Coaching in sales management (Part 2)

In last week’s blog post, I mentioned the role of the sales manager, which comes in the form of coaching and not telling. It comes from empowering the team to figure things out rather than doing it for them. 

Although it is tempting to tell what to do, it is a trap. And once you get into the cycle of telling people what to do and delivering results, breaking the cycle and getting out is difficult. Today, we will talk about the sales manager as a coach. But before we start, let’s visit some hard facts:

1- You can’t tell your people what to do. Remember yourself as a salesperson. What was your reaction when your boss was telling you what to do?

2- You cannot sell for your people, particularly if you have a big sales force. You technically don’t have enough time.

3- Each team member will likely have a different style, none matching your style.

4- Sometimes, you feel squeezed between your management and your team, creating a sense of urgency that your team might not have.

5- There are no shortcuts. The sales manager role is a thinking person’s job. It would be best if you went through those hard facts. 

We can add many other points but let’s stop here for the moment and look for the answer to the following question:

How can you be a coach sales manager?

First, it is critical to understand your role, which is “maximizing the team’s ability to perform”.

Secondly, there are some prerequisites. You need to:

  • Believe in the potential of the person
  • Put your judgments and presumptions aside
  • Be curious
  • Care

Remember, your job is not to make them see the world through your glasses. It is to help them to find the best-fitting eyeglasses for themselves. 

Once you are ready, you can dive into performance indicators. Today’s CRMs can provide too many indicators and dashboards, making it very easy to get lost. That is why I suggest focusing on four indicators:

  • Number of opportunities
  • Average deal size
  • Win rate
  • Average sales cycle time

And pick only one as a critical performance indicator to improve. And work only on one thing at a time. That point will be the performance lever for the person on which you are going to coach him.

Now you are ready to coach that particular performance lever. We will go into coaching practice in the next week’s post in Part 3.

Stay tuned…