The Coaching Mistakes You're Definitely Making

Believe it or not, the most intuitive coaching methods are usually the worst. Here are the top five mistakes managers make when coaching a sales rookie.

By Geoffrey James | Nov 3, 2011 Inc.com http://ow.ly/7o0qm

In business, a manager is expected to prepare employees to succeed by providing the resources, tools, and development they need to achieve their objectives.  Unfortunately, many managers have little or no idea how to coach effectively.

I will soon cover exactly how to coach salespeople (based on inputs from best-selling author and sales training firm founder Linda Richardson), but, first, check out the five most common coaching mistakes.

• Mistake #1: Confusing Coaching with Performance Evaluations. Some managers think that the best time to provide coaching is during the employee's yearly performance evaluation.  However, evaluation and coaching are dramatically different animals. Evaluations happen every year or every quarter, while coaching, to be effective, must be an ongoing daily or weekly process. Similarly, evaluations focus on what happened in the past, while coaching focuses on what could happen in the future. Finally, evaluations mean paperwork and bureaucracy, while coaching is, by its very nature, informal and personal.

• Mistake #2: Treating Coaching as Low Priority. Managers have many demands on their time, and they're often forced to focus on the numbers, or their own manager, simply to survive.  As a result, it's all too easy to treat coaching as something that can be postponed indefinitely. Unfortunately, without coaching, sales numbers are likely to suffer and, sooner or later, will gather negative attention from top management, investors, and (worst of all) the customers themselves.

• Mistake #3: Finding an Excuse Not to Coach. Managers who have sold, and were good at it, may realize that the skills to succeed in sales are not the same as those needed to succeed as a coach. Managers who haven't sold for a living may wrongly believe that they can't possibly coach somebody who already knows how to sell. (In fact, anyone who has been sold to can provide valuable sales coaching.)  Finally, some companies just don't have much of a "coaching culture", which means most managers don't get coached and are not rewarded for coaching.

• Mistake #4: Providing Feedback and Suggestions. Many managers coach by telling the person what he or she did wrong, and what to do to fix it.  While this process is time-efficient, most people respond to this kind of coaching by becoming passive-aggressive (quietly accepting but seething inside) or completely defensive (arguing the point). The manager typically fails to get buy-in from the employee and misses a chance to see where the employee is on the learning curve. Worst case, feedback/suggestion coaching damages the relationship.

• Mistake #5: Coaching By Example. This is the worst mistake of all. The manager and the rep go on a sales call together and, the moment it seems as if something is going awry or not according to the manager’s expectations, the manager jumps into the situation and "shows how it’s done."  This type of coaching destroys the sales person's credibility with the customer and, worse, can easily backfire, because the manager may not know the entire situation with that customer.

I hope that nobody recognizes themselves in the mistakes described above. If so, don’t take it to heart. Such mistakes are so common that most sales reps don’t expect anything better. Fortunately, coaching more effectively is easy to learn, as you’ll find out soon.

3 Ways Sales Management Can Make Their Quota

Posted by Dan Perry on Sun, Oct 30, 2011  http://ow.ly/7m66g
57% of all sales reps will make their quota this year.  Sales Management: This means almost HALF of your reps are missing their goal.  Unless you have some unbelievable ‘rainmakers’ on your team, you are probably missing your quota as well.  With the end of the year approaching, most CEOs and VP of Sales are thinking about INCREASING your Sales Management quota for next year.

What are you going to do?

Making your quota for 2012 requires changing things.  The status quo is no longer acceptable.  You have to increase your sales team’s quota attainment.  If your quota has been set properly, the sales reps on your team will need to hit at least 65% of their quota.  This means 6.5 out of 10 sales reps must be 100%+ to quota.

 Can you make this happen without LOWERING the quotas?

You make your number by coaching to your sales process. You make your number by coaching to success metrics (Close Rate increase, Sales Cycle Length decrease etc.)  You make your number by coaching to dealstrategy. 

3 Ways Sales Management can make quota (by coaching):

# 1 - Delivery of your message.  The way you DELIVER your message has a direct impact on the perceived CONTENT of the message.  The way you use effective words and pitch in the message is critical in your point to be taken. Most successful coaches talked at a faster rate than ‘normal’ and their emphasis was is consistent throughout their delivery.  They BELIEVED in their message and the ‘receiver’ thought the coach had their best interest at heart.

      Remember:  You can’t fake confidence.

MIT’s Sloan School of Management had 42 MBA students write and then present a business plan.  The students, all who had previous business experience, were ranked in three areas: persuasion, content and style.  Even though the three areas were ranked separately, if a student ranked HIGH in ONE area, they scored well in all areas.  When separate judges just READ the plans, they chose differently than the judges who witnessed the presentations.

#2 - Situational Coaching.  Don’t peanut butter spread the coaching.  One size does not fit all.  New hires need different coaching then tenured reps.  Average performers are coached differently than Top performers.  You must change your style to the sale rep you are developing.  Assess where they are and use the below chart as a rule of thumb:

#3 - Regular Cadence.  Establishing a fixed schedule that allows you the ability and opportunity to coach at all times is critical. You must be in the field with your sale reps.  This results in situations which you can observe their behavior and develop them.  Use the scenario, their exact words to help them improve on flawed behaviors.  Things like questioning skills, non-verbal communication, adherence to following the sale process etc.  These will improve their productivity. Use this table for guidance:

Sales Management Coaching Situations	Actions Required
Planned One On Ones (in the calendar)	Set an agenda with regular items formally reviewed each session. Sales Rep comes prepared with tools, responses and action items
In the Moment	Coach specifics that were just observed or discussed.  The most critical and impactful of all coaching, this needs to be done on a regular occurrence (Like Daily!)
Scheduled Semi Annual Reviews	Formal sessions discussing long range development usually tied to success metrics (quota attainment) and competencies. You must develop an Individual Development Profile and monitor the progress.

Making your quota is much more than simply filling the team’s pipelines and closing sales.  It is coaching your sales rep and developing them into ‘A’ players.  It is training to the sales process. We work with many sales managers who have ‘jumped off the Ferris wheel of doing deals’ to creating awesome sales reps. 

 One of the most significant sales management changes witnessed is by Brent Babbs. Brent took over a struggling sales team in Chicago moving from ‘A’+ sales rep to sales manager.  Brent carried the quota for the team for many years being recognized as a top sales rep in the company.  When he was promoted, the first year Brent was 99.9% of quota for his team.  Good enough to get his bonus but definitely not practicing the three steps outlined above.  His team made the quota because Brent sold all the deals.  His reps would get him into the prospects and (as one sale rep told me) Brent would take over and close the sales.  He had no turnover in sales reps that year (because they made all the commissions on the back of Brent).

The following year, Brent dedicated himself to coaching his people.  He devoted his time to the steps above and had awesome results (top SM in a company of 65 SMs).  He subsequently got promoted.  He made his sales team quota by not selling all the deals himself but coaching his sales people to sell while he coached them to improve.

Do you exhibit Brent’s early characteristics?  Can you change?  Devote your energy to the 3 ways to make your quota and you will do it!

3 Dumbest Sales Job Interview Questions... and What to Ask Instead

Need a stronger sales team? When you've got a potential hire in the hot seat, make sure you're asking the right questions.

By Geoffrey James |  @Sales_Source   | Nov 2, 2011

When it comes to generating revenue and profit, there is simply no task more important than hiring the right sales staff.  Unfortunately, most companies find this process extraordinarily challenging, as evidenced by high turnover rates.

According to CSO Insights, a company that surveys and studies sales teams worldwide, one out of three sales professionals on average leave the organization within a year.  Between ramp-up costs and lost opportunities, a bad sales hire can easily cost $150,000… or much more.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing plenty of "how to" information about building a top performing sales team.  For now, though, let's start with the basics. Here are three questions that often get asked during sales interviews, but which tend to lead to hiring the wrong sort of person.

Question #1: "What experience do you have selling this kind of product?"
Why It Gets Asked: You're assuming that years of experience automatically translate into real world sales ability.
Why It's Dumb: Three reasons.  First, it's perfectly possible to make the same mistakes repeatedly over multiple decades.  Second, the process of selling, especially B2B, has changed so radically over the past decade that past experience, even when it once generated big sales, may not be applicable any longer.  Finally, and most importantly, if the candidate has been selling for a competitor, the experience is likely to irrelevant, since your competitor probably plays a very different role in your market than your own company.
What to Ask Instead: "What experience do you have selling for companies of our size in a similar industry?"
Why This is Smarter:  Small and medium companies have to sell differently (i.e. better and faster) than their large competitors, otherwise they'll get forced out of business.  Even when smaller companies compete for the same business, there will usually be a price leader (where the main buying motivator is cost), a brand leader (where the main buying motivator is reputation) and a value leader (where the main buying motivator is the impact of a solution), according to Mary Delaney Mary Delaney, president of Personified, a subsidiary of CareerBuilder.  "Rather than hiring from your competitors, you want to find sales pros who have been successful selling for the same type of successful company as your own, but in another industry," she says.

Question #2: "Can I have some customer references?"
Why It Gets Asked: The logic is simple: if candidates know how to make former customers happy, they’ll know how to make your customers happy.
Why It's Dumb: As the saying goes, "a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while."  Even the worst sales pros are likely to have a couple of customers willing to sing their praises. Worst case, the "customer" may actually be a relative or friend queued up to say nice things, no matter what.
What to Ask Instead: "How can I contact the managers for whom you’ve worked in the past?"
Why This is Smarter: Poor sales performers leave a trail of dissatisfied managers in their wake. "Never hire a candidate unless you can talk to somebody who’s paid the candidate in the past and who says that you'd be crazy not to hire that candidate," says Jerry Acuff, author of the bestseller The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success. "Hiring problems occur when we hire people we like and, because we like them, we want to believe that they have talents that they don’t actually have."

Question #3: "How much money did you make at your last sales job?"
Why It's Asked: You want to ensure that you make a competitive offer.
Why It's Dumb: Sales compensation is always an "apples to oranges" comparison.  Unless your company has the identical commission and bonus structure, the actual compensation will be different, even if the candidate, after being hired, sells the same amount.  Furthermore, the candidate may exaggerate his or her past performance in the hope of getting a better deal.
What To Ask Instead: "What was your quota?  How often did you make it?  And what did you report on your W2?"
Why This is Smarter: These questions cut to the nub of the sales process, which is the ability to perform consistently and according to plan.  What’s more, they allow you to assess candidates for honesty and candor.  "Before you hire anybody, make certain that they’re trustworthy by asking the same question multiple ways," says Delaney.  "If there's any disconnect between the answers, then you know that the person you're interviewing might not be entirely honest."