You may not feel that sales coaching merits the tense fist, grit and apocalyptic sky this picture shows…but sales coaching is a challenge and the stakes for you and your team and your organization are high.
Certainly you want to do the best you can to encourage your sales reps to win. No matter what marketplace you are in, there is fierce competition and you need to put all your experience and skills behind inspiring the best from your team. Here are four proven sales performance coaching tips:
1. Establish your own measure.Acknowledge that you can’t control everything. The market changes, new products are introduced, relationships ebb and flow, contacts rise and fall. But you can determine with your team what success looks like within your own performance environment. Establish a metric for success and failure that makes sense for you…one that takes into account but does not depend on what the competition is doing. Ideally it should measure leading and lagging indicators of success such as revenue, margin, win rate, deal size, portfolio mix, sales cycle, forecast accuracy, market growth rate, market share, brand equity, the breadth and depth of client relationships, the number of referrals, the frequency of meetings, the number of pilots or prototypes and the number of new clients per month.
2. Recognize that you lead a team of individuals.
What coaching style works for one will not necessarily work for another. Chris may need constant supervision and structure while Jody works better independently. One team member may respond to logic while another needs recognition and rewards. Match your coaching style and motivators to the individual and to the specific situation. The more you can flex to their style and the circumstances, the better they will respond and the more effectively they will work.
3. Set the example of continuous learning.
Just as you want your sales reps to get better and better at what they do, set the same expectation for yourself. Learning takes effort. Learning takes practice. Learning takes the willingness to stretch beyond your comfort zone and to make mistakes. This is just how it works. Simply keep improving day by day. Apply the lessons learned from your missteps. This is what you must ask of yourself and what you must ask of your team.
4. Keep on course.
Don’t lose sight of the goal…developing a high performing team that has the ability to win the race over the long haul. Accept that there will be challenges. If you lose a big deal, figure out what went wrong and how you can do better next time. Go after the long-term deals with real potential for growth rather than the short-term with their transitory revenue. As sales coach, plan for a healthy future rather and a performing present.
