Inside Our Head

Questions every sales managers should consider in their strategic/team development plan include:

Which salesperson is ready to step up and assume the lead role on this team?
If I were to set a team goal to increase sales by 30% over the next 12 months, what obstacles would stand in our way?
Is there anyone I need to let go? Who is my low performer?
What step of the sales process are we weakest in, and what specifically can I do to correct this?

Every good sales manager needs to spend time focusing on issues such as team morale, individual rep motivators, career planning for sales reps, etc. Get a strategic plan for developing your sales team.

Hanging on to low producing salespeople is detrimental to your sales team!

Untrained sales managers aren't coaching reps on a consistent basis. This leads to the manager not understanding why the sales rep continues to turn in a poor performance. The sales manager then reacts to a rep's poor production by "buying" the rep's excuses, assuming the rep will turn it around soon. But by this time the problem is too old to fix. The opportunity to correct this problem occurred months ago, and the sales coaching opportunity was missed.

Most sales managers know this. She blames herself for the rep's continued failure to perform and, out of guilt, gives the rep even more time on the job to fail some more. The manager's acceptance of one salesperson's mediocrity brings the entire team down.

When untrained sales managers don't know how to be an effective sales manager, so they continue to do what comes naturally - they continue to sell. But this leads them to spend more time with their top salespeople, who are working on the biggest deals, which leaves the rest of the sales team out in the cold, without a leader/coach.

Effective sales management is a skill set that is altogether different from selling.

I don’t understand why many companies seem to believe that, without any sales training, a great salesperson will automatically become a great sales manager.

One thing I do understand, however, is that the companies that do train their sales managers will see faster ramp-up time for new-hires, increased sales productivity and morale, and more satisfied and loyal customers. In short, the entire sales team will improve results if a company will make a training investment in a their sales managers.

If you sell to businesses, somewhere during the sales process your prospects may send out a Request for Proposal or ask you to make a formal sales presentation.

Here's an important tip: if the RFP is the first you've heard about the opportunity, it means you're entering the game late (whether or not there are other competitors) and the odds of winning are low.

The way I handle the situation is to call up the customer and say, "Thank you for sending the RFP. I need an hour of your time to ask some questions and fully understand your needs." If the customer says no, I know there is little chance I can make a sale. If they are unwilling to give me one hour of their time, why should I spend 20 hours responding to an RFP?

If you are a sales manager, your sales training must include this important tip.

Look for opportunities to show interest in all team members. Ask about their life outside of work. Make an effort to learn about their families, their hobbies, their recent vacation, etc. Inquire but never pry. Keep track of names, dates, and events that are important to them, such as birthdays and anniversaries of employment with your company. Showing your team that you care about them as people is one more way to build team sprit. When the sprit is strong, the motivation follows right along.

Create an individual development plan for each employee. Work with your sales managers to create development plans that are customized to each person. The plans should identify things like: current and desired skill strengths; job interests; areas for development and enhancement; and strategies (sales training, assignments, coaching, etc.) for achieving the next step.

Get in the habit of inviting team members to challenge your ideas. Encourage them to constructively (and positively) criticize your plans. Make it okay for people to disagree with you.

This lets people know you value their input, and ensures that implemented ideas will be well thought out. By giving your sales people permission to disagree encourages teamwork, which, in turn, helps motivate everyone on the team.

Do remember, however, when someone disagrees with you he/she should raise the issue with you in private, instead of blurting it out during a team meeting.

A similar questioning track can help you, the sales coach, diagnose sales skill deficiencies.

For example, you could debrief a rep's first meeting with a prospective customer by asking the salesperson:

What problems does that customer have that we can solve?
Why is the customer experiencing these problems?
What will happen to the customer if they don't do anything about them?

Now, listen to the quality of answers you hear. Did the salesperson perform diagnostic questioning as effectively as you could have done? If not, why not? If the sales rep doesn't get better at this skill, how will it impact their sales results? The answer to these questions must be understood by not only you, but each salesperson on your team.

You will improve your effectiveness as a sales coach by slowing down, asking more questions and developing needs. Sound familiar?

Most sales managers coach too fast. When coaching, we don't help sales people find their own answers.

Managing a sales team is a much different set of skills than selling, but in at least one respect, the same skills which helped you become a great salesperson can, when applied, help you become a more effective sales manager, too. Your ability to diagnose customer needs can and should be applied to help you become a better sales coach.

While coaching salespeople, we sales managers often don't listen to everything salespeople want to tell us - we jump in with a "diagnosis" and "prescription" before they're done talking. Just as slowing down the sales process can help your customers buy faster, slowing down as a sales coach can help your sales people learn and develop faster!

As a salesperson you asked a) about customer problems, b) why the customer was experiencing this problems, and c) what will be the likely effects on the customer if they do nothing to solve these problems?

Here's a common scenario being played out in hundreds of corporate offices every day.

A salesperson suffers a bad month, so in swoops the sales manager. The necessary sales training and encouragement is given and voila! - the sales rep is sent back out to reverse their fortunes.

But is this what the top 1% of sales managers do? Nope. The top 1% don't react to the needs of their salespeople. Instead, they anticipate them. They identify Key Performance Indicators, those observable characteristics of effective sales performance. Top sales managers don't want to know a sales rep had a bad month. Instead, they want to know in advance, in time to take corrective action.

At TopLine Leadership, our coaching model actually is in the form, in the acronym, the word coach: C-O-A-C-H.

At the center of the process is Commitment. It's commitment both on the sales manager's part and also on the sales person's part as well. That's the center focus. If we don't have commitment on both ends, it falls down. Basically the model falls apart, that's why it's the central focus: C.

The O in the word stands for Observe. Observing is the starting point as it relates to the coach's process itself. All we need to do is examine both: the behaviors and the activities. So, the O in the coach acronym stands for observe, we've got observe both behaviors and activities.

The A in the model is to Assess. What are we assessing? Two things: competence and willingness. However, it's not just the competence and the willingness of the sales person, it's the competence and willingness of the sales person as it relates to each task that they are performing. We said that they might be a 5-5 at one level, five-two at another, a two-five at another level. So we're going to access the competence and willingness based on the task at hand, or the task that we're going to coach them on. Then we're going to communicate effectively.

The second C in the coach acronym is Communicate. There's actually going to be four different types of sales coaching approaches. So, before you engage in that one-on-one sales coaching process, you're going to take a step back and say: What's the level of competence and willingness? And, what coaching approach am I going to use?

The H in the model is Help. We're going to help our sales people by providing empathy, feedback, and follow-up.

So there you have it C-O-A-C-H. Commitment is where it starts, its our central point, observe , assess, communicate, and help. That's the process and that's the model.