Delivering The Ultimate Coaching Outcome
I start my sales coaching program by asking the group of sales managers, what would you like answered during this workshop?
The typical answers are: what can I say to win my point? or how can I get my sales representatives to do things my way? or how can I convince my sales representatives to do it the right way? or how can I get them to understand ?
When I ask why those particular questions, the managers explain that typically sales coaching centres on some aspect of improving a sales representatives ability to sell. The manager notes some deficiencies in a sales call and afterwards, they sit down with them to rectify the situation.
And I ask, tell me more?
They then talk about the pressure they are under. And it comes from a variety of sources.
On one level sales managers need to drive the interests of the company and on another, the interests of the sales representative team. And always, the pressure of achieving sales goals. Add to those limitations in doctor access, following the industry code of conduct and the competition from other bigger, stronger and wealthier pharmaceutical companies. Plus the competition between time spent coaching and the other tasks associated with sales management. Phew!
Sales coaching then, occurs in a context of expediency or urgency in getting results.
This creates a tendency for sales managers to coach by jumping to solutions. Coaching sessions contain a lot of talking, telling and offering of solutions. Getting them to understand
After all, the manager was once a sales representative and has been there and done that, experienced the challenge so is full of solutions. Coaching to them is akin to passing on my wisdom.
Whats surprising is that they then report that performance improvement by the representative is slower than expected. Often that need to get them to understand, etc comes from the coachs perspective and can drive the discussion into a dead end. Why?
Peter Drucker, a business thought leader, addressed this kind of dilemma in a Harvard Business Review article, What Makes an Effective Executive.
He wrote that the best managers he has worked with had a huge variety of personalities, attitudes, values, strengths and weaknesses. They ranged from extroverted to nearly reclusive, from easygoing to controlling, from generous to parsimonious. So it wasnt their personalities that determined success.
The thing that Peter saw was a shift in CONTEXT. The particular context they had for the sales coaching after, or before, a sales call was established by asking 2 simple big picture business questions:
What needs to be done? and Whats right for the business/ enterprise?
In other words, they establish a business context for the coaching conversation first. A context that focuses on the business issues rather than their personal issues. Jumping to solutions never happened. They talked big picture before they talked about implementation.
Excellence in sales coaching starts with an agreed context of the representatives performance; the why before the what.
You know youre getting there when the representative asks, How do I get that? Will this work for me? Is that really possible? Who else has done it? How do I start?