Are you, as a sales leader, spending at least 50% of your time coaching your salespeople, helping them to develop their skills and become more productive?
It’s time to inspect your own behaviors as a coach and mentor. How do you measure up? Set time on your calendar right now for specific, sales skills coaching with your salespeople.
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Please allow me to be very direct (it’s the only way I know how) when I ask you this question: “Are you really coaching your people”? I mean, really digging in and coaching them? Are you spending at least 50% of your time holding your people accountable, and coaching? Isn’t your job as a sales leader to make your people wildly successful? More successful than they ever would have been had they not been coached by you? If your answers to those questions are “yes” … great, keep doing what you’re doing! If it took you a while to answer or your answers were “no”, it’s time to get to work with some specific sales management training around coaching.
Many sales leaders manage the activity of their people by looking at spreadsheets, activity reports, and pipelines. Does that make them a coach? I’m not diminishing the importance of managing activity but what I’m talking about is coaching the behaviors that will make your people better. These are the weekly standards (activity metrics) that need to be inspected; the little things that make the big things happen. Weekly metrics include:
- Outreaches – phone calls and emails to prospects
- Contacts – live conversations with decision-makers
- Meetings Set – day and time set
There are two questions you must be able to answer when your boss asks:
- Why is one or more of your people failing?
- What are you doing about it?
Your answers cannot be, “I don’t know”, or “let me go check”. You must know the answers. How can you answer those questions if you’re not holding your people accountable?
2 other questions you need to ask yourself:
- Did we hire them that way?
- Or, has my lack of coaching made them that way?
I’m not talking about getting all over your people…or embarrassing your people. I’m talking about helping your people!
Your job as a sales leader is to help your people get better, challenge their thinking, and help them grow and practice with them to develop their skills so they are more productive for your organization and they are able to reach their personal goals. Many sales leaders do not see the need for sales management training. It’s time to inspect your own behaviors as a coach and mentor. How do you measure up? Set time on your calendar right now for specific, sales skills coaching with your salespeople.
No doubt, you have a very challenging job. You have a lot on your plate with lots of responsibilities. But, always remember that your #1 job is to coach and make your people wildly successful.
