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The Dynamic Duo Sales Coaching Strategy

JOE AMES WAS AN experienced sales rep, a star hire, and his potential was recognized during onboarding and training. His sales manager was also impressed with his basic sales skills during her early field coaching sessions. Joe was fearless, great at prospecting, and a strong presenter. However, he needed work on his probing skills to identify applications, surface detailed needs, and overcome objections to the high cost of their system. The sales manager planned to visit Joe one or two times a month to coach and reinforce skills, but other job demands limited her to three coaching visits in the first nine months. Joe left at the end of his first year, frustrated, demotivated, at 55% of annual first-year quota.

This sales manager's main problem was coaching frequency, a global shortcoming underlined by studies pinpointing coaching time at less than 10%! Overloaded with tasks and demands created by nine salespeople, she hoped Joe's potential would help him develop. Frequency is the #1 coaching challenge for today's sales managers.

Every smart sales manager knows field coaching is a priority. Unfortunately, the time available is literally locked at less than 10%, and there has been no remedy in sight for most sales managers…until now. The dynamic duo strategy, field + virtual sales coaching, provides a proven coaching process and skills, and the bottom-line value is quadrupling coaching frequency to adequately reinforce/correct individual skill performance.

COACHING FREQUENCY IS THE #1 CHALLENGE

Many sales managers currently coach in either a “routing” method, visiting each person with same frequency, or a “crisis” mode, on-demand to rescue a failing rep, or to close a big deal. Both methods limit and contradict the coaching objective, since they focus on the wrong people, a rep who is destined to fail, or one who really doesn't need help.

The field coaching part of the strategy provides a proven, unique process for allocating coaching time for the best ROI; it uses tools to measure both “need for coaching” and “coachability.” (Why waste time on a rigid person who resists change?) Virtual sales coaching, which enables the sales manager to coach from anywhere, anytime, dramatically increases coaching frequency while supporting field coaching efforts. Both must work together as part of the strategy in order to complement each other and optimize performance improvement.

If you're like most sales managers, you recognize the importance of sales coaching, and enjoy it, yet are frustrated with how little time is available for coaching your sales team in the field. Traditional field coaching, done on a one-to-one basis periodically with salespeople, is the ideal way to coach; it enables the manager to observe what is being done effectively and helps the sales manager improve skill/knowledge gaps and reinforce what each sales rep is doing well. While some companies, and some industries, allow (or insist!) the sales manager to work frequently in the field, the majority have overloaded today's sales manager with many tasks and expanded sales teams, thus limiting vital field coaching time (and results!).

The good news is, according to a study by TrainingIndustry.com, retention is 65% higher with coaching than with just training. In addition, Google's Project Oxygen Study has shown that coaching is the number one key behavior for good managers. Improving the frequency of coaching is a huge challenge along with how to determine your allocation of coaching among your sales team members. And of course, providing top-quality, effective coaching is essential. Assuming you get the message about the importance of sales coaching and an optimized frequency for visits, here's how to accomplish coaching objectives that contribute greatly to your sales team's success.

THE SALES COACHING DYNAMIC DUO

Recognizing the frequency shortfall in traditional field coaching, virtual sales coaching was created to eliminate the huge gap. Porter Henry Co. can take credit for its development and as far as I can see, we offer the only comprehensive virtual sales coaching experience globally. While coaching skills are important, the bottom-line coaching challenge, in simple terms, is coaching frequency. At 10% time allocation for coaching, you probably visit each team member once or twice a year—bad news for new or struggling reps, missing motivation and ideas for the experienced team members.

As a former sales rep, or sales manager now, do you think coaching twice a year is really helpful? Not so much. Coaching, to be effective, not only needs to be fairly frequent with little time between visits, but it must be focused on one or two skills or behaviors so you don't give the salesperson indigestion from too much learning at one time. In my early days as a branch manager, I was so eager to succeed that I took copious notes on every coaching call, covering multiple skills or tactics that could be improved. This technique ended for me very suddenly, when one bright sales rep responded to my coaching critique by saying: “Whoa! I can't swallow all of this stuff at one time. What was the main thing I failed to do, or did poorly, that would have made this sale?” Amen.

While field sales coaching per se may be limited these days, it still provides huge value. The sales manager can view the salesperson firsthand, to see him perform, and then coach immediately after each call to both reinforce or upgrade performance while details are fresh in both minds. Field sales coaching is also vital for the manager's credibility and sales rep's motivation (attention and support) and ideally sets the stage for identifying realistic development objectives for each salesperson. As indicated, its main shortcoming is lack of frequency, since coaching trips usually involve one or two days, require travel time and costs, and are limited to visiting accounts in reasonable driving proximity to each other. Bottom-line: field sales coaching is a “must” as a foundation for virtual sales coaching, and as a periodic checkup on “real-world” individual progress.

Virtual sales coaching, the new partner in the dynamic duo coaching strategy, not only fills the field coaching frequency gap but adds benefits of its own. By definition, it means the sales manager can coach the sales team members at any time or from anywhere, since most of it is done by phone with email support. Above all, its frequency is unlimited, so coaching can be handled with each individual as often as needed. It takes less time, since the manager won't be traveling or joining the salesperson on the call, and enables holding the coaching session at a convenient time for both parties. The main benefit, as indicated, is frequency, but another significant plus is that it allows the sales manager and salesperson to target specific accounts (anywhere) since the sales manager's travel and timeline, to accompany the salesperson, are not issues.

Virtual sales coaching has limitations, primarily gaining in-depth, objective feedback from the sales rep in a timely fashion for coaching. Your virtual challenge is learning to coach a presentation that you did not witness firsthand. Later you will learn how benefits and challenges are accomplished to make virtual sales coaching and field coaching the ideal duo for sales performance improvement.

Finally, this strategy will focus on a third skill, allocating coaching among members of the sales team. It's important to determine who gets coached most frequently, and which team members deserve less coaching. Allocating coaching time and “visits” helps you optimize the coaching activity for your team and provide the best payback in terms of results and use of your time. Here's a more in-depth look at the dynamic sales coaching duo, starting with the field coaching strategy segment.

FIELD COACHING

Sales managers love to coach because, for many of them, it's a return to selling, what they do best. Some are so enthused that they often take over the presentation or get involved, rather than observing. Not a good habit. Field coaching is a process with a number of critical steps and guidelines to make it work effectively. In simple terms, it requires observing a sales call, and coaching afterward based on what you have seen and heard. Obviously there are many steps and pitfalls that will be covered in this chapter. Let's start with the first step, the pre-call briefing.

The Pre-call Briefing

To ensure that your post-call coaching will work, it is imperative that you spend a few minutes with the salesperson immediately prior to the sales call, developing both a tactical plan and a coaching regimen. Five minutes invested in a briefing will bring you up to date on the account, enable you to check the salesperson's game plan or strategy, and determine your role during the presentation. It sets the stage for your observation and will improve the quality of the sales call and enhance the coaching afterward. It will also help you determine how much preplanning the sales rep has done, and even enable you to do some pre–sales call coaching based on the feedback. If working on a specific development plan for the rep, you can reinforce the skill you want to focus on and prepare her for the coaching afterward.

Make sure your pre-call briefing includes the following:

• Have salesperson describe the account's history...