Coaching salespeople is hard work and it helps to have a consistent and effective process to help keep you on course. As a sales coach, there are five critical steps that you must know and execute in order to get the best effort and results out of your salespeople.

These are the 5 Keys to Coaching!

• INSIGHT - As a coach, you must be able to see what is happening and what is not happening out in the field.  Without real insight into what is going on, you will have difficulty understanding their choke points so that you can coach them.

        5 Keys to Coaching - Insight

• FEEDBACK - As a sales coach, you must continually give your salespeople specific feedback on their activities.  This includes both positive and constructive feedback.  If you ask your salesperson if they will allow you to coach them to help them reach their goals, you will usually gain permission.  And that makes the journey better for everyone.

        5 Keys to Coaching - Feedback

• DEMONSTRATE - Part of a sales leader’s job is to be effective at demonstrating the behavior they want their salespeople to execute in the field.  And they must take time out of their busy day to schedule time with their team members and demonstrate specific situations from a sales call or meeting, role play with their team, identify gaps in the selling process, ask specific questions, and most importantly, coach their salespeople to become better salespeople!

       5 Keys to Coaching - Demonstrate

• PRACTICE - We have all heard the saying, “Practice makes perfect”. This is particularly true in selling. Practice is essential in improving selling skills, specific techniques, interpersonal skills, and attention-to-detail in the selling process.  Without practice, your salespeople will only go so far, and as a sales coach, you must role play with your salespeople in order for them to practice and achieve success!  Be prepared, they might not like it but they must do it.

       5 Keys to Coaching - Practice

• ACTION PLAN - It is essential that YOU as a sales leader take time to sit down with your salesperson and establish an action plan – what are the specific prospecting and networking activities that they must do in order to reach their goals?  This will undoubtedly include utilizing LinkedIn, attending association meetings with the intent to meet the right target profile client, etc.  This action plan SHOULD include getting introductions from current clients.

      5 Keys to Coaching - Action Plan

To learn more about the 5 Keys to Coaching and our specific available coaching packages, check out the link below!

A guest post by Mark Trinkle, President, Anthony Cole Training Group

An audible is a change in the offensive play called by the quarterback at the line of scrimmage.  Today, I thought of that in Chicago as my Uber driver made several deviations from her GPS directions in transporting me from Midway Airport into downtown.

As I rode along with the windows down on a beautiful and sunny day in the Windy City, my thoughts turned from sightseeing to salespeople…specifically, the need for salespeople to make changes on the fly, whether that be during the initial phone call, the first meeting or even at the time they present their solutions.

Anyone and everyone who has had any exposure to Anthony Cole Training Group knows we are completely sold on the importance of process.  We have table-pounding conviction (a tip of the hat to my good friend, Mike Iverson in Atlanta) around how important it is for a business driven around and by sales to have certain key processes in place in term of their sales infrastructure.  And, of course, we believe that sales training creates the most return on a client’s investment when the salespeople and sales managers are following a sales process where opportunities are moving through the funnel in a stage-based and milestone-centric manner.  We believe that firms who don’t have a consistent sales process (everyone following the same steps and using the same terms to describe stages in the sales process) but who implement such a process can often see a 15% to 20% increase in new business sales.

But, here is something worth remembering – life is complicated.  Ferris Bueller (can’t come to Chicago and not think of him) told us to slow down or we might miss something.  And the same is true with selling.  Sometimes you just need to slow down and do something unconventional.  Sometimes you need to do something that is even contrary to what your training has taught you to do.  Sometimes you just need to call an audible.

Let’s be clear – usually your training is going to be correct.  But, sometimes, you will need to remember that selling is both science and art…and the art part means you might need to listen to your heart and occasionally let that heart override your mind.  Of course, the best in the business know when to listen to their head and when to listen to their heart.  And if they get it wrong every so often, so what?  They get back up and keep going.

So, listen to your heart.  Sometimes you will need to call an audible.  Like now…forget the salad; there is a deep-dish pizza out there calling my name.