Why is it that so many sales managers don’t coach their salespeople? Surprisingly, it has little to do with a lack of coaching and leadership skills. Below are three common reasons, and some ideas on how to change this problem. Reason One. Sales Managers are Focused on Selling, Not Coaching Many sales managers rose through … Read full article
With the 3rd quarter recently completed, the time to sit down with your team members and review their performance is likely at hand. Here are three questions you should ask each of your salespeople during your next one-on-one: 1) What are you getting from me that you like and find helpful? 2) What are you … Read full article
Our sales management training program is more comprehensive than other sales management training programs. Others place significant emphasis on a few aspects of the sales managers’ role, such as how to coach the sales process and how to hire salespeople. While our program also includes these necessary modules, we provide much more, simply because the … Read full article
A common mistake sales managers make when coaching salespeople is to give them a laundry list of things they need to improve upon. Most of us only have the capacity to improve one or two things at any given time. You don’t want to overwhelm your sales reps because you may damage their self-confidence. Give you … Read full article
In sales management, most sales managers focus on the “Close” part of the sales process because that is where problems/mistakes rear their ugly heads. A sure thing sale suddenly goes “silent.” The prospect decides to check out other vendors. Everybody panics… and that’s when the sale manager steps in to try to close the sale. … Read full article
I have reviewed many sales manager job descriptions over the years. Recently I was retained by a Fortune 500 company to examine their job description for the sales manager position. Fully 85 percent of the duties were directly linked to coaching salespeople. After this review, I conducted face-to-face interviews with a number of the sales … Read full article
In sales management, many managers face a lot of distractions. Often times, the first thing to go out the window is developmental coaching… time spent helping salespeople improve their skills (not just closing one sale). These sales managers haven’t observed their salespeople selling, or intervened at key points of the sales process, so when a … Read full article
To get better performance from your sales team, the solution is to steal a lesson from the medical profession and “triage” your sales team. Chances are, your peak performers and highly experienced/tenured people will survive regardless of how much time you spend with them. Praise and recognize them – continue to motivate them – but … Read full article
Based on my contact with thousands of sales managers over the past 30 years, one of the most common mistakes I see is sales managers who spend most of their time with either their poorest performers or their top producers. Focusing on the poorest performers is misguided. Suppose your coaching efforts result in a 10% … Read full article
There are many similarities between selling customers and coaching salespeople. Both require understanding another’s problems, diagnosing the cause of that problem and helping the other person to understand the complications/ripple effects if they don’t solve the problem. Sales managers already possess many of the abilities that they need to become a great sales coach—but habit … Read full article