Manager and Coach Archives - Kona - Sales and Management Training

3 Questions That Identify Why Demonstration is the Key to Sales Coaching

In a recent blog One of the best Sales Managers I ever had was a Rubbish Removalist called ‘Cowboy’ we stressed that just because an employee has experience in a certain area of business it doesn’t mean they will be successful in a new role or new project. Look at how many successful people fail when promoted to managers; or how many corporate high flyers fail when they go into business for themselves; or how often a new employee headhunted from your competition doesn’t achieve the same success in your organisation. HR and Recruiters will point to Behavioural Event Interviewing techniques (a technique that asks the candidate to describe a situation or an experience they had in a previous job) and say that “Past behaviour is an indication of future success”. However, this isn’t effective if the role is different or new to the person. As a Manager and Coach it is critical that Managers don’t have the attitude that because an underperforming employee ‘should know better’ they actually know how to perform. Managers who are having coaching conversations with their people from behind their desks, and discussing what the underperformer should be doing, instead of actually getting out on the road and seeing them in action, are letting their people down and taking the easy way out. In a recent article 4 Things to Consider When Promoting Your Top Sales Person to Sales Manager it was stressed that KNOWING WHAT to do in a job is very different to actually DEMONSTRATING HOW to do the job, and yet far too often Managers and Leaders are taking past results and current office conversations on face value. Until you actually see your people demonstrating the skills and tasks they need to be successful, Managers must stop delegating and empowering, and start providing sales training and coaching to become better Managers as Coaches. So here are 3 questions to see how well your people are being coached: 1. How many days a month do your Managers spend with each of your sales people, actually on the road watching them in-front of customers, so they can see and hear them in action, to be able to provide Sales Training and Coaching. In a recent on-the-spot survey in a KONA Sales Management Training workshop, 12 managers, who were managing 60 sales people between them, had collectively only spent 8 days on the road coaching in the last 4 weeks – less than 1 day each a month. And they were blaming their sales people for being below target! NOTE: Coaching is not offering a better price that you haven’t allowed your people to have, or dropping into a Key Account for a Royal Visit, or spending a couple of hours with your sales person, before “having to get back to the office for an important meeting”. 2. Coaching Professional Sales Skills involves many stages to Sales Proficiency, in addition to the core skills of Cold Calling and Making appointments; Questioning and Listening; Presenting; Negotiating; Closing; and Account Management. So how clear are your Managers and People on the 4 specific and exact Key Skills and Capabilities they need to be proficient at to help them Hit KPIs? (Not to be busy and fill their diary, but to Hit Their KPIs.) 3. What are you going to do as their Manager, Trainer and Coach to improve the way each of your people demonstrate their 4 Key Skills?

Additional Question

Is the blunt, honest truth that the problem with your underperforming people is that their Manager is suffering from Imposter Syndrome – The fear of being exposed as not being up to the job because they actually might not have the Sales Skills or Sales Management Capability they need in the position they are now in?