The importance of that step, the customer’s decision-making process, may just be the most important step in the buyer’s journey. Salespeople can gain a great deal of information from CRMs and lead nurturing data and best practices from industry research systems like Relpro and IBISWorld, however, these will not give them insights into a prospect’s specific decision-making process. There are nuances in every company as to how they approach an important purchase and elite salespeople are skilled at asking great questions in order to uncover those in their qualifying discussions.

Questions to Ask About Your Customer’s Decision-Making Process

One lead (or prospect) lead nurturing best practice is to just be direct, ask the question. We coach salespeople in the commitment step of the sales process to simply as them “When you’ve made a decision like this in the past, what was your process?” Simple enough but the prospect may give a surface answer, making it seem much simpler than it is of course. Of course, you must have already uncovered that you are working with the decision maker but rarely in a substantial purchase, is there just one making the decision. They may be the ultimate decision maker but the decision impacts others that they will want to gain input from. Skilled salespeople help the prospect think through this by drilling down from their surface answer and will ask further questions such as:

• “Will that be the same process you follow this time?” and
• “How long does that normally take?” and
• “Who will this change impact in the organization?”
• “Who all needs to fall in love with this solution to gain approval?” and
• “Can I go with you to present to the committee?”
• “How will you tell your current provider?”

The bottom line, it may not matter how much your direct contact likes the solution you have recommended, if the customer’s decision-making process is unknown, you are at risk of losing the deal. Those important questions need to be asked and salespeople who master these close more sales.

From the coach’s perspective, one of the findings from our partners at Objective Management Group is; Managers who are effective at helping their salespeople get prospects to commit to a decision have 40% more top performers than managers who are ineffective at coaching on decision making.

Why is this so predictive of success for coaching? If managers are helping their team to regularly uncover the decision-making process and gain commitment, then they’re probably coaching on several supporting skills also. Getting a prospect to agree to a decision means the salesperson has uncovered a compelling reason for them to buy, they have thoroughly qualified the opportunity, and presented a need and cost appropriate solution at the right time. This takes active listening, many insightful and challenging questions, and the ability to pushback appropriately on potential stall tactics.

8 am daily paper check with our entire sales team and manager and each region did it at the same time, every day. Paper check meant, our boss opened the competitive papers and asked us about any businesses advertising in our territory that we did not have running in our paper. This was of course, in front of the whole team. So, my first lesson on the importance of feedback in sales was frequency and consistency matter. I knew that I had to be ON IT or look like a weak link on our team. The second lesson about the importance of feedback was transparency. We all went under the same daily scrutiny and although this was painful at times, it also brought us together as a team. It was competitive, it was fun and we rooted each other on. This feedback process also allowed us to share some best practices and teach the newbies so that they knew what was coming and how to get better.

Adaptability in sales is essential and that is another lesson I learned at The Dallas Times Herald. During my 6 years there, my territory was split 4 times so I gave up strip centers and advertisers to my co-workers and had to go deeper into my current client base, selling them more or finding new ones in a smaller territory. I was blessed with a North Dallas area and was able to adapt and continue to outsell my complacent Dallas Morning News opponent.

My boss, a wonderful guy named Eddie, was a master at understanding the importance of feedback and would always find a time to point out the wins, the great sales, the creative approaches and he was famous for slipping us producers a $50 here and there as a bonus. Which of course, we went out and blew that night at the Elan, dancing and drinking a few cocktails. I grew to love feedback, as all salespeople should, but of course, the quality of it matters. Coaches should be direct, fair, instructive and consistent in their feedback to make it work its magic. Not everyone is as lucky as I was to have an accomplished and encouraging coach.

The coach is so important when it comes down to it. I would certainly not have been as motivated or as skilled or as inspired to canvas my territory, stay out late and build ads until 8 pm at night without Eddie. So how do coaches become better?  Here is one great resource from our partners Objective Management Group: The Ultimate Sales Coaching Guide with another downloadable below.

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.