Sales Coaching for Accelerated Results

by Cindy Stradling CSP, CPC

Coaching is about change. Change comes from a dream of something better.  Coaching engages your imagination and at the same time is immensely practical in the real world.

When we dream we use our imagination, we soar beyond the confines of our lives into a wider world where many things are possible and we are not restricted to the cards we have been dealt.  We are free to take any wild card and transform our hand.  Dreams take us beyond ourselves.  Every change in our life starts as a dream, We use our imagination to project ourselves into the best of all futures.

What is Sales Coaching?

Coaching is about giving salespeople the opportunity to generate their own insights, solutions and possibilities that will have them drive their results.  It is an advise free conversation and process of discovery.  Coaching is based on the belief that the question is the answer. Coaching is a process of inquiry that is interactive and collaborative.  Coaching builds accountability when it is performed in a safe environment for people to honour their commitments.

Coaching helps tap into a person’s unused strengths and talents that advances their personal growth and learning.  Coaching helps people discover their personal best.

Effective sales coaching is a co-creation without attachment and wanting more for your sales people than they want for themselves.  Coaching is about the sales person not the coach. If you find yourself thinking about or using the word “I” a lot while you are coaching – it has become about you.  Sometimes new coaches make it about themselves and wanting to “do it right.”

Often new coaches are so committed to providing results they give the person the answers prematurely.  Give the sales person the space they need to arrive at their own conclusion.  Sometimes just listening is a powerful coaching process and may be all that is needed. Providing a safe place during a coaching session where the sales person can talk freely and openly without feeling vulnerable is one of the most powerful coaching strategies.

Coaching salespeople is about what they want for themselves more that what you want for them.  People unintentionally lie to themselves and believe the lies to be true. 

Sometimes people are afraid to admit they don’t have the skills. Good coaches need to constantly gauge the resistance level, if pushed too hard salespeople will either shutdown or push back.

Finding out what the salesperson’s expectations are from the coaching, the value they expect and how they would like to be coached will greatly impact the results.

Once the sales manager takes full accountability for themselves as well as their team members, they will then be able to empower others to be fully accountable for themselves.

Making your people right, even when they are wrong makes a huge impact on their productivity and attitudes.  To see the rightness in salespeople, you must believe that people are doing the best they can at any given moment.  If their best doesn’t meet your standards, you always have the choice to make changes.

Managers may think they don’t always have time to coach their salespeople, but think about the things that are taking you away from coaching and meeting with your salespeople in the first place.  Many of the issues and problems that need to be dealt with are often actually a result of not coaching and connecting with our salespeople.

Coaching is about having the salespeople grow on their own.  Questions broaden their peripheral vision so they can best respond to the events or things that are coming at the.  Ask your salespeople how they want to be coached. Three fundamental rules of sales coaching:

1. Let your salespeople do all the work.
2. Let your salespeople do all the work.
3. See rules one and two and let your salespeople do all the work.