Sales Coaching Tips: Questions Successful Managers Need to Ask
Know the Strengths and Skills of Your People
As a coach, what do you think is truly keeping your people from achieving great sales success?
As a manager, how do you know this for certain? If you know those hurdles, why aren’t you doing more to help?
Why are some people on your team already over-achieving seemingly on their own each month, some are ahead some months and behind other months, and some never seem to even hit the minimum requirements and goals you’ve set for them?
Behavior Challenge
They don’t know the roadmap for success in your company and don’t know what behaviors to execute on daily and track to for success. Do you know these? Are they being held accountable to these?
Technique Challenge
They don’t know or have the tools to execute the plan on a regular basis and what to do to get more effective in their conversations with prospects and clients.
Mindset or Attitude Challenge
They have mental and emotional roadblocks that no matter if you give them the plan and tools for success and hold them accountable to executing them, they’ll still find an excuse of why it didn’t happen or a way to screw it up.
Motivation Issue
Do you know who on your team is truly motivated to achieve sales success and committed to doing whatever it takes to get there? Do you really know what even motivates them? (Here's a hint – have you ever asked them what truly motivates them?)
Sales Management Issue
Maybe it’s the sales managers that you need to look at and not just your sales people. Is it that your managers don’t know how to truly coach, motivate, and hold your salespeople accountable for achieving the goals and strategies you’ve laid out for them? Are they retraining your people on the same things again and again instead of getting to the root of their team's problems and fixing them right the first time? Are they creating the trap of their team having their managers solve the same problems for them over and over again?
How do you know for sure?
As a manager, if you want to really help someone solve their sales challenges and be their best, you need to make sure that you slow down and diagnose the problem properly first so that you’re working on the right issue. Once that is completed, then it makes sense to prescribe the CORRECT solution, develop an action plan, and coach your salesperson on it with checkpoints for accountability and improvements.
Would you take advice from a doctor that didn’t diagnose properly first and didn’t have data and facts to make sure that their prescription would truly help you get better? If not, why are you doing this as a manager?
What You Can Do First
Do an inventory of your sales team's (including management's) skills and strengths to understand what’s already there that’s helping them and what’s missing so you can create a sales plan based on data and facts - not just your gut. Then get the plan in motion, commit yourself and your team to it, and hold yourself and them accountable to achieving it. They deserve it and so do you.
Let's do this Together
Need help figuring out the sales strengths and skills of your people to build a plan that will achieve their sales goals? Contact one of Lushin’s sales consultants and they’ll be happy to reach out to you to have a discussion on how we can help.