#60: Listen as Chris O'Connor, Head of Sales Development at Ambition, discusses sales coaching and the balance between accountability and encouragement. He offers insight into coaching sales reps and raising the bar to help your reps get the most out of their careers.

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Show Notes:

Encouragement and Raising the Bar (0:42)

The perfect recipe is a balance between accountability and encouragement, and most sales leaders will fall closer to one of those two ends on the spectrum.

An important aspect is to know where your rep's ceiling is and raise it for them. For example, say, "I know you think that this is your bar, but I see more out of you, and I'm going to hold you to that until you get there."

We want to raise that ceiling for everyone because if we can do that across the board, we likely can hit our numbers more easily as a team.

Building Accountability (4:40)

It's important to be very open and transparent with your reps about expectations and where they fall. That makes accountability easy because the numbers do the talking. 

While a lot of reps are pitted against one another, it's really about competing with themselves at the end of the day.

Once you have the right visibility, it makes it a lot easier to hold them accountable and stay on the same page. Put the numbers in front of them and figure out together what's the right path to get there.

Look at those numbers consistently and set that standard from the beginning versus being a little more wishy-washy on what activities lead to the outcomes we're looking for.

Chris uses a productivity quadrant, and if you don't use Ambition you can easily create it. It's essentially a skill-versus-will chart.

Highlighting opportunities for the rep and showing them exact areas where they may have some weaknesses is important.

Coaching to Empower (12:21)

We want to build a muscle of self-awareness within our reps to begin self-diagnosing as they move on in their careers. It's important to empower them. 

That one-on-one interaction is the most important interaction you're going to have with your reps every week. So, you want your reps to look forward to that 30-minute slot.

When they lead that conversation, it tends to be more valuable for them, which is why Chris always suggests empowering them to lead that discussion.

It can be intimidating for them because they don't necessarily know what we should be talking about. So what Chris likes to do is give a really high-level agenda of what he'd like to talk about, but not set it in stone.

Setting The Agenda (16:23)

Working remotely poses other challenges since you're not face-to-face. 

A simple "how are you doing" is a great way to open up that discussion. Some reps will give a generic answer, but others will use it as an opportunity to let you know what they've been struggling with. 

The second thing Chris always covers in his one-on-ones is what goals the rep has for the week. Again, it's helpful to have the meeting early on in the week to set goals and make a plan.

The third is what the path to quota this month is. That's a really big area where you want the rep to take control of the conversation and make a plan for themselves. 

This leads to asking what the rep will need to win that week so you can help them get the tools they need to succeed.