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Do You Really Need to Hire More Salespeople?

Do you believe that hiring more salespeople will fix the gaps you have in your sales organization? In this video, Mark Allen Roberts helps you consider if you need more salespeople or just the right people in the right roles.

The Art of Sales Coaching: Techniques for Sales Managers to Master

Sales coaching plays a pivotal role in driving the success of any sales team. It is one of the most scalable activities you can invest in. Effective coaching can significantly improve team performance, increase sales revenue, and foster a positive working environment. This article will explore various strategies and techniques that sales managers can master to elevate their sales coaching game.

Build Strong Relationships with Your Sales Team

Establishing strong relationships with your sales team is the foundation of effective sales coaching. A healthy relationship based on trust and open communication enables sales managers to understand their team’s strengths and weaknesses better and provide tailored coaching. Implement weekly one-on-one meetings with each team member to discuss their personal and professional goals. This will help the manager understand each team member’s needs and show them that their growth is a priority. This practice can significantly boost morale and motivate team members to perform better.

Strategies for Building Strong Relationships

  1. Be approachable and accessible: Ensure you’re available to your team and foster an open-door policy.
  2. Communicate openly and honestly: Encourage open dialogue and actively listen to your team’s concerns and ideas.
  3. Show genuine interest in their personal and professional growth: Learn about their career aspirations and support their development.
  4. Conduct a sales effectiveness and improvement analysis: here, we determine salespeople’s skills, motivations, and beliefs so sales managers can create individualized learning and coaching plans.

Set Clear Expectations and Goals

Setting clear expectations and goals is essential for your sales team to understand what is required of them and work towards achieving those targets. It also helps establish a sense of accountability, fosters a results-oriented culture, and ensures everyone is on the same page. Set quarterly sales targets for each sales rep and schedule monthly review meetings to discuss progress. This approach helps the team stay focused on their objectives and provides the opportunity for timely adjustments.

  1. Establish SMART goals: Set Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals for your sales team.
  2. Communicate expectations clearly: Ensure your team understands their responsibilities and the desired outcomes.
  3. Monitor progress regularly: Review your team’s progress and adjust goals as needed.
  4. Establish Leading and lagging indicators: Your KPIs should review past performance and track behaviors and sales motions that drive future revenue.
  5. Develop Trusted Advisors: customers have spoken and no longer want or need sales reps. They wish to be business consultants masquerading as salespeople. Your coaching must include helping salespeople evolve into trusted advisors.

Develop a Coaching Framework

A structured coaching framework is crucial for effective sales coaching. It helps to standardize the coaching process and ensures consistency in the quality of coaching provided to each team member. Create a comprehensive coaching framework with a detailed skill matrix, a step-by-step coaching process, and a repository of training materials. This framework enables sales managers to provide consistent, high-quality coaching to their teams.

Strategies for Developing a Coaching Framework

  1. Identify the key skills and competencies required for success: Determine the specific skills and knowledge needed for your sales team to excel.
  2. Develop a step-by-step coaching process: Outline the coaching process, including goal setting, skill development, and ongoing support.
  3. Create a coaching toolkit: Develop resources and materials to support your coaching efforts, such as training modules, checklists, and templates.
  4. Set clear expectations: what will you discuss in each coaching session, and what should your salesperson be prepared to discuss?

Provide Ongoing Feedback and Support

Continuous feedback and support are essential for sales reps to grow and improve their performance. It helps them identify improvement areas, encourages a growth mindset, and ensures they feel supported in their development journey. Implement bi-weekly coaching sessions that focus on discussing recent sales calls, celebrating wins, and identifying areas for improvement. This approach creates an open environment for learning and growth

Strategies for Providing Ongoing Feedback and Support

  1. Schedule regular check-ins: Set aside time for one-on-one meetings with your sales reps to discuss their performance and provide constructive feedback.
  2. Celebrate successes and learn from failures: Acknowledge your team’s achievements and use setbacks as learning opportunities.
  3. Provide actionable feedback: Offer suggestions for improvement and help your team develop a plan to address their weaknesses.

Foster Continuous Learning and Development

Encouraging continuous learning and development helps your sales team stay up-to-date with industry trends, sharpen their skills, and maintain a competitive edge. Consider creating a monthly “lunch and learn” program where team members present on various industry topics. This initiative fosters a learning culture and promotes teamwork and collaboration.

Strategies for Fostering Continuous Learning and Development

  1. Offer ongoing training opportunities: Provide access to workshops, seminars, and online courses to expand your team’s knowledge and skills.
  2. Encourage knowledge sharing: Promote exchanging ideas and experiences among your team members.
  3. Support professional development: Encourage your sales reps to pursue industry certifications and other professional growth opportunities.

Utilize Role-Playing and Simulation Exercises

Role-playing and simulation exercises help sales reps practice their skills, develop confidence, and receive immediate feedback in a safe environment. Develop a series of role-playing exercises that simulates various client interactions, such as product presentations and handling objections. These exercises help the sales team hone their skills and gain valuable insights from their peers.

Strategies for Implementing Role-Playing and Simulation Exercises

  1. Incorporate real-life scenarios: Use realistic sales situations to make the exercises more effective and engaging.
  2. Offer constructive feedback: Provide immediate feedback to help your sales reps learn and improve their performance.
  3. Encourage peer feedback: Allow team members to offer feedback to each other, fostering a supportive and collaborative atmosphere.

Incorporate Data and Analytics

Data and analytics can provide valuable insights into your team’s performance, helping you identify areas of improvement and tailor your coaching efforts. Implementing a data-driven coaching approach that involves monitoring key performance indicators and using the insights to guide coaching efforts can help address specific performance issues and drive improvement across the team.

Strategies for Incorporating Data and Analytics

  1. Track key performance metrics: Monitor sales metrics such as revenue, deal size, and sales cycle length to gauge your team’s performance.
  2. Identify patterns and trends: Analyze the data to uncover trends and pinpoint areas that require coaching attention.
  3. Leverage technology: Use sales performance management software and other tools to track and analyze data efficiently.

Encourage Collaboration and Teamwork

Promoting collaboration and teamwork encourages your sales team to learn from each other, fosters a positive working environment, and helps them achieve shared goals. Organize regular team huddles to discuss strategies, share experiences, and solve problems collaboratively. This helped create a supportive work environment and fostered a sense of camaraderie among the sales reps.

Strategies for Encouraging Collaboration and Teamwork

  1. Create a team-centric culture: Emphasize the importance of working together and supporting each other in achieving common objectives.
  2. Encourage knowledge sharing: Facilitate open discussions and sharing of best practices among team members.
  1. Organize team-building activities: Plan team events and exercises to strengthen bonds and promote collaboration.

Conclusion

Effective sales coaching is instrumental in driving team success. By implementing the strategies discussed in this article, sales managers can elevate their coaching game and empower their sales teams to reach their full potential.

Now is the time for sales managers to take action and apply these techniques to their coaching practices. By doing so, you can unlock the true potential of your sales team and drive meaningful results for your organization.

Remember that becoming an exceptional sales coach is an ongoing process. Continue to learn, adapt, and refine your coaching methods to stay ahead of the curve and support your team’s growth. Your commitment to your team’s success will improve their performance and impact your organization.

Do your sales managers coach?

Have they been trained to coach their salespeople?

What percentage of the time do they coach salespeople?

Let’s schedule a call if you want answers to these questions and more.

Increase Sales: Fix Broken Windows in How Your Team Sells

 

 

Is your sales team prepared to win and achieve their sales goals  today? Do your salespeople consistently exhibit the discipline to drive profitable sales growth? Do your salespeople clearly understand your expectations and they are accountable to them? One way to ensure your sales team breaks the growing global trend of sales teams not achieving sales growth goals is to fix broken windows in your sales organization. In this post we will discuss where to look for broken windows that are hurting your sales performance.

 

I am very thankful to a number of my mentors over the years. They taught me how to capture and leverage the voice of the customer and how to serve customers by providing industry insights and best practices to improve their bottom line. One mentor taught me how to listen, actively listen for unresolved problems. Mentors help salespeople understand the discipline required to drive profitable sales growth and to be accountable for key behaviors that if performed consistently will drive profitable sales growth. Having disciple and being accountable is not about doing 1,000’s of things perfectly. Being accountable and having discipline is about is having clear goals and expectations on how you will achieve those goals. As the sales leader it is about inspecting what you expect and understanding the behaviors and attitudes to support key goals.

 

I am very proud of my children. My dream for my children was I would grow a business and give it to them one day to run. In running the business they would learn the life lessons I experienced and have financial freedom. I discovered about 15 years ago this was only my dream. My children had much different plans. My daughter became an amazing artist and now is the social media marketing manager for a company driving 3-5 times the traffic to their trade events and website leveraging her artistic skills creating innovative content. My son has a burning desire to serve and protect others and a police officer.

 

Over the holidays my son and I were talking and he shared something called “Broken Window Theory” and I thought it was fascinating. Broken window theory suggests that visible signs of crime like cars stripped and up on blocks in the street, street signs missing, traffic lights not working, people consuming alcohol in public and other anti- social behaviors create an environment for more crime and more serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes such as vandalism, public drinking and others create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes.

 

In the 1969 a psychologist named Philip Zinbardo from Stanford ran an experiment. He parked a car with no license plates in two neighborhoods. One that was run down, broken windows and signs of crime and one in an affluent neighborhood in Palo Alto California. The car parked in the run down neighborhood was vandalized within 10 minutes. Next he smashed the front window and what he observed surprised him. Others in the neighborhood with vandalism and other crimes joined in and within 24 hours the entire car was stripped to the frame. Who did the vandalizing is what was disturbing: It was respectable adults in the community often with their children not …street gangs.

 

The car in Palo Alto remained untouched.

 

The findings from the study?

 

Unintended behavior leads to a breakdown of community controls

 

One broken window leads to many if left unaddressed

 

Disorders drives fear and withdraw from community laws and norms

 

Even the best citizens in a community can start bad behaviors if the behaviors are left unchecked

 

My son has been a police officer in a large city now for a number of years. He has personally experienced how policing and correcting what seems like minor misdemeanor crimes helps bring a neighborhood back to life. He has seen the impact having the discipline to enforce common community norms and expectations that support a safe and prosperous community and how this reduces crime significantly.

 

“Ok Mark, this is all interesting … but how does this apply to driving profitable sales increases year over year?”

 

I thought you would never ask!

 

How many broken windows exist in your company’s sales organization?

 

Do you know where to look?

 

The good news is you have a good smart team and there are many things about your company you and your team should be proud of. When I did business development consulting work I asked a lot of questions and looked for broken windows that are signs of much bigger sales problems to be solved. It is not unusual for my past clients to not even see the broken windows they walk by each day. Many broken windows have been broken for years and they became “ how we do things around here”. New team members will see them immediately but if they want to survive they learn to look the other way. Instead of repairing the broken windows teams try to just cover them up.

 

Let me help you see the broken windows that I have seen because you too may have grown accustomed to seeing them and may walk by them everyday and they are hurting your business development and sales growth efforts…

 

Majority of salesperson’s time spent in non-sales activities

 

“Hi how are you meetings” …Salespeople bringing donuts to their distributors with no other business reason for the visit, no one at the distributor even knew you were coming

 

Not being properly groomed

 

Company car dirty inside and out

 

Not making eye contact with customers in meetings

 

Sales people not taking notes in meetings

 

Salespeople not having a pen visiting a customer job site and having to “remember” the requirements

 

No pre-call plans 

 

No CRM entry for future meetings or past meeting notes

 

Outdated company brochures in sales associate’s vehicles

 

Damaged and stained brochures from not being properly stored used in customer presentations

 

Poor or no customer follow up

 

Not following up on leads provided, QDD disorder

 

Salespeople leaving sales training to make/ take phone calls

 

Customer email not responded to in 24 hours

 

Out-dated sales process

 

Salespeople working on laptops in meetings and not paying attention

 

Missing team weekly meetings

 

Salespeople openly criticizing others on sales team, others on other teams ( not constructive criticism ) 

 

Not responding top your email of voicemail in 48 hours if you asked them to

 

No plan to achieve their sales goals

 

Showing up late to weekly meetings

 

Salespeople playing feature and benefit bingo 

 

Not being prepared for weekly meetings

 

No cadence for how often they visit with each customer

 

Not completing expense reports timely

 

Poor interpersonal exchanges with team members from other business groups

 

Talking too much in meetings with customers

 

Salespeople who have never been trained in sales (product-yes, sales-no) 

 

Not understanding their customers’ businesses

 

Not understanding their market or market language

 

No dollar value in CRM for new opportunities identified

 

Not understanding how your product or service impacts your customers’ bottom line

 

Not qualifying potential customers

 

Salespeople seen as just another rep not a trusted advisor

 

Salespeople not spending the majority of their time in sales behaviors

 

Not updating sales stage in CRM

 

Asking poor questions in meetings

 

Poor listening, talking over customers 

 

Selling on price not value

 

No ideal customer profile so everyone could be a customer 

 

Company vehicle not maintained

 

Poor to no relationships at key customers

 

Key account budgets/goals… but no strategic growth plans on how to achieve them

 

Only knowing the buyers at key accounts no relationship with other influencers 

 

Sales pipeline bucket not a funnel 

 

Poor new product sales 

 

Poor sales customer visit trip planning (more time driving and flying than in front of customers)

 

No formal sales process

 

Salespeople staying at very expensive hotels

 

Salespeople submitting very expensive dinners without customers

 

If you see some of the above you have broken windows that need to be repaired before your team can experience explosive sales growth.

 

The above are some broken windows I have observed but there are plenty more I am sure.

 

How about you…

 

What broken windows have you observed in your sales teams that are negatively impacting your profitable growth plans?

 

Do you have associates in key sales leadership roles that have not been trained to lead salespeople?

 

Are their politically incorrect secrets that your salespeople know but are afraid to discuss?

 

If we allow broken windows in how we sell they hurt our ability to drive profitable sales growth and increase shareholder value. We are not saying everyone has to be perfect and 1,000’s of things. What we are saying is we need discipline and accountability in our sales teams. As the leader you need to set the expectation and insure compliance. If you observe a behavior that is not consistent with what your team has identified as your core values you must be safe to address it and correct it. If not the little broken windows become chaos and good team members in your sales community will start behaving in ways counter to driving profitable growth.

 

In our next post we will discuss common marketing broken windows to look for and repair.

Congratulations you are a Sales Manager…now what?

 

Only 40% of sales teams will achieve plan this year on average. Why will 60% of sales teams fail to hit plan this year? Have you recently been promoted to sales manager and you find yourself saying now what? Do you have sales managers reporting to you and you lack a sales background? Are you a sales manager looking for a road map on how to add the most value? If so this post is for you.

I just finished the book: The High Impact Sales Manager, a no-nonsense, practical guide to improve your team’s performance. The authors from the Sales Readiness Group defined the role of sales manager and built a strong foundation that defines the sales manager role and helps new sales managers have the greatest impact.

Where do most sales managers come from? Sales managers are often sales super stars who are promoted into management with little training and plan to achieve the sales goal. I have seen it repeated over and over again in the past 30 plus years…. A company has a sales super star that consistently hits or surpasses sales plan. They open more new business than their other team members, sell more new products at launch and their customers love them. The leaders of the company want every salesperson performing at their level so they promote the sales super star with the vision they will help the entire team operate as they have done.  However in the majority of these cases the new sales manager will fail. Why? This was your sales super star eight months ago…what changed? More important, what can we do to set new sales managers up to win in their role?

 

The authors describe the scenario of the top sales producer becoming the sales manager as the “Star Athlete Syndrome”. The sales star consistently produces to plan but grows tired of the daily grind of sales. They dream of moving up in the organization. After all how hard could sales management be? It sounds easy, almost intuitive…I know how to sell, I have demonstrated the ability to sell, …I can be a sales manager. If it is so easy why do so many sales super stars fail in the role of sales manager?

Answer: As a sales super star you drive results on your own. As a sales manager you must lead a team and drive results through (I prefer with) other people.

What is the definition of a sales manager?

sales manager, someone who directs an organization’s sales team, oversees its processes, and is typically in charge of talent development and leadership, benefits by having clarity into the company’s future. As a sales manager oversees a company’s operations, an effective sales management process will allow them to drive their company forward. They’ll have a clearer vision of where they stand amongst their competition and know how to stay above their competition.  

The key words in this definition include: process, oversees, talent development and vision.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the roles of salespeople and sales managers in hopes of determining why the star athlete syndrome occurs so often.

To be an effective salesperson you need the following skills:

What skills are required to be an effective sales manager?

Can you see how there is a skills disconnect between a star salesperson and a sales manager? Is it any wonder sales managers who are not trained fail to produce high impact results?

The Authors of The High Impact Sales Manager do a great job of discussing this skills gap and they present a roadmap to becoming a top producing sales manager. I highly recommend this short book.

How about your team…

Will your sales team achieve sales plan this year?

Has your sales manager received training?

What are the most important tasks of a high impact sales manager?

If you research the word “sales “you will find millions of articles and advice on selling. If you look for “sales management” there is much less content and the content that does exist applies more to “general management” and not specifically sales management. This book will establish a foundation your sales managers can build upon and help them focus on the right activities and not get sucked into the daily grind and firefighting.

Fix Sales problems: Are “Gaps” Holding Your Sales Team Back This Year?

 

Do you have Gaps that need closed to improve your sales team’s performance this year? Is your team hitting their sales plan or do you have a sales problem that needs fixed? (and fast!) In this post I will share how identifying and closing three key Gaps will improve your team’s performance,  sales effectiveness and sales engagement.

I recently enjoyed the book: The Three Gaps, Are you making a difference? by Hyrum W. Smith. If you read my posts you know I like to read…Ok, I read a lot! This book was recommended in one of my social feeds and what captured my attention was the question: “Are you making a difference?” Isn’t that what we all really want at the end of the day?…to make a difference in our families, our church, our social networks and our work? Are you making a difference? The author shared in a quote…

“Inner peace comes from having serenity, balance, and harmony in our lives through the disciplined closing of three gaps”

  • Hyrum Smith

So what are these three gaps and how can I help close them to better serve others?

Values Gap

Time Gap

Beliefs Gap

Let’s unpack each one but really spend some time on the beliefs gap.

Values Gap

The values gap is the gap between what you value most, and what you are actually doing. It asks the question: How are you spending your time, energy and resources compared to where and how you want to be spending them? When you read the book the author does a great job of explaining this with a story of a beam stretched over a deep canon. Of all the crazy things to be afraid of, I am afraid of heights so this story really resonated with me. Would I run across this beam for $1000? …Probably not.  $10,000? $100,000? Now let’s add some new information…its pouring rain and winds are blowing 35 -50 mph…would you run across the beam for $ 1 million? Unfortunately I think my answer would be no. Now let’s change the scenario… I look across this deep cannon and a rain soaked beam and winds howling and see someone about to drop one of my children over the side…I would run across the beam!

“When daily Activities are in concert with your highest priorities, you have a credible claim to inner peace”

  • Hyrum Smith

 

Time Gap

For as long as I have led  teams I have heard; “ I don’t have the time to do all the things you are asking of me and have a life outside of work too” The truth is we are in absolute control of your time. Every minute, every second you are making decisions on how to spend your time. Right now you are choosing to spend time reading this content ( thanks by the way) but you are also choosing not to make that call to the new sales target, have that meeting with your underperforming sales regional manager and so on. I am choosing to write instead of watching TV right now. So we all have “time” it’s how we choose to spend it is the real issue. The author does a great job in sharing three principles to help us better manage time.

 

Beliefs Gap

This is my favorite gap and the one that I believe if we spend some time on closing we can help heal our companies, ourselves and help our sales teams get back on track. The author shares how we all have a beliefs window through which we see the world and it is a function of our age, life experiences, training and so on. Now picture this window with little see through pictures on it. These are your beliefs. I was taught at a seminar long ago: a thought, true or false, repeated over and over again becomes a belief.  So my challenge to you is what if you have incorrect beliefs on your window clouding how you see your market, your companies’ value proposition today, and your salespeople and so on? The author shares a simple test. If you want to know someone’s beliefs, check their behaviors. For example, I believe the best thing I can do to serve my company is be in the market meeting with customers and prospects listening for unresolved problems. I listen and ask questions about those problems, and even note the words they use to describe them. My friends at Pragmatic Marketing would say I am practicing “NIHOTO”. So it should not shock anyone I am writing this post from a Holiday Inn in Indianapolis after attending an industry trade show for one of our markets. If you look at my behavior: travel 50-60% of the time it shows you what I believe. The author also shares how our beliefs drive future behavior.

“Any belief that drives behavior that does not meet your basic needs over time is an incorrect belief”

  • Hyrum Smith

So let me ask you the million dollar (goal achieving) questions…

What do you believe about your markets?

What do you believe about your current customers?

What do you believe about salespeople?

What do you believe about your salespeople?

What do you believe about marketing?

How do you believe your buyers shop today?

 

Now let me ask one more question so you can get back in control of your time and serve someone…

Are your beliefs true (today)? Or are they based on some past experience or how we always to do things around here? How you answer will have more impact on your sales and future sales than you can imagine. If there are disconnects between what you as a leader in your organization believe and what is actually true it is negatively impacting your team’s performance. Your beliefs shape how you interact with team members and even the strategies you ask them to implement.

Let’s assume you are not from a sales and marketing background. Let’s assume you grew up through the ranks of your organization in other areas like accounting and maybe operations like a number of company leaders. Twenty years ago when you were working hard to serve your company, salespeople used to drive you nuts. They seemed to ask for things we were always out of stock on. They complained that what we just shipped was late and when it arrived it was defective and now the customer is upset. They all drove fancy foreign cars and when you were in accounting you saw those expense reports at expensive restaurants, golf and hotels. Or let’s say you had a bad experience with a poor example of a sales manager who only cared about his personal income, a commission junkie as I call them in other posts. So as you look through your window from now the CEO’s seat and you look through little snap shots, thoughts that you have repeated over and over again for the last 30+ years and you believe all salespeople are:

  • A pain to deal with…they are just different than everyone else
  • Always complaining, never happy
  • Are on the customer’s side and not yours
  • Not accountable
  • Commission junkie’s who only car about themselves and not the long term health of the organization
  • They lie
  • They sell on price not value
  • Spend company money foolishly
  • Feel free to fill in your own….

Can you see how those thoughts are plastered over and over again on your window explain why you don’t trust salespeople? (and why they don’t trust you?)

Chances are you probably have met poor salespeople who had bad behaviors ( like I have)  but I can assure you not all of us like that. The role of Sales has also changed over the years. Just look at the statistics on “the internet of things” and its impact on how buyers buy. Salespeople today have more resources to sharpen their saw and get more effective at their craft than ever before.

If you study why sales super stars leave organizations just like yours it might surprise you to learn it is not one of your possible beliefs: more money. (you can learn what it really is here) If you do not feel like checking out the link…the number one reason why sales super stars leave is their belief if you value them. So do you?

If you want to get the most out of your sales team it’s time to come clean. Scrub all those past thoughts repeated over and over again off your window and take the time to understand what your salespeople  and buyers are really like today and what they are doing and why. You need to practice what I refer to as clean sales management. Once you have done this, I highly recommend you and a few of your senior executives spend time meeting with customers and prospects in your markets to determine if your organizations ‘beliefs match who they really are today. I recommend you conduct win loss interviews or hire someone to do it for you and understand your markets today. They will tell you the unfiltered truth, the truth not clouded by your past.

This a great book and I highly recommend it to leaders or those wanting to be leaders to help you close the three key gaps that stand in the way of your success. We have all read articles on the impact engaged employees can have on the bottom line. Closing the 3 Gaps will fix your sales problems and help your organization get back on track to a profitable sales year.

This book is written on a much broader context to help you close three common gaps to help us as individuals. The author shares that getting our own life together is the first step in having a positive impact on the world. In this post I shared how to apply his content specifically to helping to heal sales problems.

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