Selling Power Blog

Formal Sales Coaching: So Irresistible, Why So Hard?

Today's post is by David Pearson, CEO of Level Five Selling, the creators Of The Level Five Coaching System.

 

 

People knowledgeable about sales excellence know that coaching is worthwhile—it can make a difference; it needs to be a priority. Most sales leaders agree about the importance of sales coaching, yet would also admit “the job isn’t getting done.” A lot of great companies start coaching initiatives with tremendous energy and commitment. Far fewer exit the other end of the tunnel.   

Three propositions increase the urgency for a renewed dialogue about coaching. 

• Sales force performance is a bigger piece of the competitive advantage puzzle. Today it is challenging to sustain a competitive advantage by product alone. Even if you have a winning product, the competition is likely to bring to market one that is just as good, cheaper, and in half the time it took several years ago.
    
• Sales excellence is more difficult to achieve. Not only is superior sales performance more critical than ever, but it’s also harder to get there. Today’s salespeople must develop their knowledge and skills to an unprecedented level. Now top performers have to know more and know it at a higher level of competency than ever before. 
   
• Skill development cannot be an event; it must be a process. Parachuting salespeople into any training event and expecting them to learn and integrate the complex skills to create value in today’s markets is unrealistic. It simply will not happen regardless of how good the program is, or how talented the trainer. Skill development needs to be a process, not an event, and coaching is an essential ingredient for making that happen.  

Superimpose these developments on one of the most transformational and disruptive periods in recent history, and you create a picture that explains why market-leading companies are taking a second look at getting coaching done and getting it right.  

At Level Five, we have had the privilege of working with great sales leaders.  Here are some of the best practices these great sales leaders are doing on a good day for getting coaching right.  

Improving the diagnosis 

Unfortunately, most people struggle to construct an accurate self-assessment of their abilities. In fact, most people seek out evidence that confirms their positive opinions and ignores evidence to the contrary.   

It’s challenging to travel the performance improvement road unless everyone agrees on where the journey is beginning. Recognizing the myth and achieving a better beginning diagnosis is one of the best opportunities for improving the coaching process. Some specific ideas:    

• Change the standard against which the salesperson is self-judging—shift to a best practice standard versus “what everyone else is doing.”    
• Discuss specific behaviors like “asking questions” or “active listening” when coaching ideas like “selling value.”    
• Coach how to leverage strengths as well as how to correct deficiencies.     

Helping salespeople learn versus teaching

A traditional sales coaching model sounds like this, “I’m the leader–I’ll suggest what you should do to improve your performance. Your job is to practice–my job is to give feedback.” This model is about teaching people how to fix a performance problem.   

An alternative model says, “You’re the one responsible for the learning.  As your leader, I’m responsible for helping you become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses, expand your alternatives for improving, and increase your understanding of how you’re doing.”   

This latter model helps explain why top coaches ask more than tell–and listen more than talk. 

Coaching both account strategy and call execution

Account strategy formulation and call execution skills are critical for any world-class sales team. Hence, they both should be a top priority for coaching. 

But in many companies, account strategy coaching is underemphasized.  If you select the correct accounts and establish a rigorous coaching protocol, performance improvement per unit of time spent on sales strategy can significantly impact sales productivity.  

The importance of having a superior sales team is increasing, but you can’t just “buy” one. Having a great group of front-line leaders who are masterful at coaching and get coaching done are necessary parts of the answer.  Only five years ago, you might have been okay at putting this “getting good at coaching goal” on the back burner for other priorities. However, in today’s market, that decision is more difficult to justify.

3 Sales Coaching Tips To Inspire and Engage Your Sales Team

Today's post is by Mark Cox, CEO and founder of In the Funnel Sales Coaching. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

 

As sales managers, our main objective is to influence the future behavior of our sales teams to achieve sales targets. Period.

This is done by: 

1. Setting high—but reasonable—expectations
2. Providing guidance on how to achieve those expectations (i.e. sales playbooks, sales processes, strategies, and tools) 
3. Providing effective sales training (outsourced or in-house) to enable the team to achieve those expectations

Once these three foundational elements are in place, we need to actively manage our teams with a formal sales management cadence to effectively: 

• Coach the team
• Motivate the team
• Inspect the team

Though this may sound simple enough, there’s a catch. 

The Challenges of Sales Management 

We constantly face everyday challenges that prevent them from achieving our goal.

Our three key stakeholders (customers, CEOs, salespeople) have ever-expanding expectations. The pace of change is relentless and every once in a while, the economy/ environment kicks us in the tail to ensure we don’t get too comfortable sleeping well (see current turbulent times).

As a result, our coaching programs can suffer and so can our sales teams.

According to research from BlessingWhite, only 23% of people being coached thought that the coaching had a “significant impact on their performance or job satisfaction.” Amazingly, 10% even suggested that the coaching they were getting was having a “negative effect.”

On the other hand, statistics also show that coaching matters and is directly related to sales performance. According to the Sales Executive Council, sales managers that were rated as highly effective coaches outperformed sales managers who were rated as ineffective coaches by 19% in revenue production.

This means spectacular coaching is a crucial sales management responsibility and strategy if we want to build and sustain a top-performing sales organization that can yield exponential sales growth.

How to Improve Your Coaching Program

Here are three strategies to improve your coaching program as part of your sales management cadence today.

• Scheduling coaching events
• Stop giving advice and start asking better questions
• Understand the six types of sales coaching

1. Schedule coaching events

One-on-one meetings and time in the field with your salespeople are the opportune times for sales coaching. 

When coaching in the field, ensure you reserve time to review the client call/ presentation after the activity. According to Michael Bunga Stanier in his excellent work the Coaching Habit, “People don’t learn when you tell them something. They don’t even really learn when they do something. They start learning, start creating new neural pathways only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.”

We suggest reviewing a customer call or event by asking the sales rep to identify three things she liked and three things she would do differently next time. Then we (as the sales leader) share our opinion on the same. This allows the salesperson to first self-diagnose, thereby creating the learning moment.

2. Stop giving advice and start asking better questions

You may think you know the answer to the issues and challenges that your salesperson is facing. If you give them the answer today, you can guarantee that they will be back for a similar answer next week. 

This creates a dependency cycle—they come to you for all of the answers in the future. The kind of people you want on your sales team are intelligent, driven, and humble. They want to develop and learn. You need to give them space to allow for this.

Try this as a process for your next coaching moment:

• Assess their situation
• Create great questions to help them come to the same assessment
• Align on your go forward plan together
• After the coaching event, ask them to send you an email summarizing the go forward plan or the key points of what you discussed

It is tremendously difficult to stop yourself from giving the answer when this issue seems so obvious to you. You want to be helpful, you want to show value, and you want to feel like you made a significant contribution as a sales manager. You think the best way to do that is to tell them the answer. 

However, when you do this, you are missing out on an opportunity to develop your employees.  It is your duty to make people who work for you better. Too many sales managers believe it is the salesperson’s duty to enable us to hit our numbers.

Remember, when you tell them the answer, they don’t always internalize it or commit to it.

3. Understand the six areas of sales coaching

When coaching your sales team, be intentional and work with them to ensure they understand and are aligned on the following areas:

• Mindset (extremely important during the isolation of these turbulent times)
• Skills and capabilities 
• Territory management
• Activity/funnel
• Opportunity 
• Sales process

We can either coach a situation or we can coach the person. One fixes an immediate problem and the other creates someone who will fix these problems without us in the future. Both are necessary.

Join our upcoming FREE sales webinars where we help leaders create high-performing sales teams.

Sales Coaching in the New, Virtual World

Today's post is by Justin Zappulla, managing partner at Janek Performance Group.

 

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, many sales teams quickly adapted new skills to sell in the virtual environment. At the same time, however, many were ill prepared for the challenges of coaching remotely, such as the time required to coach a dispersed team. In an office, coaching opportunities present themselves organically. Managers sit at a rep’s computer or teams gather in conference rooms and even cater lunch. However, it’s different in a virtual world. Coaching practices geared toward in-person interaction did not readily translate, and for virtual coaching to be effective, managers had to find ways to sufficiently engage their reps. Here are a few ways sales managers can meet the challenges of remote coaching.

Actively engage reps

To coach successfully in a virtual environment, managers must change the dynamic. An overly prescriptive coaching engagement, where the manager speaks most of the time, will be even less effective virtually. Managers should encourage reps to speak up, invest in the coaching, and buy in to the desired outcomes. A basic tenet of sales has always been to believe in your product. Virtual coaching practices that encourage participation increase commitment, making reps stronger representatives for their customers and clients. This also aids retention as reps develop a stake in the organization’s long-term goals.     

Create an open environment

Key to creating engagement in virtual coaching is adapting how managers and reps communicate. In virtual, it’s essential to utilize open-ended questions. Similar to how successful sales reps use open-ended questions to uncover a client’s needs, managers must communicate honestly, build trust, and foster a willingness to engage in the coaching initiatives that increase performance and drive sales. Combined with open-ended questions, closed questions can provide confirmation and indicate buy-in. By themselves, however, they can make reps defensive. Remember, many reps already feel anxious from the isolation of working remotely, so employing a combination of open-ended and closed questions makes for a comfortable and enjoyable coaching experience.

Focus on quality communication

In virtual coaching, written and verbal communication require greater attention. As sales managers rely more on email, they must avoid miscommunication that stems from carelessness. While reps can readily note a manager’s joke in person, it’s easy to misconstrue a comment in an email. Without the benefit of body language, isolated reps might find themselves stressing over a misinterpreted comment that the manager meant humorously. Also, managers should read emails aloud to ensure their tone isn’t short, curt, or out of alignment with their intended meaning.    

On video, managers should reassure remote reps they are valued and appreciated. On the phone, without facial expressions, meaning can blur, especially when criticizing or critiquing a rep’s performance. As in face-to-face coaching, virtual coaching should always seek to build a rep up. In virtual, this requires a little extra awareness to preserve feelings and ensure a productive coaching experience.

Embrace technology

Today, technology is essential to coaching. Sales managers must be able to communicate and collaborate with remote reps through video and other conferencing applications. They must share data from their CRM, review recorded calls, and listen to live calls in real time. In addition, as technology is only as useful as its functionality, both managers and reps must troubleshoot the issues common to virtual interaction and prepare a network within their organization to ensure remote reps have access and support if something fails. Also, both managers and reps should be proficient with the tools of virtual collaboration, such as screen sharing and whiteboarding, to get the most from virtual coaching.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, it’s easy to see how sales coaching took a backseat as organizations struggled to maintain sales in the remote environment. Gradually, as organizations adapted and the need for coaching grew, it became clear the old way was no longer effective. Instead, as their teams adjusted to sell virtually, sales managers modified their coaching practices to suit the changing needs of their remote sales force. Going forward, as the virtual model continues to grow, successful managers will consistently update their coaching to ensure the productivity and success of their sales teams.   

For more helpful advice on how to advance your selling and sales management skills, visit Janek's resource library. 

The Top Three Sales Coaching Challenges Facing Sales Managers Today (and How to Fix Them)

Today's post is by Brian Trautschold, co-founder and COO at Ambition, the leading sales coaching and gamification software used by in-house and remote sales teams across the globe.

 

You’ve heard it time and time again: Sales coaching is the number one thing sales managers can do to improve the performance of their reps.

But not all sales coaching programs are created equal – which is why we wanted to understand what’s happening in the real world, right now. What does sales coaching look like for a typical sales team, and, most importantly, is it actually making a difference?

We surveyed sales leaders and reps from mid-market and enterprise sales orgs, and our survey affirmed what we know to be true – that sales coaching matters (a lot). But many managers are struggling to run sales coaching programs that directly impact performance, due primarily to common challenges sales managers face.

Here are the top three problems that contribute to ineffective sales coaching, plus some actionable tactics sales managers can use to improve their programs.

Challenge #1: Lack of Manager Training

According to our survey, 98% of managers said they were in a front-line selling role before moving up to a sales manager role. It’s a big percentage, but it’s not surprising: The sales management world is full of former all-star sellers – many of whom, unfortunately, get their big promotion, a pat on the back...and that’s about it. 

This begs the question: Who’s managing the managers?

The bottom line is that sales management isn’t the same as selling. It’s a different role with completely different responsibilities, skill requirements, and measures of success. Through no fault of their own, managers often lack the training required to coach, motivate, and pull the levers that lead to positive, lasting behavior change in their reps. 

When managers don’t know how or when to coach, it either doesn’t happen effectively or it doesn’t happen at all. If this sounds familiar, take heart: There are ways you can take charge and hone your sales coaching skills – or at least get the ball rolling.

The Solution

• Start a dialogue: Communicate with your supervisor or leadership team about where you’d like to grow as a sales coach. Sure, it may be intimidating or feel like you’re admitting a weakness – but consider what it would be like if the tables were turned and one of your reps approached you seeking opportunities to improve in their role. It actually shows commitment to your team, your desire to be successful as a sales manager, and a high level of self-awareness. If you’re having that conversation, know what you’re asking for ahead of time: Are there specific resources you need? Is there a course you’d like to take? Be specific and solution oriented.
• Identify professional development opportunities: The sales world loves an event – and sales coaching is always a hot topic. From Webinars and seminars to conferences and retreats, there’s something out there for everyone. Also: Don’t underestimate the power of community. Seek out sales associations or LinkedIn groups, jump into Reddit or Quora – you’ll find a lot of people asking and answering the same sales coaching questions you have.
• Request feedback: Surveying your employees can be a humbling exercise but, if you do it right, it’s worth it. No matter how green or seasoned you are, seeking out regular feedback from your team can take the guesswork out of what’s going well and where you can do better. Be sure you do this in a variety of formats: Of course, people may feel more comfortable responding anonymously – and you may get some very honest answers – but be sure to provide opportunities for open dialogue, too.

Challenge #2: Lack of Performance Visibility

The best kind of sales coaching is data-driven sales coaching. According to our survey, however, only 27% of managers have excellent visibility into their reps’ progress against goals.

It’s hard to coach if you don’t know how your reps are performing, what they’re struggling with, or where their skill gaps lie – and that story needs to be told by data, not just by feelings, hunches, and anecdotes. When sales coaching sessions aren’t structured around data, they’re at best fluffy, and, at worst, emotional or even confrontational.

When managers don’t have accurate, accessible data, it’s often because they’re using a CRM, spreadsheets, or even whiteboards to keep track of their team’s performance – all of which become a hassle and a time suck for managers who just want to know where their team stands.

It’s also a problem when reps lack visibility into individual or team performance. That’s because they don’t have the opportunity to develop any kind of self-awareness around their progress, strengths, or weaknesses. If they can’t evaluate how they’re doing, they can’t prepare for their one-on-ones or proactively contribute to their own development.

The Solution

• Track the right KPIs: Having visibility into data is helpful only if it’s meaningful data. Be sure you’re tracking the right metrics for your team. It’s not just about the Big Number; you should have insight into the daily sales activities that drive deals down the funnel and the weekly or monthly sales objectives that will ultimately lead to your team hitting (or exceeding) quota.

• Go real time: Real-time insights are valuable for your weekly one-on-ones because you’ll know you’re working with very current numbers and not just a snapshot of what happened last week, month, or quarter. But real time is also important because it allows you to coach beyond your sessions, so you can step in and recognize wins the second they happen or offer support before your reps veer too far off track.
  
  
• Provide teamwide visibility: Again, your reps need performance insight just as much as you do. Whether your team is in the office or remote these days, you can leverage a sales leaderboard as well as real-time alerts and triggers to keep progress against goals front and center.

Challenge #3: Lack of Structure

Structure and consistency are critical to coaching effectiveness, but many managers struggle to launch or maintain a program that checks either of those boxes.

It comes down to bandwidth: According to our survey, more than half of managers said time was a key resource they needed to effectively coach and manage reps. 

Where do the hours go? Many managers spend significant chunks of their days in leadership and department meetings or handling administrative tasks (like running reports) – or they find themselves sucked back into a selling capacity.

It’s no wonder there’s little time for meaningful coaching: Whereas one-on-ones ideally would happen on a weekly basis, both managers and reps report getting far fewer coaching opportunities than they actually need.

It’s not just frequency that’s a problem, either. When a one-on-one does happen, it’s often focused heavily on pipeline and deal review. Those are important items, for sure, but they don’t make for a true coaching session.

The Solution:

• Get automated: Leverage sales coaching software that will help you cut out the sales coaching tasks that can be put on autopilot – like tying sessions to KPI data, sending questions ahead of time, and recording notes and action plans. 

• Pick a format: Don’t reinvent the wheel every week; it’s fine to have a similar format for all your reps. The key is to ask the right questions and make sure you give your reps a chance to reflect on and answer them before your session. There are countless sales coaching methodologies you can tap into or sales coaching templates you can use to get started. 

Despite its potential value, sales coaching can become an afterthought – and it’s often because of the challenges sales managers inherently face. If you’re not seeing results from your sessions, it’s not because sales coaching doesn’t work; maybe your strategy just needs some attention. 

By putting in the time, effort, and resources to develop your own coaching skills and launch a program the right way, you can expect to see meaningful, measurable, and ongoing ROI. Download the full Sales Coaching Challenges report.

Get a Big Sales Coaching Boost for Your Salespeople Right Now

Today's post is by Ed Ross, CEO and founder of The CORE Results, Inc.

 

 

We’re hearing a lot about which businesses are “essential” and “non-essential” in this pandemic. No matter what condition the market is in, I think we can all agree that sales teams are in the “essential” category. Salespeople will drive your ongoing operations and may even help you tailor your offerings to appeal to markets with growth opportunity. 

Sales Coaching Is Critical to Success

That said, this is a new world for salespeople, and they’ll need proper coaching to find their footing and yield the best performance. (Salesforce research indicates that 67 percent of companies that have had a formal sales coaching program in place for three years or more experienced high revenue growth.) 

For the time being, this coaching will have to happen remotely. At The CORE Results, our AI-enabled approach to sales coaching was developed to maximize a sales manager’s ability to leverage data to improve the level of individual, targeted training – absent the need for physical interaction.  

How AI Enables Great Remote Sales Coaching 

Innovations in machine learning and AI are leading the way to fully automated, personalized sales coaching programs built on precise insights and remote interactions. 

Real-time coaching fosters greater coaching competence and proficiency among managers (so you support your team at all levels – both managers and sellers). Our system helps you in the following ways. 

• Takes the guesswork out of sales coaching. For decades, sales managers have led teams by relying on instinct while cherry picking data buried in multiple systems. This is time consuming and, honestly, an elaborate form of A/B testing.
  
  Our technology identifies coachable moments for the sales manager and the individual contributors throughout a coaching interaction by establishing clear and concise actions to advance an opportunity in the sales process. Focusing on the core behaviors aligned to each stage and/or milestone enables sales organizations to increase sales-funnel velocity. 
  
  
• Helps you coach efficiently and with greater precision to save time. One of our global healthcare clients has used our system to provide just the right amount of coaching for each salesperson on his team.
  
  As he put it: “There’s never enough time in the day to spend time with every rep, on every deal. CORE’s dashboard allows me to quickly see my team’s progress, then drill down to gain insight into each rep’s individual skills and competencies. With this level of visibility, I know exactly where I need to focus on developing an employee – whether a top performer or rising star. We’ve never had insights like these all in a mobile platform. It has allowed me to be more effective as a coach, in less time.”
  
  
• Fine tunes your sales coaching insights and increases deal velocity. Our proprietary technologies analyze emotion, context, and sentiment in real time for nuanced coaching insights. Because interactions on our platform are powered by AI, our system delivers more precise and useful suggested action steps the more you use it.
  
  We’re on track to create a fully automated cycle in which sales managers receive the key insights, feedback, and analysis they need to be exceptional sales coaches, while also sharpening their skills. When insights are converted into predictive analytics about selling and coaching behaviors, they have a great impact on deal lifespan and revenue. 
  
  
• Accelerates sales managers’ progression from individual contributor to game-changing sales coach. Recently promoted a rep to manager? This transition often leaves the new manager feeling overwhelmed and under-prepared. Our Six Elements of Coaching™ methodology enhances your newly-promoted manager’s ability to measure key competencies of individual sales representatives, as well as analyze the performance of the entire team. This data can then be combined to understand and improve the proficiency of a sales manager’s coaching ability.

During this time, it is more important than ever that we all leverage technology to stay productive and keep sales moving forward. Adopt remote sales coaching strategies today that will yield your team greater success tomorrow and beyond. 

For more insights about sales coaching, download the Six Elements of Coaching Guide.

Three Simple Ways Sales Coaching Can Reduce Turnover

Today’s post is by Brian Trautschold, co-founder and COO at Ambition, the leading sales coaching and gamification software used by in-house and remote sales teams across the globe.

 

In an ever-changing industry like sales, there’s one challenge that’s constant: high sales rep turnover.

The average tenure of a sales rep is often quoted to be somewhere between 13 and 30 months. When typical ramp time takes nine to 12 months, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for reps to operate at full steam before they move up to a different role or move on to a different job.

What’s the trick to getting your best reps to stick around? It’s all about managing with a sales coaching mentality. Reps crave effective and consistent coaching. In fact, our State of Sales Performance Management Survey showed that 98 percent of reps who responded were more likely to stay with a company if they’re offered ongoing training and development.

Here are three ways you can use sales coaching to ensure your top (or up-and-coming) talent sticks with you.

1. Get personal.

If you’re not engaging in meaningful conversation – or if every coaching session with every rep looks exactly the same – then you may as well not be coaching at all. To keep your coaching sessions personalized:

• Automate what you can: Yes, it seems counterintuitive, but automating the administrative tasks – like scheduling sessions, gathering performance data, tracking conversations and action plans, and sending questions ahead of time – means you can spend your sessions on valuable, development-focused conversations tailored to each rep. The right sales coaching software will help you do just that.
• Ask the right questions: One-to-ones are not mini performance reviews. In fact, your reps should be leading the sessions – but you can guide the conversation with a solid mix of thoughtful, open-ended questions. Ask questions that encourage your reps to make observations about their performance; draw conclusions based on those observations; and then apply them to new and different circumstances.
• Invest in their success: Show your reps you care about them – as members of your team and as sales professionals. Help them identify career development opportunities and position themselves for success. Sure, they may leave you someday if they’re eager to climb the ladder, but you’ll instill in them a level of confidence today that will have a direct impact on their performance today.  

By personalizing your coaching efforts, your sessions will not only become more powerful; you’ll also nurture relationships with each rep – which goes a long way toward creating a healthy team culture. 

2. Provide a clear path to success.

It’s easy for reps to mentally check out if you haven’t defined what success looks like or if success feels flat-out unattainable. At best, that can lead to disengagement; at worst, it can be demoralizing and create burnout – a huge driver of turnover.

As a sales coach, identifying the right KPIs and setting the right targets will allow you to create a clear path to success for your reps. Bonus: It gives you hard numbers to which to hold your reps accountable. 

Not sure if you’ve got the right goals in place? Here’s a quick refresher:

1. Work backward from your “North Star”: Start with the big revenue number your team is trying to hit; then, reverse engineer your sales funnel by each opportunity stage – going backward from closed deal to RFP to demo to...you get the picture. 
2. Calculate conversion rates: Using historical numbers, figure out the average conversion rate between stages in the pipeline. 
3. Define the activities that drive each stage conversion: These are the activities you should measure and reinforce for reps. Figure out which sales motions work the best for each stage of an opportunity, and incentivize whichever reps are responsible for that part of the funnel to hit their activity goals.

Remember: You can only manage what you can control – and activity and effort are two things that are fully under your control. Set sales goals for your most relevant activities and drive your reps to achieve them every single day. This will create a system of consistency and accountability that will make your reps successful and engaged – and successful, engaged reps are much easier to retain.

3. Coach beyond the one-to-one.

Every sales coach needs to find ways to recognize, motivate, and coach in the moment – without constantly looking over your reps’ shoulders or micromanaging. 

The best way to strike that balance is to leverage tools that provide real-time insights and alerts into performance (bonus if they integrate with your instant messaging technology, like Slack). That way, the second a rep veers off track, you’ll know – and you can step in to offer support or coach them up on skills they may need to develop.

Of course, coaching is also about recognizing and celebrating a job well done. If you’re sharing a sales floor, leverage sales TVs with anthems and triggers that fire off when reps score – and be sure to publicly broadcast your sales competitions, too. (If you’ve got remote team members, make sure everything can be viewed through a URL, so the whole company can cheer the team along.)

Real-time coaching demonstrates to your reps that you’re present and plugged in, which in turn keeps them present and plugged in – a surefire way to combat high turnover.

If you’re struggling to retain your top talent, you’re not alone. Before you throw your hands up and assume that short tenures come with the territory, however, consider reevaluating your coaching program. 

Structure a coaching program that gives reps what they need, and you can expect to see enhanced productivity, stronger performance – and a lot of talented employees who choose to stick around.

How to Improve the Way You Coach Millennial Sales Reps

Today’s post is by Justin Zappulla, managing partner at Janek Performance Group.

 

Millennial sales reps don’t always see the world the same way as their sales managers.

Technological advancements often signify divides between generations. But there may be no sharper divide than that between the Information Age Gen-X/baby boomers and the Digital Age millennials.

The globalization of digital information, awareness, and communication has created a generation far different from its predecessors. As a result, astute sales managers will recognize that coaching millennial sales reps will require tactics different from older sales reps.

Three Ways to Adapt Your Sales Coaching Style

Here are three basic tips to help you adapt your sales coaching style to millennial sales reps.

Tip #1: Use structure and guidelines.

Many millennials grew up in an environment where their day was carefully plotted and scheduled, with many after-school activities, sports, etc. Their educational system emphasized standardized test scores, resulting in teaching to exams – a process that necessitated instruction in a specific structure and format.

For a considerable portion of millennial sales reps, hearing the phrase “figure it out” can be alarming. When your formative years had a built-in structure and clear guidelines, you might naturally find the open waters of uncertainty and vagueness disturbing.

When coaching sales reps of this generation, use structure and guidelines – both in the sales coaching session itself and the skills and accounts being coached to. It will make things much easier for your reports and it has the side benefit of forcing you, as a sales manager, to clearly articulate and define a given skill or your organization’s processes and expectations. This, in turn, will have positive effects on the rest of the sales team.

Tip #2: Make technology your friend.

To paraphrase Bane from the recent Batman film franchise, millennials were born in technology, molded by it. This extends into the generation’s daily life, where a large portion will look up how to do something via YouTube instructional videos, for example.

You, too, can use technology to your coaching advantage with millennials. (Explanatory videos not only appeal to this age group but will aid older visual learners on your team.) Also consider gamification apps for sales training reinforcement, and using technology to provide feedback, disseminate data, and distribute metrics information.

Tip #3: Give consistent and frequent feedback.

It’s inaccurate to say millennials have poorer interpersonal communications than previous generations. Rather, the form of communication has changed. Rather than face-to-face, much conversing takes place via text, social media platforms, and other forms of digital communication.

In fact, there’s even more communication in the digital, global society than we’ve ever had before – it’s just that less of it occurs face-to-face. Given this increased, real-time discussion, particularly against the background noted in our first point, your millennial sales reps will expect consistent, frequent feedback on their performance.

So provide that feedback on the expected timelines. It’ll make you a more effective sales manager because you’ll be able to 1) spot issues before they become serious and 2) develop a closer relationship between you and your team members.

Adapting to Sales Coaching Changes

Yes, sales managers are being asked to adapt during a time of massive change. (Don’t forget: Generation Z also began entering the workforce last year.) But change also brings opportunity. Try these tips and you’ll strengthen and improve your company’s sales coaching culture, and get a greater return on your efforts.  

For more advice on how to advance your sales coaching skills, visit Janek’s resource library or sign up for our free monthly newsletter.

How to Coach Your Salespeople off Plateaus

Today’s post is by Mike Fisher, vice president of business development and a master facilitator for Integrity Solutions. Contact him on LinkedIn.

 

It happens to nearly every sales manager at some point. One of your most consistent salespeople reaches a plateau and just can’t seem to get past it. The goals you’ve set for them should be attainable, but you hear excuses and their activity starts to fall off. “That won’t work in my territory,” they tell you.

As their manager, you start to wonder, Is that all there is?

The good news is, in most cases, the salesperson is absolutely capable of moving off that plateau. But the excuses and the decline in activity aren’t what the real issue is. Like the “check engine” light in your car, they’re the indicator that something else is wrong.

In our work, we frequently see two primary culprits that lie at the root of why a salesperson stalls out: self-limiting beliefs and a lack of goal clarity. Coaching your people around these two areas can help them release their inner achievement drive so they can get back on track and hit their numbers again.

Self-sabotaging Self-talk

Over the course of our lives, we all develop belief boundaries – defining for ourselves what we can and can’t do. Someone freezes up on a quiz in grade school and decides, from that point on, they’re not a good test taker. A manager sets a goal that’s beyond anything a salesperson has achieved in the past, and they tell themselves, “No way – I can’t do that.”

No matter how much someone knows (intellectually) what they’re supposed to do, that self-talk works against them – looking for ways to prove they can’t do it. Any obstacle is a sign: “See, I told you so.” In essence, they’ve programmed their goal seeking mechanism to achieve negative results.

When you hear arguments or excuses, it’s an indicator that you’re pushing up against that person’s comfort zones. They can move past that plateau and achieve more, but their belief boundary is telling them they can’t. It’s your job as a coach to help them recognize their self-talk is just talk. It does not reflect what they’re really capable of.

• Focus on activities, not results. Coach salespeople to do the activities that will drive the results they want, and reward and recognize the effort rather than the result. The salesperson can’t control whether someone buys, but can control whether to make the call. When the skills are there, activity will build confidence and expand their belief boundaries as the effort begins to pay off.

Lack of Goal Clarity

People often say, “You can’t teach achievement drive,” and that’s true. But everyone has achievement drive within them; it just lies dormant until they have goal clarity.

That’s where great sales coaches come in. They see more in their salespeople than the salespeople see in themselves. When salespeople don’t think they can do it, sales coaches show them they can.

As a sales manager, you have the opportunity to be that person for your salespeople. Once salespeople are clear about what they’re trying to accomplish, and why, they can come up with a plan to get over the obstacles. The “why” that goal clarity provides is an essential self-motivator. If you have the “why,” you’ll figure out the “how.”

• Support, don’t assign. Never tell them what you can ask them. You can ask, “How do you think we can reach a 20 percent increase?” Let them share their beliefs. There is much deeper buy-in if it is their idea. This releases achievement drive to make it happen. Coach them and hold them accountable, but let them own the goal.

By nudging salespeople out of their comfort zones, expanding their belief boundaries, and helping them take ownership of their success, you’ll not only help them hit their numbers; you’ll change their view of what’s possible.

To get the full results from Integrity Solutions’ 2018 research on sales coaching effectiveness and its impact on organizational performance, see our Research Brief.

How to Overcome Resistance to Sales Coaching

Today’s post is by Michael Mallin, professor of Sales and Marketing at The University of Toledo’s Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales. He has published more than 40 articles in sales and sales leadership and is the academic director for the Executive Master of Sales Leadership degree program – a specialized master’s degree program for sales professionals.

 

Sales coaching is an ideal way to improve productivity among your team. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, “… no other productivity investment comes close to coaching in improving reps’ performance.”

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, however, sales coaching outcomes aren’t always as effective as they could be. Chalk it up to basic human nature – salespeople sometimes have an instinctive, negative reaction to sales coaching.

Why Salespeople Sometimes React Negatively to Sales Coaching

Even if sales managers have the best intentions to positively impact performance, salespeople might respond with feelings of defensiveness, reluctance, fear, confusion, and apathy. This is perfectly natural, and there are a few key ways managers can lay the groundwork for successful coaching outcomes.

Put on Your Sales Coaching C.A.P.

Dealing with a salesperson’s negative reaction should be treated like the process of handling any sales objection, issue, or concern. Think C.A.P.: Clarify, Address, Proceed.

Clarify. First, clarify or acknowledge the negative reaction to reveal the basic issue. This may be accomplished by

• Asking questions (“Help me understand your concern with me traveling with you”);
• Reflecting (“So, you feel there are no areas in your questioning techniques you can improve upon?”); or,
• Showing empathy (“I understand it may be difficult to try something new”).

Address. Next, address the negative reaction by clearly explaining the purpose. The key message should be to remind salespeople that your focus is to help them develop and refine their skills so they can achieve sales objectives.

Proceed. Finally, proceed with the coaching session only after clarifying and addressing the salesperson’s basic issues.

This table illustrates some sample conversations you can use when salespeople display negative reactions to sales coaching.

Salesperson Negative Reaction	Basic Issues	What You Might Say: Clarify or acknowledge (C) the basic issue Address (A) the concern
Defensiveness	Ego and self-esteem protection; Risk of exposure of skill deficiency	C: “Help me better understand your hesitation.” A: “I’ll share with you my observations during the (sales) call and we’ll discuss steps to get you back on track.”
Reluctance	Defiance or unwillingness to engage; Does not see or believe a benefit will result.	C: “I see you are a bit reluctant. The benefits of doing this may not be apparent.” A: “I’ve been working with Joe over the past few weeks on this (skill). He is now on track and is more confident.”
Fear	Concern over consequences stemming from skill deficiency	C: “I can appreciate your concern, given last month’s results.” A: “However, I believe in your abilities. If we spend some extra time together, I know you can make a great comeback next month.”
Confusion	Lack of clarity or ambiguity of the process and benefit	C: “It seems that you are not clear on the purpose.” A: “My goal is to facilitate a discussion with you so we can agree on some adjustments necessary to help you achieve your sales goals.”
Apathy	Self-improvement is not important; Belief that coaching will not make a difference	C: “I sense your skepticism.” A: “This is an important step to ensure we both agree on your steps to performance improvement.”

Conclusion: The Key to Effective Sales Coaching

Remember, negative reactions from salespeople don’t have to be a roadblock. By incorporating the steps discussed here, sales managers can put themselves in the best position for their coaching efforts to be received more favorably by salespeople and for their feedback to indeed be viewed for what it is: a gift.

Effective sales coaching is an action-oriented process to help salespeople further develop their knowledge, skills, and efforts. It is not a one-time event but a sequence of ongoing conversations providing lessons to maximize performance. If you’d like to learn more about coaching and other sales leadership topics, look at the curriculum of the Executive Master of Sales Leadership degree program at The University of Toledo’s Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales.

Sales Coaching Is Important: So Why Aren't You Coaching?

Today’s post is by Mike Esterday, CEO of Integrity Solutions, the sales performance, customer service training, and coaching firm based in Nashville.  

 

Sales leaders and managers: Before you read further, pause for a moment and reflect on a couple of questions:

1. How much did you coach your sales team this week?
2. How much last week?
3. More to the point: How much have you coached your salespeople at all?

If your answer to one or all of those questions is “not much” or “hardly ever,” you’re not alone. In fact, you’re pretty much in the mainstream, according to new research that we conducted in partnership with the Sales Management Association (download the full report here).

In a nutshell, here’s what we found in our survey of hundreds of sales managers: 76% say coaching is strategically important. Yet most admit that they don’t do it.

Our survey also showed that nearly everyone defines coaching differently. And here’s the kicker: Managers who coach regularly—even if not particularly well—have teams that perform better. What’s more, managers who are really good at coaching—and stick with a consistent routine—have teams that perform dramatically better than others.

Our research findings are also clear on what people say about why managers don’t coach. The biggest reason given by most sales managers? They say they simply don’t have the time. But we see that as a convenient dodge.

As we all know, we find time to do what we value and what we believe will drive productivity. And here our research findings provide important direction: The average manager spends about seven hours a week coaching, if he or she coaches at all. But we found that those who coached at least 10 hours a week see a significant increase in their employees’ productivity—in fact, up to a 9% boost.

This isn’t about working more hours each week, though; it’s about working those hours differently. And for good reason. Coaching more drives better performance.

Our new research results confirm what many of us have known for some time: Sales coaching provides important leverage in an organization. But too often it is seen as a reactive activity—something to turn to when a salesperson has a problem or a set of challenges that need to be addressed.

Sales coaching might also be considered when someone’s at risk of quitting, or when you have a new employee who needs coaching to get up to speed or build confidence around your products/services. But coaching’s most important function is proactive, and it’s particularly powerful when it’s targeted at building motivation, purpose, and drive. The best of coaching is to build people—to get them to see a higher definition of their own abilities and empower them to strengthen their performance.

As we know, most people do more of what’s expected of them by their managers. And because only about 40% of the managers we surveyed said they are coached by their leaders, the message internally is loud and clear: “If I’m not being coached, and I’m not being held accountable to coach, then I’m not likely to do much of it.”

Of course, if everyone from sales leadership to managers to the front lines saw how valuable coaching is in its ability to improve performance and help the best get even better, sales coaching would be elevated and prioritized. In fact, that’s the way it’s already viewed in the top-performing organizations, which overwhelmingly tend to have excellent, established coaching cultures.

To join the ranks of the top performers, follow this six-point plan for building a more robust sales coaching culture.

1. Define sales coaching. Clearly state what your organization believes sales coaching is and what it isn’t. (It’s building and developing people, not performance evaluation.)
   
2. Implement a coaching system. Create a simple, structured approach that anyone can use, so that they’ll actually make time to do it, which will yield concrete results. The system doesn’t have to be time consuming to be highly effective.
   
3. Build accountability. Make sales coaching a part of everyone’s performance evaluation. Senior leaders must coach managers and hold them accountable to coach. It needs to be clear that everyone is responsible for coaching, and that the role is proactive vs. reactive.
   
4. Coach to motivate. According to our study, this can lead to a 15% increase in performance.
   
5. Focus on everyone, including high performers. The biggest performance, business, and talent retention lift often comes from coaching people who are already good at what they do.
   
6. Share best practices. This will maximize the impact and develop more coaching ability.

For more information, download the full Sales Coaching Practices Research Brief.