How does a company create an effective sales coaching program? Experience tells us that most companies are good at setting sales goals and measuring results, but the statistics around frequent, one on one coaching tell a different story.

Weaknesses of Sales Managers as Coaches

Let’s look at the weaknesses of most managers as coaches:

• Do not consistently coach and debrief.
• Ineffective at joint sales calls.
• Do not ask questions.
• Have a need for approval from salespeople.
• Rescue salespeople.
• Do not have a sales process.
• Ineffective at commitments.
• Beliefs do not support coaching.
• Do not have goals and a plan.
• Do not know what motivates salespeople.

Less than two percent of managers are adept at identifying sales coaching needs and coaching those needs. There are many reasons for this, but among them are: they themselves were not coached or they had a bad experience with coaching; they were elevated to a team lead or manager position based on their sales success and not their coaching performance; and they have not had any coaching training, either formal or informal.

There are some simple, concrete steps managers can take to initiate an effective sales coaching program. It begins with managers developing an understanding of what motivates their salespeople. Less than seven percent of sales managers know the personal goals for their people. Since most salespersons today are intrinsically versus extrinsically motivated, this is key in the manager-salesperson relationship as well as the salesperson-client relationship. 

Effective coaching occurs when a manager is proactively asking questions of their team members, giving feedback on a regular basis, and showing a genuine interest in the development of the salesperson.

Successful Sales Managers Should

To get started, managers should:

1. Set time aside for a personal goal discussion

This should be done in-person or via a video conference call so that there is eye “contact.” Salespeople are motivated first by their personal goals. The goal is the find out what drives the producer and what is important to them. Encourage them to dream big and free think about their life goals, including family and personal aspirations. No goal should be too big or too small. After that, goals should be translated into SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Based) goals.   

2. Set Professional Goals

Begin by asking the salesperson to consider how meeting their professional goals can help them reach their personal goals. Working with the salesperson, set professional goals that not only include targets for sales, cross-sell, and retention, but also what the salesperson has shared is important to them.

3. Set weekly check-ins

Establish a rhythm for follow-up and discussion about both the salesperson’s personal and professional goals. These check-ins should include managing activities identified in the plan, holding salespersons accountable to activity levels, helping to identify choke points, coaching how they are doing what they do, and asking for the opportunity to observe sales calls and encouraging de-briefs.

Developing an effective sales coaching program is ultimately about developing a meaningful human connection, a relationship. This has to begin with the sales manager and the salesperson before it can translate into a salesperson and client relationship. When this is accomplished—and it’s not a one and done proposition, but an art that requires regular attention—companies can develop a service to sales career path for its salespeople that leads to success for all.    

Building Trust: Unfortunately, bank customer trends show a decrease in trust and satisfaction, while service expectations continue to rise. That may not apply to your bank but we do know that younger demographics represent a challenge as they consider expanding digital offerings. Leaders must put their focus on helping retail branches excel at deepening customer relationships by sharpening their skills of asking questions, listening, becoming a guide and a trusted advisor. All of these begin with empathy in sales, putting the focus on the client and working as a guide to help them uncover and achieve their financial goals. Do your frontline people have the skills and yes, the courage and desire, to expand into more meaningful conversations with clients? This all hinges on your sales team’s motivation to be different and memorable and have empathy in their selling approach. Do they care enough to ask the tough questions, listen closely and build that essential trust factor?

Managing Change: There has been a seismic shift in the community bank space this year and one of those shifts seems to be less of an interest in driving new clients through commercial loans and more of an interest in deepening current client relationships in the branch. To accomplish this, leaders must be ready to coach their bankers on a new, transformative approach to initiating distinctive conversations with their clients and prospects, building trust through meaningful relationships. What is at the heart of this approach? It is important to have a relationship building (sales) process to teach, coach and inspect. Not only does this give you a system to better understand how your team is motivated, it gives your frontline bankers a step-by-step process to follow to deepen their relationships. Following a stage-based process is one of the hallmarks of top relationship building bankers. Some may think of it as an art skill, however, there is also a science to becoming a trusted advisor, including ‘owning’ and being skillful at asking the right questions and guiding the client to make good financial decisions.

Now is an important time to take a look at your current people, how they are approaching their customer interactions and if they can transition to a more consultative role. An important component of deepening relationships will be the motivation and ability to be effective at outreach, calling current clients and initiating the conversation with thoughtful, caring, empathetic questions. This is a time to focus on questioning and listening skills, not product solutions.

• Over 90% results are probably coming from 36% of the sales team.
• The bottom 36% of the sales team is responsible for less than 4% of total sales.
• Of the last 4 hires - only 1 of them is doing better than the people they replaced.
• The company could eliminate the bottom 36% and increase profitability significantly.
• Many senior people are not performing nearly as well as some of the newer salespeople.

The challenge to most organizations is the answer to the question:  Are we growing and acquiring new relationships from existing clients and new clients?  If that answer is no or not enough, it needs to be addressed.

The Importance of Ongoing Sales Training

The importance of ongoing sales training can be substantiated by the data and analytics of your sales team noted above, but how does an effective leader and coach go about addressing these problems? Here are 3 methods to implement ongoing sales training immediately.

• Speed to failure – With new hires, sales managers must find out quickly if both of the salesperson and the manager made the right decision. In the hiring process, the sales manager making the offer must let the new hire know everything they are going to have to go through, what numbers they will be managed to and what is expected in the first 90 days and the following 6 months. That is the basis of ongoing sales training and coaching.
• Conversation is KING – Despite all the technology that is available to help salespeople create opportunities, nothing yet has replaced the value of quality conversations, sales coaching and training. Leaders must have a very high standard for training, practice and preparation before they put people out into the market. The importance of ongoing sales training starts at day 1 establishing regular one on one coaching sessions, demonstrating and observing the new hire in sales scenarios, prior to being in the field.
• Sales technology should make it easy for salespeople to communicate to suspects, prospects and clients.  It should be easy to use and provide extremely useful information for the sales manager as well as salespeople.  It should drive salespeople to consistently follow the company sales process and it should provide the sales leader with the sales data and analytics to coach that person to improvement. Sales technology is an important component of effective ongoing sales training.

Taking a close look at the data and analytics of sales and then implementing ongoing sales training, whether it is in house or with an external sales training firm, will go a long way to helping companies improve their sales environment and productivity of the entire team. 

In analyzing those salespeople who are successful year after year, we have found significant consistencies in behavior, sales skills, and practice management. We call these The 7 Activities for Sales Success. If your sales team can adopt these 7 habits, you will be amazed at how your sales will improve.

1. The ONLY “A” priority is prospecting. Successful salespeople service accounts just like everyone else. They also have“fires” to extinguish and meetings to attend. But they let nothing get in the way of consistent prospecting. They don’t have to like prospecting; they just have to do it. Of course, if your salespeople learn to like prospecting, they will do more of it. A sales leader’s coaching of this important sales behavior is also critical for success.
   
   
2. Don’t look, act or sound like every other salesperson calling on the prospect. Create a unique approach – your salespeople can’t just say that they are different. They must also demonstrate it. As sales leader, if you were the prospect, would you take their call? If not, then their approach needs some work.
   
   
3. Have an ideal prospect profile and look for candidates that fit this profile. You can help your salespeople do this by evaluating their best clients. Are their best customers typically Fortune 500 size or small family-owned companies? Are they regionally based, national, or are they local? Do they have thousands of employees? Are they retail organizations? , etc. Your salespeople must know who they are targeting.
   
   
4. Successful prospectors understand that the purpose of a call is to set an appointment with a qualified candidate. Your salespeople must stop seeing everyone and anyone who will see them. They must make sure the prospect qualifies to do business prior to setting an appointment. They also must stop selling on the phone.
   
   
5. The quality of the phone call determines the quality of the appointment. The goal, while on the phone, is to identify if the prospect has a problem that can be solved. First, they must establish that the prospect would like to fix the problem. Even though the prospect may identify a “problem” on the phone, this isn’t typically the real problem. Your salespeople must ask questions like “Why is that a problem?” and “How much is the problem costing you?”

6. Prospects want to meet professionals through introductions, not cold calls. Help your producers learn how to ask for introductions from their COIs and current clients as their first prospecting strategy. This is a proven practice of “elite” producers.
   
   
7. “Drill down” past the pain or problem indicators (symptoms). Here are a series of questions to provide and help your salespeople get past the initial symptoms that a prospect will verbalize:
   
   
   • Tell me…
   • How long has this been a problem?
   • What have you done…?
   • When you spoke with…?
   • What has your current provider done to make this problem go away?
   • What happens if you don’t fix…?
   • How much is it costing…?
   • Is that a problem?
   • Do you want to or have to fix it?

As sales leader and coach, you must track their activity and look for ways to coach and improve revenue by improving technique. For instance, your salesperson may be great at getting a first meeting, but not adept at uncovering real opportunities. There is your area to coach them. If you track these vital numbers, you can start to improve the areas where they fall short.

Review The 7 Activities for Sales Success with your sales team and ask them which sales skill or habit is most important today andfor the next 30 days. Then have them commit to adopting or changing that one behavior or practice and track their success.