Mentoring in sales

During my own experience in sales, I have observed mainly two levers of professional development: Training and coaching. Both companies and employees put their focus on those two areas. Yet, there is another tool that, I believe, is underestimated by both companies and salespeople. It is mentoring.

Training programs help salespeople gain new skills and competencies while coaching helps them achieve the behavior change, which makes the new learning last. Mentoring, on the other hand, helps accelerate the whole process. In the short term, mentoring would help salespeople “learn from others’ mistakes” so that they will not have to spend time and effort on the same mistakes. In the long term, it helps salespeople to build their career trajectories.

And besides, the mentoring process teaches us the following competencies that are neither taught at school nor in training programs.

Humility:

Mark Twain says, “It ain’t what you don’t know gets you in trouble. It is what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” The mentoring process helps us discover new knowledge and questions, verifies, and adjust our current knowledge. Practicing that regularly helps us stay humble while talking to the customers.

Asking for help:

The cliché image of the salesperson is being competitive, strong, and ready to learn the hard way. And like many clichés, those are also taken very seriously in the corporate environment, particularly by those who are at the beginning of their sales career. Mentoring process would create a safe environment for the salespeople to talk about their difficulties, such as fearing making cold calls.  

Dealing with our vulnerabilities:

Talking about the difficulties and asking for help will undoubtedly reveal the vulnerabilities of a salesperson (of any person indeed). Thus, the mentoring process’s learning experience will help them deal with those vulnerabilities.

Clearly, there are many other benefits of mentoring in sales, which are for the use of both the mentor and the mentee.

Mentoring is regarded as a fundamental leadership development model, and I think as salespeople, we do not take enough benefits out of it. If you want to learn more about mentoring, you can check the website of European Mentoring and Coaching Council: https://www.emccglobal.org/leadership-development/leadership-development-mentoring/