Do You Have What It Takes To Be a Great Sales Coach?
Guru/Author Gives Sound Advice on Real-World Sales Management
Originally published in Issues & Answers in Sales Management:
A Leader's Guide To Growth And Profits
July 31, 2000
Mark David is many things - an author, a trainer and a "turnaround
expert" who has helped restructure companies and build
high-performance teams. Above all, though, he is a straight-talker.
Ask him to give his definition of a coach - a subject on which he
has over 25 years of experience - and you get a straight reply.
"A coach is someone who makes a commitment to another person to
grow and develop that person," he says. "I coach so many junior
managers, so many supervisors who aren't full-time managers yet -
people who want to be managers. They ask me 'What should I do?' "
He has answered these questions with Coaching Illustrated: a
proven approach to real-world management, a remarkably
effective volume that lays out 30 guiding principles for all
managers and coaches to follow when developing their employees.
The Power of Vision
According to David, who spends up to 70 percent of his professional
time coaching sales managers, the first thing a successful coach
must do is clarify his or her vision for the professional sales
force. There are, he notes, a number of practical considerations to
make when establishing one's vision.
"You, as sales manager, first must establish your immediate
objectives, as given to you by your coach or boss," David explains.
"For example, you have a quota - that quota represents keeping the
light going, fulfilling 401k obligations, vacation schedules, and
so forth. It's the glue that holds it together - you've got to make
quota."
Establishing A Focused Team
"Once you've established a quota," he continues, "you can take your
own personal view of what you want develop your team into. What is
that team going to look like or sound like? Are they a truly
world-class sales team? Are they all going to make President's
Club? What is that vision and how do, as the manager, see that
vision developing?"
From that vision comes a plan to make the sales manager's
objectives a reality. With that plan, however, comes a
responsibility of stewardship, to harness the energies of your reps
and focus them toward the common goal.
"With salespeople especially, the fuel that drives them is
emotion," David explains. "That can be a strength or a weakness.
When you look at salespeople as they climb up the ladder with a
great coach, what is that coach doing? He's increasing the ability
of that sales professional to stay focused. Take that energy, that
emotion, and turn it into passion. Passion is a much stronger, much
more consistent energy within the being of the sales rep than the
emotion of the elevator going up and down.
"The great sales managers," he concludes, "are the ones who
constantly focus their people on where they're going tomorrow, so
they can make the decisions today that are correct, in unison with
the organization, with management, and with themselves."
David notes that when sales managers, sales reps and the company
for whom they work all take a shared responsibility to push forward
with clear direction, the results can be truly spectacular. Such is
the power of teamwork.
"It's not the money that motivates," he says. "The money is a
by-product of the team working together as a team. When you get
salespeople working together as a team, you've got a unique
situation. Traditionally, they are forced to be independent numbers
on a chart. You can't lose that independence, but you need a great
coach to organize them."
Accountability Breeds Respect, Success
One of the more unsavory duties of the manager/coach is to hold
reps accountable for following the organization's plan and process
for success. This can make for some uncomfortable scenes for the
manager who does not approach accountability correctly, using what
David terms "proactive motivation" to spur reps toward the proper
approach and actions.
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