to blocking schemes and defensive fronts, but those adjustments were easy to execute because of all the practice prior to the game.  Recently, I was listening to a talk radio show where they were discussing how the Patriots go about practicing pass patterns for when Brady has to scramble out of the pocket. These aren’t plays that just happen by accident.  They are due to hours of specific practice where the offensive team run through scenarios they might encounter in a game.  And they have to learn those plays on the practice field so that, in a real game when the lights are on and everyone is watching, they can execute them and make them look “easy”.  That's what Tom Brady and Bill Belichick demand and that is why the team performed so well under pressure to overcome a historic deficit and win Super Bowl LI.

Additional Resources:

Are You Wasting Sales Training Dollars?

Do Your Sales Growth Strategies Exceed The Limits of Your Sales Team?

Are You Drafting The Right People For The Right Roles?

SCORECARDS DO NOT DRIVE SALES GROWTH

I don’t believe that scorecards drive sales growth. I say “believe” because I don’t have any definitive proof one way or another and I’m not about to sort through over a million responses from Google search to find out.  But, instead, I will tell you about my experience and exposure to scorecards and the impact they can have.

TRACKING THE RIGHT INFORMATION FOR IMPROVEMENT

My golf experience would not indicate that scorecards improve my golf game.  However, many years ago, I decided to do more than just keep score.  I also tracked fairways and greens hit in regulation and the number of putts I took on each hole.  (Full disclosure here:  I am a lifetime mid 90s’ golfer which gives me a handicap in the low to mid 20s.) The year I decided to track more information, I set a goal to get under a 20 handicap.  At that time, I didn’t play a lot of golf – no more than 20 times a year, but I managed to end the season at an 18.  I believe that tracking the RIGHT information on the scorecard AND setting a goal AND working to improve metrics are what led to meeting the goal of making improvement.

I’ve been in two meetings this week where scorecards for performance were presented.  One scorecard was really a financial data update reporting on actual performance against goal and year over year.  The other scorecard reported on various initiatives and the current stage of completion. The stages were reported as:

• Green – on track or completed
• Yellow – close to being on track or completed
• Red – not on track to be completed by deadline

THE REASON SCORECARDS DO NOT ALWAYS WORK

When Alan Mullaly left Boeing to take over Ford (see scorecard info), he implemented the Green, Yellow, Red scorecard concept that served him so well at Boeing.  If you read the book, American Icon (a GREAT read, by the way…), you find out one of the reasons they cannot be directly connected to sales growth.  Spoiler alert – not everyone reporting the status of the project is courageous enough to tell the new CEO when his or her project is not on target.

Alan met with the leaders of his production teams every week to get an update on progress being made.  The leaders had to report on what they were responsible for as Green, Yellow or Red.  For months, there was never a Red status on any project.  Alan knew that this could not possibly be true, but he let it ride.  He was certain that, sooner or later, someone in the group was going to step up and be willing to take some bullets.

Sure enough, a car launch that was scheduled for the holiday season was behind schedule and was in jeopardy of missing the launch date entirely.  The manager of that division decided that he’d rather take the bullets now rather than later and so he reported RED!.

(Back to my meeting…)

Nothing on the scorecard was RED.  As I sat there and calculated numbers on some of the various metrics, I saw that the levels of achievement year to date were in the 33% range when, to be on target, they needed to be in the 50% range.  I’m new on the committee, so I was a little uncertain as the newbie and I thought,”Should I speak up?  Is this something that has been addressed before and clarified?  Does the RED indicator show up when something is 30% or less?”  Finally, the gentleman sitting next to me asked the question, “How come we don’t see any RED?” The reasons given to the committee were both evasive and vague. 

HOW TO MAKE SCORECARDS WORK TO DRIVE SALES GROWTH

What happened next is what can happen to make a scorecard report contribute to sales growth.

• Questions were asked about the various projects in YELLOW
• Clarity was gained on the exact status
• A series of What, Why, Who, When, How, Now What questions were asked
• We arrived at standards that would change a status from Yellow to Red

The point is this:  If you are going to build and use scorecards to impact sales growth, the following has to happen:

• You have to have metrics that are both leading and lagging
• Standards have to be set and they have to be set high enough to allow growth and eliminate mediocrity
  • At or above 100% - GREEN - Good
  • At a maximum 90 to 99% - Yellow - Poor
  • Anything under 90% is RED – AND you have to be willing to call it FAILING.
• You have to have established confidence and trust in your team so that they are comfortable being truthful about the status or production, pipeline, sales activity and forecasting.

YOU HAVE TO KNOW "WHY"

Finally, if you want to be able to answer, “Yes, our scorecards contribute to sales growth” you have to understand that the scorecard is like the meteorologist reporting the weather.  Normally, when it comes to weather, that’s all most of us care about. But, when it comes to sales growth, you better want to know why it is sunny or rainy!  That is Performance Management! To make your scorecards more effective always, ALWAYS be prepared to ask questions about outcomes that are either positive or negative:

• Why are we getting this result?
• When did we know this was going to happen? (I assure you it was known, or should have been known, way before the report was generated if you are collecting leading indicator sales activities via huddles.)
• Who is or who are the DRI(s) – Directly Responsible Individual(s)?
• What did we do/you do/they do the moment they knew?
• What actions have been implemented to 1) duplicate this success 2) eliminate the problem and/or 3) slow down the negative trend?
• What is happening now? What is the current status?

Having this type of discussion is what leads to sales growth not the scorecard alone!

Additional Resources: 

How well is your team doing? Try the free Sales Achievement Grader

So, this morning, Linda and I were watching Morning Joe while talking business.  We were discussing our brand promise of, “When you lie awake at night worrying about sales growth, we lie awake at night.”  We compiled a list of questions that often haunt managers throughout the day and into the night when they should be preparing for a good night’s sleep:

• Do I have the right people?
• Are we doing the right things?
• How effective are we?
• What do I have to do to make sure we hit our numbers while we stay consistent with our vision and mission?

As we’re talking, we see a news banner at the bottom of the screen about a man who was arrested for breaking and entering a home.  He was apprehended after the police entered the home and saw his feet dangling from the chimney.  As usual, I automatically started thinking about how that related to sales, sales management, performance management, coaching, pipeline, pre-call strategies, etc.

My first question is this – “Do you have sales opportunities that are important/critical for hitting your goals and growing sales that are stuck?”

My second, but maybe the most important question, is this – “Is this particular opportunity a repeat offender?” 

QUESTIONS FOR EVALUATING OPPORTUNITIES

Now, there are 2 things to consider when attempting answering that 2^nd question.

1. Is that opportunity familiar to you and the salesperson who has entered the opportunity into your pipeline management system? (This isn’t the same as your CRM). If we’ve worked on this opportunity before and they – the opportunity – “got away on a technicality”, then this would be defined as a “repeat offender”:
   1. Not the decision maker
   2. Wasn’t able to undo the current relationship
   3. Decided to not make a change
   4. Couldn’t arrive at the price point
   5. Really didn’t have a solution that fit the features and benefits they were looking for
   6. The timing wasn’t right
2. Are other opportunities stuck in the pipeline/chimney for the very same reasons as this one – the salesperson failed to execute the qualifying steps in your sales process:
   1. No compelling reason to make a change identified
   2. Competition unknown
   3. Incumbent still part of the equation
   4. Budget for investing time, money resources is a mystery
   5. Decision making process has not been uncovered
   6. Timing or urgency of making a decision not clearly understood
   7. Agreement on next steps unclear
   8. Did not ask the question – Is this a “want to fix” or “have to fix” problem?

CMBMQHM AND WHAT YOU NEED FOR SALES GROWTH

Sales growth is dependent upon this – CMBMQHM.  My staff hates it when I make up acronyms like this.  When I put these in our learning decks, the people in my office  want to know what the acronyms mean.  I generally tell them that they don’t really need to know; they just need to make sure the rest of the deck is done correctly. I know what it means and I will explain it to the sales team we are working during our training session.  But, they insist on knowing, so here it is:

Close More Business, More Quickly, at Higher Margins

It’s almost as good as WITALAIITU. (If you want to know that one,  click HERE.)

So, what does it take to accomplish CMBMQHM?

• You have to have a milestone-centric sales system – something that can be quantified, measured and evaluated for progress towards the objective of “getting a decision”. (This is not the same as “getting the sale”.)
• You have to have a process for building a success formula for each salesperson based on that sales system.
• You have to have complete buy-in to the use of your pipeline management process. Here are the guidelines to get that buy-in. It needs to…
  • Be easy to use
  • Be effective
  • Be beneficial to the user
  • Provide you with business intelligence
  • Automatically generate and send reports to you so you don’t have to go find the information
• You have to have a system of pre-call strategy sessions for EVERY opportunity that meets or exceeds the benchmark of your top 33%.
• You have to have a post-call debriefing session for every opportunity you discuss in the pre-call session.
• You have to conduct a CSI – “Crime Scene Investigation” – for every deal you don’t get.
• Finally, you have to conduct 1-on-1 coaching sessions that are intentional.
  • They are based on the findings from your pre- and post-call meetings
  • They are based on what your data is telling you about the choke point(s) a particular salesperson is having or the most common choke point(s) for the group
  • The coaching needs to accomplish 1, if not 2, things:
    1. Change behavior
    2. Improve skill

In the next post, I’ll talk about the 5 Keys to Effective Coaching.  (Pam, don’t let me forget that is the next blog topic!).  In the meantime, here are the 9 skills needed!

Additional Resources:

Download the Success Formula Worksheet

Try out the Effective Selling System online learning demo

Sales Management Effectiveness Certification Program