Category Archives: Sales Coaching

Sales Coaching

Learning Styles and Call Centre Coaching

Executive summary

In this 900 word article, I explore the four different types of coaching interventions that Call Centre Sales Managers use to drive up their team’s performance but argues that each agent has their own preferred learning style and this should dictate the coaching mode used most often with that agent.

Plus some useful tips to perform coaching at your highest level.

Learning styles and coaching

We’re all very familiar with Honey and Mumford’s Learning Styles piece of work from the 1980’s which describes the four varying styles of learning that we all have. My preferred style is a reflector since I like to look back on my learning events, take my time when learning, think things through, listen to others and I hate being dropped in at the deep end.

Others might prefer an activist style where being dropped in from a thousand feet would suit them, happy to learn from mistakes, can easily see what their mistakes have been and can figure out an alternative way in mini seconds. They just seem to want workshops to soar at a hundred miles per hour.

You might prefer a theorist style with a desire to look at all the detail and background to the training topic and to see where theories and models can benefit your learnings.

Or finally the pragmatist who, by now, has got bored with this piece because they don’t see the benefits and how it can help them.

Have you ever used these learning styles to help you maximise your phone based sales coaching? You may not have thought about it but it makes perfect sense.

Most phone sales centres or call centres or Inside Sales Operations as our friends across the Pond call them, use a variety of coaching interventions. These are:

 

  1. Live side by side coaching in the call centre
  2. Recorded call coaching in privacy
  3. 1to1 coaching with metrics and KPIs
  4. Group listening sessions followed by facilitated group discussion on best practice

 

If you have a choice which one you use with your phone salespeople, then choose the one that fits their learning style.

Side by side coaching

For activists – definitely go for live side by side coaching. Here’s some tips to make this coaching better for them:

 

  • Decide on a theme to work on during the side by sides and listen out for this area during your observations.
  • Ask your agent for their preferred theme to focus on
  • Focus mostly on feedback and keep it snappy, then ask them what they can do differently.
  • Use GROW but start on reality by giving them feedback on the reality that you just observed, then launch straight into options, giving them a chance to comment.
  • Keep the feedback to around 2 minutes, then get on the next call.
  • The beauty of live side by side is that you get to see the actual challenges they’re facing which are non-skill based, normally system or process, so empathise with them and take some action to improve these.

 

Recorded feedback sessions

For reflectors – give them more private recorded call coaching sessions. Here’s some tips to help you here:

 

  • Give them slightly longer with the “how well did you do” question, look away a little more, give them space to think.
  • Let your agent choose the calls to listen to so long as you stipulate a good one and a not so good one.
  • Don’t choose calls randomly; use intelligent Speech Analytics Software to choose keywords, phrases used, attitudes, sentiments and acoustics.
  • Allow your agent to gauge themselves against your best practice checklist, and then comment afterwards.
  • Use silence, non verbal nods and lots of matching body language to encourage the reflector to talk… and we do.
  • Once some actions start appearing, GROW them naturally and then wrap up with the WHY – where do they need to be, how will I get there and how will you help me.

 

1to1 performance coaching

Theorists might prefer the 1to1 coaching with metrics and KPIs to ponder over. Some tips here:

    • Let them have the metrics in advance.
    • With the exception reports focus equal time on the above average performance as opposed to the below average performance, this is a balanced performance review after all.
    • Try and use a balanced scorecard approach to the metrics you measure. You could split these four ways:
      1. “How well is your agent serving the customer?” – Customer satisfaction
      2. “How well is your agent performing?” – Operational efficiency
      3. “How well is your agent supporting sales?” – Business value
      4. “How am I getting the best out of my agents?” – People management
  • Always have some coaching in the metrics meetings, these are not just assessment and feedback but a chance to spot trends and determine action plans.

Group call listening sessions

Pragmatists might prefer the group interaction commenting on played-back calls, especially if you have some top performers in the group and keep it punchy. Here’s some ideas:

 

  • Choose calls carefully, some exemplars and not such good calls. Maybe choose a theme upfront.
  • Sell the WIIFMs to the agents before you start. (What in it for me’s)
  • Keep the session to about 45 minutes.
  • Ask them to complete the best practice checklists.
  • Invite everyone for their opinions but keep this tight. Request one good point and one development area and ban repeating what previous agents have said.
  • You don’t need to chip in an opinion just for the sake of it; the art is to encourage the agents to comment on their own calls.
  • My final tip is to ask the agent as to the preferred coaching, what coaching would they want from you to support their growth and how should the coaching occur. They won’t give you pragmatist, theorist, reflector – that’s technical jargon for you and I – but they will give you an impression to work on.

 

Now haven’t we breathed a breath of fresh air into Peter and Alan’s learning styles?

Paul is an international speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. His expertise and experience is in selling and sales coaching, his books and articles focus on rapport selling which puts the customer at the heart of the sale. Visit his website http://www.archertraining.co.uk/Sales_tips.htm to sign up for his Weekly Sales and Coaching Tips or visit his blog at http://www.paularcher.com where you’ll find his unique style of weekly blog posts for you to enjoy. paul@paularcher.com

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Sales Coaching

High Performance Sales Organizations

For most B2B companies the largest promotional investment is the sales force, yet most companies fail to utilise this resource to its full potential. As corporations continue to struggle in these difficult economic times, sales executives will need to focus on reinforcing the foundation of their sales organizations in order to survive.

What do we know? We know that high performance sales organization have two common characteristics:

1. Great processes and
2. Top notch people.

Because sales executives are bombarded with suppliers promoting CRM, sales enablement and sales training solutions, we think all the elements are present to move forward successfully within these organizations. As each one of these solutions claims to have a positive impact on top and bottom line performance you must ask yourself what is the optimal impact? I don’t fundamentally disagree with any of these performance enhancement solutions, but I also don’t believe that they treat the true cause of poor sales performance.

What Should be the Foundation of a High Performance Organization?

I strongly believe that the key to success is having the right people in place to start building a high performance sales organization. With that being said smart sales executives might conclude that they need to focus on hiring and developing top sales reps.

But who hires and develops your top talent? The front line sales managers are the ones’ that are responsible for hiring, developing and retaining the top talent in your organization and strangely enough these are the people that get the least development and focus in terms of investment dollars.

Front Line Sales Managers

The Front Line Sales managers (FLSM) are the unsung heroes of the sales team and the foundation of any high performing sales organization. These people are the drivers of sales performance and the key to unlocking the potential of your sales organization.

What are you doing to develop your FLS management team? What do you have planned next year to help elevate their performance? Perhaps you have thought about it or maybe are planning something or think it is a great idea to do something, but are unsure how to move forward. The fact is you are likely doing very little to help these great drivers’ performances grow to the next level.

Why spend another penny on more sales training without great sales managers to reinforce the training? Are you wasting your precious budget dollars on new CRM or sales enablement solutions? Can your front line sales managers effectively implement the solutions?

Are You On Board Yet?

Assuming I got you thinking or maybe you are really excited about developing your front line sales management team, where do you start? The no. 1 sales management activity that drives sales performance is coaching. Most sales managers do not know how to effectively coach. They have not been trained or coached on how to coach. They tend to tell their sales reps what do as opposed to asking and facilitating reps to come up with their own solutions to challenges they face. Coaching is a difficult skill set to perfect. It takes practise and patience, but most of all it takes effort and training.

Coaching requires a shift into “Coaching Mindset”. The coaching mindset is different from a management mindset which tends to be more directive in orientation. In order to be a great coach the sales managers needs to be able to take off their management hat and don a Coaching Mindset.

The ability to shift into a coaching mindset allows sales managers to be more effective at a slew of other skills. Being better at asking questions allows managers to be better at interviewing and selecting top candidates. Effective questioning enables managers to conduct better business reviews with sales representatives. The same holds true when coaching reps on developing their own business plans.

What’s In It For You?

You have many different opportunities or challenges to address with your financial resources. Given the case I have laid out why wouldn’t you invest in developing your sales managers coaching skills? Outside all the wonderful benefits of having a team of front line sales managers who can coach sales reps to be better, you will have less turnover and better sales rep engagement. In addition, you will see a better return on sales training and leading change as well.

BIG DEAL!

What you really get by transforming your sales managers into great sales coaches is a 19% increase in sales. This is no joke or empty sales pitch. By developing great coaches you will have a dramatic impact. I can’t think of another initiative that will give you a bigger bang for your buck.

So if you want to thrive in difficult economic times, start by focusing your resources on building a strong foundation for your sales organization. The first step is developing your sales managers; they are the key to driving sales performance. Next, by transforming your sales managers into great sales coaches you will have the building blocks for developing a high performance sales organization.

Steven Rosen, MBA Author | Coach | Speaker helps companies transform sales managers into great sales leaders. Steven is the author of 52 Sales Management Tips – The Sales Manager’s Success Guide. Click on the link to get my FREE eBook with 6 of my favorite Tips! http://www.starresults.com/download-free-ebook/

Steven’s Focused Executive Coaching Program helps clients achieve greater personal and professional success. For more information email Steven at steven@starresults.com, call 905-737-4548 or visit http://www.starresults.com

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Sales Coaching

The Coach’s Role on Joint Sales Calls

Normally, when a manager attends a joint sales call, it is at the time of the capabilities presentation or closing presentation. Though attending these meetings can be helpful, they do little to help sales people close more business that late in the process. That is like coaching a baseball team by showing up in the final inning instead of watching the entire game. As sales manager, you may know the outcome based on the data, but you will not know how the game developed. Knowing how the sale develops is essential to effective coaching. This is why observing sales people in action is so important.

Here are 4 steps to help you and your sales people have more effective joint calls.

1. A Quality Phone Call- Remember, the quality of the phone call will determine the quality of the appointment. Your sales person must follow the 8-Step Phone Process to make sure that the joint call is taking place with a qualified prospect versus a practice call.

2. Conduct a Pre-Call Session. In pre call sessions:

– sales people make sure they are prepared to execute their sales approach effectively
– The sales manager and sales person role-play the appointment
– Everyone agrees to and identifies who will do what during the sales call

3. Identify the Reason for a Joint Call – If it is for learning purposes, then the sales manager has a very small part in the call. If it is for qualifying or closing a large account, then the role of the sales manager can be more prominent.

4. Do a Post Call Debrief – This is an opportunity to help sales people recognize opportunities that they missed, questions they could have asked better and commitments they failed to gain. First, ask the sales person how he/she thought the call went. Listen and take notes. Compare their comments with your own observations. From there, share your insights about the sales person’s performance. Then schedule a one-on-one meeting to outline specific next steps and to develop an action plan that will address the “choke points” that were demonstrated.

A few tips for the sales coach. First, schedule these calls with your sales people. Do not wait for them to schedule.

Be proactive and select the calls to join. Secondly, observe the sales person during the call. Be present during different stages of the process so you know how the sales person opens, nurtures and closes a sale. Always do a pre-call before the meeting so that the sales person is prepared and so that later you can listen and absorb what is happening on the call. Make sure that the sales person is prepared to conduct the perfect sales meeting because you are there to observe. During a joint call, the coach’s role is defined as supportive, not as main character. This means that when you are on a joint call, you must let the sales professional run the meeting and make mistakes so that he/she will learn. If you “rescue”, this will not happen.

That being said, you probably wouldn’t let a sales person blow the sale of a lifetime. However, you should not ask a critical question that the sales person has neglected to ask. If you think you must assist, address the sales person with a question. As an example, if the sales person has forgotten to get clarity on the decision-making process, you should ask him/her about it. This would sound something like – “Mary, I must have missed this in the conversation – what is the decision-making process?”

You can access Tony’s entire eBook, 9 Keys to Sales Coaching Success, on Tony’s Sales Brew Blog. Make 2013 your year to become an even more effective sales coach!

Tony Cole, CEO of Anthony Cole Training Group
http://www.anthonycoletraining.com

Download Tony Cole’s Free eBook – 9 Keys to Successful Sales Coaching at http://blog.anthonycoletraining.com/free-ebook-9-keys-to-successful-coaching/

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Sales Coaching

Examples of Good Coaching

By its definition, one can already figure out the value that coaching brings to an organization, to its executives, down to the ordinary people. Coaching is working one-to-one with a qualified, a one hundred percent dedicated mentor. The coach conveys updated information to his clients, focusing time and effort training on them. These are all for the advantage over the life and business of the customers. He focuses even more; far beyond the transfer of learning to a client. He aims to make a “change in attitude” on the client’s side. Difficult it may seem at first, because it involves a trial-and-error process. Nevertheless, when coaching is focused coincidentally on the right people or organization, attitude can change very rapidly. A good example of coaching that almost “says it all” is established in the definitions of coaching by Peterson & Hicks (1996) describing it as “the process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities, they need to develop themselves and become more effective.”

Merely focusing on transfer of information is a weak approach to coaching. Here are some good coaching examples:

• Sales Coaching- one that is active, enabling those receiving the coaching to have real opportunities to practice, integrating new behaviors and attitudes into their repertoire of skills and abilities.
• Business Coaching- members highly participating and geared solely to the client’s needs and there is an exchange of ideas and concepts through dialogue.
• Life Coaching- must lead to better retention or promote and stimulate much more interest in life, moving forward as a result of an immediate action.
• Mindset Coaching- addressing behavior and attitude change very quickly and helping others learn exceptional performance in difficult times.

Those are a few good examples of coaching, which gives everyone the opportunity to apply and show real learning. It is precisely tailored for the client and ‘where they are’ now, it enables the client the opportunity to find, apply and commit solutions to their issues. Today no training can compete with coaching in getting a higher level of learning and personal improvement. Training alone cannot guarantee any learning at all.

Recipients of coaching, particularly the leaders of organizations and business establishments have viewed it as a way of enhancing the success and reducing the risks of failure. It has also become a serious observation that there is a positive impact on sales representatives whose bosses became better coaches. Likewise, many of professionals finally seek coaching because they believe it works.

[http://www.lourdesburias.com/]

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Sales Coaching

8 Trends in Sales and Sales Coaching for 2013

The rise of the “expert” seller

It’s been coming for a few years and 2013 will see their recognition in the field of sales. The “expert” seller also known as the accidental salesperson.

Customers need expertise from salespeople; they need something of value compared to the old days. Adding value to the sales relationship has been sought otherwise the product or service that you’re selling will be commoditised and bought on the internet or via procurement software packages.

2013 will see the expert salesperson gaining in credibility and effectiveness as sales teams realise they need expertise as well as the ability to communicate, run a sales process and help the customer solve their problems, pains and challenges.

Salespeople will fuse into experts who sell.

Cloud based CRM

Cloud based CRM is not a new idea. CRM or Customer Relationship Management software has gradually migrated from desktops to the cloud. Once there, it changes everything.

Put simply, successful sales people and their managers run their business lives through their CRM software and they do it on the move. Using mobile devices – phones, tablets – salespeople can log their calls and visits, update the customer profiles, communicate, forecast their pipeline, chat to each other and keep focussed on their sales goals and activity. Meanwhile the sales managers and support teams can work alongside the salesperson to benefit the customer.

2013 will at last witness salespeople seeing the benefit. As a result, they’ll update the CRM more regularly than the past and reap the benefits.

Online video

The vast majority of websites are stationary, still, lifeless. Online video will see a considerable growth in 2013 in the field of sales and sales coaching. Online video is being increasingly consumed using mobile devices such as your phone or tablet, which makes it easier to view. Video can be put out on YouTube, websites, Facebook, Tweets and companies will want to seriously consider putting out more video in 2013. Not the stale corporate stuff but videos of the people, the humans behind the product and service.

More of us will be creating short snippets of video and letting their customer watch the video rather than read an email or written note. Proposals can be accompanied with a video of you talking through the key points or if a customer has asked for more information, send them a video showing how the product works or can help them. Not from the shelf but created fresh.

SoLoMo

A new buzz word for 2013. Social, Local, Mobile. It means that customers want to consume from you in a social manner, using social media, locally, so bespoked to their personal needs and mobile, so they can use their mobile device to communicate with you.

This is a seriously scary trend brought about by mobile device popularity and their ability to locate wherever you are to a metre. Consumers want advertising to be local to them, delivered via their phone and done socially. So a parking ticket bought by your phone, ensures a pizza special deal is made available to you and your tribe. Coffee at the building society branch is available to you and a chance to chat through your loans, but only if you want to pop in, after all you’re only 10 metres away as you pass.

Bulk advertising, expensive TV commercials, mass mailings, eShots… all maybe a thing of the past!

Google Live Hangouts

This is a serious game changer for salespeople and sales managers. 2013 will see the move towards proper video conferences where people can look each other in the eye as they talk to one another; watch some body language and plenty of facial language to help communicate with each other.

Google hangouts works with their social media site – Google Plus – not as popular as Facebook but the same concept. You can start a hangout with anyone in your circles, up to 10 people and have a meeting, a conversation, a hangout with each other on screen. The videos of each person will be shown to everyone on the hangout. Everyone can talk, listen and enjoy.

You can also opt to have the whole thing live screened to YouTube. Suddenly the game changes. You can have as many people as you want view the hangout on your YouTube Channel and once it’s over, a recording will be automatically posted to your channel.

For sales managers I can see this technology being used to run sales meetings, run client meetings just like Webex is being used today. The main difference is video and the use of mobile devices, after all, Google + and YouTube needs no additional software. As salespeople merge into experts who sell, the live video can be used to demonstrate expertise, teach, educate and promote on a local level.

Watch this one; it’ll impact you in 2013.

The decline of email

Email use is declining and 2013 will see this trend accelerating. Viruses, Spam deluged folders haven’t helped but the greatest impact is on the younger generation’s use of email. They just don’t dig email.

It’s not going to disappear overnight and will remain hugely important but the message for 2013 is… discover another way to communicate online with your customers. This may be via social media or Socmed as it’s known, texing ironically works well, Skype, YouTube, phone.

Total selling

I first heard the term in the 1970’s with the Dutch national soccer team. Total football it was known as, then total rugby came in the 1990’s. It means that everyone can play any position and helps the game to be quicker, more fluid and exciting to watch.

Total selling involves everyone in the organisation to be involved in the sales process and each person knowing what the other person is doing. The CRM helps here. More companies will train their staff in all aspects of the sales process and it’s they that will develop the competitive advantage.

Gamification

Another new buzz word for the 2013’s – Gamification – taken from the burgeoning gaming market.

I was reading the Economist this week – the gaming industry is now worth $67 billion rivalling the movie industry. Games offer excitement, entertainment, challenge and the ability to win and it’s this Gamification that will effect selling and sales management in 2013.

How will the trend evolve. Communication with customers, whatever the means, will become more gamified and consumers will want their messages delivered in this way.

How much entertainment, reward and stickiness does you current communication provide to customers and sales teams alike?

In sales teams, sales managers will be considering how to gamify sales meetings, sales trainings, the annual conference, web meetings. In their new book “For the Win”, Werbach and Hunter argued that future communications can be enhanced by gamifying. Games have distinct ingredients and so will our messages.

I talk about WIPEing the message.

 

  • W is for win, can the activity that you create to communicate allow them to win something?
  • I is for instant feedback, how can the group players get instant feedback?
  • P is for points or badges to signify progress and success and
  • E is for excitement, which tells it’s own story

 

Sales people might be considering their sales messages to customers and how sticky these are? Particularly their online messages and communications, can they add an element of WIPE to the way it’s delivered. If they don’t others will and gain a competitive advantage.

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