Why being a “Dashboard Junky” is not sustainable!
The Sales leaders of today, as well as overall business leaders and business owners want to win net new business, get more business from existing clients, increase sales productivity, and produce more predictable sales forecasts. To execute on this, they need to increase the sales force’s win rate, and improve the participation rates, i.e., get a higher percentage of reps hitting their numbers. This can only be executed with solid sales leadership and coaching.
In a study of 2,000 salespeople by the Sales Executive Council, salespeople who received three or more hours of sales coaching per month on average reached 107 percent of their quota, as compared to 88 percent of quota for salespeople who received little or no coaching.
That’s a 19% improvement in results from coaching alone.
During my interviews with sales people, some of those that perceived they had received good coaching made comments like the following; they were, “inspired and motivated to put in the extra effort, it increased my drive”, “when your guided and properly supported, you learn from that and benefit from improved results”, “with transparency and trust, you end up sharing more as a result, so you get to answers or solutions quicker”, “You think better and focus better because they cared about me.”
Powerful words I think, its that kind of followership that gets you Best in Class sales results.
Like many levers to improve sales results, coaching requires the support of the organization, it needs to be a constant and regular cadence. There is a skill and a competency to coaching that is underestimated. Coaching is not only looking at numbers, and it is not asking why you didn’t make certain metrics or kpi’s. In other word’s being a “Dashboard Junky”. It’s also not dictating a certain style.
Like sales itself, coaching is part art and part science. It’s the great managers who know when and how to apply each.
Coaching is not telling the sales rep what to do or how to do something like making a cold call, or closing a deal. The easiest way to manage a sales rep is to simply tell them how to do something. You are the expert, just share your knowledge.
Simple, right? The problem is the sales rep won’t learn nearly as much.
What I’ve learned is that it is far more rewarding to coach more thoughtfully because you really witness how you have genuinely helped someone. You have helped them become better at what they do with lasting effect. It’s a little more difficult, you must put aside your need to solve something quickly and move on, your ego’s need to look and feel like the expert. But in the long run you are not being an effective coach and it’s not scalable if you just dictate or correct.
The questioning process in effective coaching will take more of your valuable time. True coaching is gaining their trust and sincerely working on helping them be better at what they do. The only way to do that is to ask questions, after a call ask them how they think the call went, how they think they could have improved. How did they open the call, how did the customer react to their opening, how did the customer react to their questions? Why do you think the customer reacted that way? What other way could you have tried that might have been more effective? Did you tell a relevant story? What value or insight did you discuss that resonated with the client?
This method of coaching forces the reps to really dig in and think about what they’ve done in a given situation. They need to look at how they planned for the call, what decisions they made in terms of strategy to get to the next steps. Whatever the issue, ask questions first, then help them solve the problem, or improve the behavior together. If they self identify you will get longer lasting results, and the rep will own the change more fully.
I believe that sales management and effective coaching is the key lever in your ability to create a best in class sales team, without it, you will not achieve your revenue growth targets. I liken sales coaching to the sports coaching we see daily, whether it be team sports like hockey or football, or individual sports like golf, everyone needs a coach, no matter how good you are.
I recommend that any sales manager that wants to be the best he or she can be should make sure that they receive the coaching training they need to be more effective managers. If your company doesn’t offer it, ask if they will support you financially to get the training on your own. If not, I would invest in it on your own, it will definitely pay off in your career and in your team’s results.
Yes the manager has to pay attention to the results, the activity, the KPI’s and other metrics, but I believe more importantly, the manager has to pay more attention to real time effective coaching, helping their people be the best that they can be, day in and day out.