Sales Coach

What a year it’s been. 2021 is nearly over and it’s time to look back.

As a sales professional, it’s the right time of year to take stock of what you have achieved.

In today’s episode, we’re going to consider 10 qualities which make you a quality sales leader.

You’re then going to score them as A, B or C.

When you do this, you will begin to see opportunities to grow as a manager to your sales team.

You can then reflect on these and use them as a basis for creating a successful sales year in 2022.

Your one-to-one coaching conversations can be unstructured ’water-cooler ’moments, casual catchups,

They can also be structured check-ins to follow up on KPIs, meetings, prospecting etc.

The most important thing is to make sure they take place. Why?

They keep you in touch

They keep you informed

They keep your people on track

You can help your team to uncover, understand and unlock their own performance when you make time for regular 1:1 coaching conversation

Not everyone will need the same amount of 1:1 time with you.

New hires often need more than experienced salespeople. But it’s quite subjective.

When you coach your salespeople, you are helping then to think for themselves and to develop a degree of self-reliance and autonomy.

Listen now for more ideas.

Years ago, I worked with a Head of Sales called Rafi who always encouraged me to read each morning.

Business newspapers, blogs, in fact anything that would help me to be better informed.

Many sales people tell me that they have no time for researching because they’ve got calls to make.

But that’s like saying ‘I’m too busy driving to stop for gas’ OR ‘I’m to busy earning to make time for learning’.

How can you sell if you don’t know what you’re solving?

How can you solve if you don’t know what the problem is?

How can you understand the problem if you don’t know who has it and how it impacts them?

We sell to people so we need to:

Keep reading

Keep informed

Keep up to date

That means making time for research, and making sure that your people can leverage it in sales conversations.

Check out today’s episode now!

Kevin - a recently promoted Sales manager - told me: all I ever seem to do these days since I took on this leadership position is either preparing for meetings, attending meetings, or following up on meetings. This isn’t what I signed up for.

People like Kevin are frustrated by the burden of end-to-end meetings and meetings about meetings, and meetings that don’t contribute to results.

Most sales managers would rather do the kinds of things that identify, progress and close sales opportunities than clocking up meeting miles. True?

Let’s look at some ways to get more from your sales meetings through coaching.

To make the territory review / planning session a success, you need to get your reps to engage in strategic thinking (not just tactical thinking).

A coherent territory plan ensures your salespeople are focused on the opportunities that will maximise yield by allocating the appropriate territory, accounts etc. based on their skills and experience.

I like to think of salespeople as having a franchise. So, let’s imagine that you owned the Master Franchise for a region or national territory as part of a fast-food chain.

You would be expected to come up with a plan to generate as much business from that area as possible. You would need to find, onboard, and develop franchisees who could maximise revenue opportunities for you, right?

Think of your salespeople as franchisees.

True, your reps are salespeople, but they are also business owners.

That they ‘sit’ on a territory and are expected to come up with a business plan to maximise its yield.

Today, I’m going to give you some ideas and fresh thinking.

I had a conversation with Paul and Aisling, 2 SDR Managers recently

As we approach Q4, they expressed concern that some of their top performers are thinking of brushing off their CVs and crossing street to competition.

Sales people come and go but there are few challenges which cost you more than losing people you:

Don’t want to lose

Can’t afford to lose

Struggle to replace

And your top producers are hard to find and harder to replace than anyone else. Agreed?

In today’s episode:

Who is thinking of leaving your team?

Why might they leave?

What are you going to do about it?

The performance review is usually a formal, pre-scheduled one-to-one conversation that takes place at quarterly / half-yearly intervals.

The main purpose is to review your rep’s results. A secondary purpose is to provide some developmental coaching.

The key thing to keep in mind is that you are there to review the rep’s performance not the rep her/himself.

I have seen many times well-meaning managers appraise the results of someone on their team, but they do in such a way that the rep feels they are being reviewed rather than their work.

The consequence? Defensiveness, resistance and sometimes outright hostility.

The first problem is that the performance review is often perceived to be corrective by design. When that is the impression, your rep may clam up and what was meant to be a coaching dialogue becomes an appraisal monologue.

Let’s use today’s episode to look at how you can coach the performance review right!

Last week, I gave you some question sets to use when coaching someone on BANT.

This week, we’ll do the same for MEDDIC

There is any number of ways of asking these kinds of questions

What you will notice is that they are not designed to be easy-to answer and there is no ‘one-way’ to answer them. 

I want you to use the questions to help your rep to challenge their own assumptions, spot information gaps and then come up with a plan to close them.

This week, I’m giving you some question sets to use when you’re coaching BANT.

These are simply questions which you can take, tweak and try out. 

These are not for your reps to ask your prospects.

These are here to help you coach your rep. 

You need to ask these continuously in all kinds of conversations.

You want to see your rep think about how they are using BANT.

Not just gathering facts but using them to qualify in / qualify out quickly.

I ran a workshop recently for a bunch of newly promoted Sales Managers and detected a little bit of apprehension. No surprise.

Many sales professionals - even those in senior positions - baulk at the idea of forecasting. Why is this the case? 

Here are three myths that tend to surface:

Forecasting is shrouded in some mathematical mystique which make it difficult 

Forecasting is the language of senior managers or those who sit in board meetings

Forecasting has got nothing to do with me…I’m just a (blank)…

Sales forecasting means having confidence in your version of the future and being able to stand over it.

If you’re engaged in activities which have a direct effect on future revenue streams and you are accountable for delivering on those things as a sales person, then forecasting is in your remit one way or another.

Today: How do I coach my sales team to forecast?

Listen now!