With effective coaching, self-diagnosis, and supportive systems, you can help your team thrive. Discover how to improve sales performance from your team to drive them find their own solutions.
How to Be a More Successful Sales Coach
Sales coaching can be challenging! When working with clients, we find managers regularly struggle with the coaching aspect of managing their sales team. In this video, we review three common steps managers can take to be more effective sales coaches.
1. See in People What They Do Not See In Themselves
Managers often make the mistake of coaching their salespeople by telling them what the problems are and what the fixes are. A manager’s real role in coaching is to see in their people what they do not see in themselves, and then foster the strengths that will help their salespeople become more successful. Rather than tell a salesperson what to do, awaken the strengths they already have.
2. Have an Infrastructure That Tells You What To Coach To
Having a well-established, functional sales process in place can help you greatly when it comes to sales coaching effectively. You'll be able to gauge progress and provide feedback without making your salespeople feel like they are being micromanaged.
3. Stop Telling Your Salespeople What To Do
Instead of providing sales coaching by telling your salespeople what you would do in a situation, ask them what they think they should do and why. This will help people to realize on their own what they could improve in their sales skills and methods.
Learn more about Lushin's leadership coaching services
Related Resources
Articles
- Why a Sales Process Can Be More Valuable than a Sales Rockstar
- Why Choosing a Leadership Mindset is Essential for Your Team, Clients and Sales Prospects
- What to Consider When Evaluating Your Sales Team
Video
Case Study
White Paper
Video Transcript
We find that many managers, people in sales management, or even people in a big-picture manager or leadership role, really struggle with the coaching aspect of their jobs.
Your real role in coaching is to see in people what they do not see in themselves. So if I'm looking at them doing their daily jobs and going about performing their work, I'm looking for what's right or what's wrong from the aspect of how I improve that in them. Because it's in there, I just need to awaken it versus I need to tell them what to do.
The second thing is you have to have an infrastructure that tells you what to coach too. If you're not working off of a sales process that they're supposed to follow, if you're not using a CRM, what you're going to have to do is, you're going to have to go to them and look for those things.
So you're going to have to ask them questions, like, "Hey, what happened with that meeting?" or " How is this deal coming?" You're kind of working on the wrong side of the curve if you're coaching that way because that feels to them like micromanagement.
So make sure that you've created an environment where the systems are telling you what's wrong and the people are coming to you with what's wrong. They're bringing the problems, or the problems are right there in front of you, so that you can say, "Hey, I've seen this. What do you think?"
The third aspect of coaching is to stop telling people. We have a rule that says if you can say it, you can ask it. So if you feel like telling somebody, "Here's what I think you should do ..." that's going to be your way of doing it, not their way. So our job as a coach is to make sure that we're asking them what they think they should do.
So instead of "Here's what I should do," it should be, "What do you think you should do?" or "Why do you think you ran into that problem?" or "What do you think you could have done better?" instead of pointing it out. If they realize it on their own, if they self-diagnose, they're more apt to apply the fix in doing that.
