The Key to Unlocking Performance
Even if you have exceeded your sales numbers this year, chances are your sales team is still not performing at peak levels.
Coaching is the number one sales management activity that drives sales performance. However, most sales managers struggle to become highly effective coaches and fail to spend enough time coaching their salespeople.
Take the Q9 Sales Leadership Assessment and see how your leadership stacks up.
Imagine if you were a master sales coach and all the sales managers in your company were master sales coaches. Just think of what you could all achieve!
Great coaching is the key to unlocking the performance of your sales team. Great coaching is a factor of the quantity of time coaching and the quality of your coaching.
6 Tips To Unlocking Performance by Taking Your Coaching From Good To Great
1. Set Coaching Targets:
The key to improving coaching starts with setting a goal for the number of days you want to be in the field coaching your salespeople and a plan on how to get you there. To ensure you achieve your target number of days you spend in the field, you must block time in your calendar. The best approach is scheduling field visits with each of your reps three months in advance.
If your target is to be coaching 100 days a year, you need to schedule 25 field visits every quarter and stay disciplined to meet your target.
2. Ask Effective Questions:
Coaching requires a different mindset. The coaching mindset shifts the conversation from telling your people what to do to asking effective questions.
3. Self–Evaluation:
When doing a post-call debrief, the key is to ask questions to help your sales reps self-evaluate before providing any feedback. Having the rep self-assess promotes the habit of self-evaluation, with the goal being the rep can now self-coach.
4. Coaching Starts with a Plan:
If you don’t have a coaching plan, then your coaching becomes flavour of the day coaching. On one field visit, you focus on discovery; on the next, you focus on closing. There is no plan and no consistency.
A coaching plan should cover 1-2 skills your sales reps are committed to working on that will positively impact their performance.
A coaching plan allows the rep to develop an action plan on how they will master the skill and by when. This can be a one-page Individual Coaching Plan (ICP).
5. Focus on Development:
Great coaches reference the ICP on every field visit to hold the sales rep accountable for working on their action steps.
Great coaches will spend 5-10 minutes asking the rep how their coaching plan is coming along every time they speak or meet with them. When in the field, most of the day should be focused on the 1-2 skills the rep is working on.
The mastery of any skill can take six months of ongoing development.
6. Accountability:
Great sales coaches keep their salespeople accountable for their development and success.
The Key to Unlocking Performance:
Sales leaders who want to unlock their sales team’s true potential need to develop their coaching expertise. That means increasing the time they spend on coaching and improving the quality and effectiveness of their coaching.
Do you want to crush your sales?
- DM me and I will send you a copy of my eBook “Developing Master Sales Coaches”
- Or schedule a meeting to see how I can help you make coaching gain traction in your organization.
