Do You Have What It Takes To Be a Great Sales Coach?
Guru/Author Gives Sound Advice on Real-World Sales Management (page
2 of 2)
"Proactive motivation is just like tough love," he explains.
"Managers don't want to get into their reps' faces - they'd rather
talk about successes, about wonderful moments in their lives. In
the proactive mindset, the coach holds the rep accountable to be
proactive and to help the rep's career - that is the coach's
motivation. It's not because he's some tough autocrat; he does it
because it's what the employee needs, and he has to have the guts
to stand up to his commitment to his employees."
David gives an illustration of the wrong way to enforce
accountability.
"You hear sales professionals and others say things like 'I can't
believe they put me on corrective action. I'm pretty close to
quota, but I don't understand why I got CA.' Or they come out of a
meeting and they're blown away by the fact that their manager has a
six-month documentation of poor behavior, but no one told them
anything.
"That's totally reactive," David concludes. "Coaches have to find
the internal fortitude to meet their commitment to growing and
developing that person, and holding the person accountable is the
teeth in that agreement. The sales professional or employee needs
to know what the consequences are of not living up to their end of
the bargain."
Teach Reps To Solve Problems On Their Own
Even as they focus on holding reps accountable for their actions
and processes, sales managers must also be cognizant of the ability
of each sales professional to solve problems without having anyone
hold their hands.
"Unfortunately," David notes, "I think most organizations in the
virtual world hire reps, put them through some basic training, then
say 'Good luck.' The rep is then left to create winning and losing
situations on his own."
Learning Through Failing
What many sales managers fail to realize, David says, is the power
of learning through failing. "In my experience, the greatest
learning does not come from success," he explains. "It comes from
failure. In this situation, the sales manager/coach is there,
whether in a virtual or a face-to-face situation, deliberately
allowing the rep to fail so that they can teach them."
David realizes this may be a bit too much for some sales managers
to swallow. "I've worked with so many coaches who feel that if the
deal is too big, you can't let them fail," he concedes. "But you
really have to allow them to fail, even in big situations. Now, I'm
not going to walk away from the biggest deal in the company's
history and just let it burn, but I will go into a coaching
situation - a teaching situation - knowing that we'e going to lose
some sales in order to teach the lessons that need to be taught.
David recalls one such example from his own experience.
"I was teaching a rookie how to qualify," David remembers, "and he
didn't qualify who the competition was; he wasn't prepared when the
prospect asked him 'Why should I buy your product and not the
product from XYZ?' I was there with him, he knew that I knew the
answer, and he just looked at me expectantly."
It was a tense situation, made even more tense by the non-action
David took next. "What I did, and what I teach coaches to do," he
explains, "is to not look at the rep; look at the client. Be a
mirror of the client's reactions. So now the rep is sitting there,
going 'Mark?' And I wouldn't say a word.
"I've had some literally kick me," David recalls with a laugh. "But
the thing that teaches them is to not make the same mistake again.
If he makes the same mistake twice in a row, I know I have an
immature professional. What I expect him to do is to go into my
office and tear through my competitive books and get the right
answer, so that he never makes the same mistake again."
The Ultimate Qualifier
It comes down to the rep's alignment of word and deed, an alignment
guided by the coach, but one which ultimately is up to the rep to
pull off effectively.
"What I teach is that when people tell you who they are and what
they'll do," David explains, "don't pay as much attention to their
words as you do what their actions demonstrate. This is true of
reps and clients alike. Actions work as the true penetrator of
truth. They are the ultimate qualifiers." |
