The goal of coaching, mentoring, training and all other interventions is to improve the performance of your people, right? No matter which of these you choose, you have to start with an understanding of three things: 

• What should performance be? 
• What is performance right now? 
• What can I do to close performance gaps? 

You do this for each individual. This is your basic Performance Audit. The reason we do this is to decide which of the interventions listed above is the appropriate one.Think of this as consultative diagnosis. With the answers to the three questions, you can create a basic coaching plan. Without these answers, you cannot know what to coach, who to coach or why to coach.

How good are you at asking questions?

 

Do you find yourself leaning more towards asking or telling?

 

I’m guessing that you are naturally inclined to tell people when you have information, and you are naturally inclined to ask people when you don’t have information.

 

It’s true, right? I want you to flip this around!

 

To succeed as a coach, you need to ask questions a lot more often than you currently do. (A lot more).

 

You need to resist the temptation to give your people answers even when you know the answers.

 

You need to ask questions to help your people to find their own answers.

 

This is what makes coaching so powerful.

 

Today:

 

What Socratic Questioning is

What ICE questions are

Some Question Dos and Donts

How to go easy on yourself when coaching

 

Check the episode out now

Do you wonder if you can coach your sales people?

Right now, I am training 4 cohorts of new sales managers to coach.

It’s a program designed to give sales managers the skills, the framework and the tools to coach their sales team

I asked the VP of sales what she thought was preventing managers from coaching in the first place

She gave me some interesting questions that the team raised.

How do you know you can coach your sales people?

I am going to answer that and more in today’s episode

Check it out now!

One of the things that you can do as a manager is create conditions where people want to listen to their own calls so they can derive benefit from past performance.

 

It concerns me when people say I haven’t got the time to review my own calls. But that’s like saying I’m too busy driving to stop for gas.

 

In today’s episode we’re going to talk about how we can coach the planning stage or preview of upcoming calls.

 

We’re also going to look at how we can debrief or review past calls.

 

When your sales people are clear on the goals of a call and how they will add value on the call, they’re going to have much more productive calls.

It’s truly amazing how many sales people don’t qualify properly.

 

Even when they have been trained, they post opportunities in the CRM which have no chance of ever being closed. 

 

They hope that opportunities will turn out for the best.

 

And when your reps go to close unqualified deals, they collapse like a cheap deck chair.  

 

Your role is to coach your reps to uncover gaps and assumptions and ask the hard questions early in the sales process so they save themselves, you and the prospect later down the line.

 

Anything half-qualified is un-qualified. 

Do your team work on opportunities with Sales Engineers or Pre-Sales guys?

 

Not everyone on your sales team might know / understand or even appreciate the role that Sales Engineers play.  

 

Maybe your guys have been at odds with their SEs. Maybe there’s a skills gap.

 

How do you get that triad of BDRs / AEs and SEs to work together, give each other feedback, develop pipeline and close opportunities? 

 

My guest today is guest Giulio Magni, Director Sales Enablement over at Bringg in Boston.

 

Giulio was a Pre-Sales Engineer and before he moved into Sales Enablement. So we’re going to get a qualified perspective from both sides of the fence. 

 

I’ve asked Giulio to give us his take on what SEs do and how your guys can work with them and why to work with them.

 

Check it out now!

Today, we’re chatting with Bill Parry who runs Sales Enablement for Privitar in Texaas. 

 

I want to findout from Bill how he helps sales people to get up to speed quickly in a start-up environment. 

 

There are many sales qualification frameworks like MEDDIC, VIPP, SCOTSMAN and NUTCASE.

 

And there are many takes on sales processes: 5-steps, 6-steps, 7-steps and even 9 steps.

 

But do you need all that?

 

What do your startups sales people need to build credibility, and get wins under their belt quickly?

 

What is just enough to get started?

 

That’s what we’re addressing in the next 30 mins

 

Thanks for stopping by!

When you began your sales career

 

You didn’t know very much initially.

You had to fill in information gaps.

You had to talk to people to get a feel for things. 

 

You had to be authentically vulnerable. 

You had to be willing to say that you didn’t know something

You had to be willing to say you didn’t understand something or had forgotten something.

 

If you didn’t, you struggled unnecessarily.  

 

And that’s the point: unnecessarily.

 

Hopefully you didn’t think like a MacGyver or a Bear Grylls who acts like s/he needs to figure everything out on their own so they can single-handedly save the day.

 

You need people who work within your team, as part of your team and for your team. That means hiring people who want to help and are willing to ask for help.

 

In today’s episode:

 

Coaching questions to ask yourself

Coaching questions to get your sales people to ask for help

Ideas to get your team more open to being helped

 

Check it out now

 

Link in comments

Today, I’m talking with Ashton Williams, Revenue Enablement Manager at ADA Inc.

 

And it’s those two words in Ashton’s title that form the basis for today’s episode: Revenue Enablement.

 

You might know it as Sales Enablement but even then:

 

- You may not have access to Sales Enablement professionals

- You might know what Revenue Enablement or Sales Enablement is

- You may not know how to enlist their help

 

So in today’s episode:

 

Why do you need Revenue Enablement?

What does Revenue Enablement take care of?

How do you enage with them so they can help you as a Sales Leader

Today, we’re speaking with Kristen Twining, Vice President Of Business Development/Inside Sales at FireMon.

 

Kristen leads two teams and she’s actively recruiting.

 

So what is her role?

What role does BD and Inside sales play?

How is Kristin finding and nurturing sales talent 

What’s her take on the growth of Digital Sales?

What does it mean to her to be a coach to her team?

 

All this and more on today’s episode.

 

Check it out now!