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Sales Coaching Is Key
If you manage a sales team, by default, you’re the coach. We’ve talked about field sales coaching, now we look at one-on-one coaching sessions to improve performance. How do you coach your salespeople and maximize their performance? That’s what we are going to talk about today.
We are talking about sales coaching to help improve a particular skill. This sales coaching session has no set schedule. When will it take place? It takes place when you determine, form your field coaching sessions or your one on ones, that this salesperson needs help in a particular area. In a lot of cases this session may be shorter then this podcast. Most of the time, what I will do is add the sales coaching session onto my weekly one on one meeting. We have the weekly one on one session that last approximately 30 minutes and then we add 15 – 20 minutes for the coaching session.
Coaching is a collaborative process
You start by identifying a problem or challenge and working with the sales person to acknowledge the problem, identifying a solution, and taking action to correct the problem.
So let’s take another look at the sales coaching process. In the sales coaching session we will again focus on the six steps of the sales coaching process:
- Identify a problem or challenge
- Have the sales person acknowledge the problem exist
- Get them to commit to finding a solution
- Discuss the cause of the problem
- Work with the sales person to Identify and possible solutions
- Decide on an action plant to be taken by the coach and sales person to correct the problem
- Agree on a specific follow-up date
We’ve all heard how important it is for a sales manager to be an effective coach, but a lot of managers don’t coach because they aren’t sure what coaching is, how to do it, or who to coach. Everyone wants to spend time coaching the sales people on the bottom on the board. I’ll give you a suggestion. Allocate your sales coaching time based on ROI, return on investment. Which of your sales people would give you the greatest return if you invested your time?
Just like I did with field coaching, I have a form that you can use in your sales coaching sessions. You can find the form, Sales Coaching Session Notes, and yes Kim, I have double checked that the link works.
This form goes hand and hand with the sales coaching process. I work with sales managers and business owners as a coach and the first thing I let them know is that in order for me to coach them, they have to have a challenge or problem for us to focus on. If everything is going fine, and there is nothing they want to change or improve on, then how can I coach them? So you have to have a specific challenge that needs to be addressed. This could be a challenge you identified or a challenge that the salesperson brought to you.
I hope you find this podcast on sales coaching helpful, and I look forward to your comments.
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