Unbound Growth Blog

There is a lot that goes into effective sales coaching, but the research and results are real and measurable. Yet, even though coaching is where half of a sales managers time should be spent, there is little to no formal training and coaching on how to coach in the sales context.

But even if it was an ideal world, and all sales managers were superhero sales coaches, it still wouldn't make the impact you want without the necessary motivation and accountability. Because without them, salespeople will say; “Yes, you are right! I will do that…” but then, they almost never will.

If there's no motivation, there is no change.

So what does the data and research tell us about how to motivate salespeople?

Last week I presented brand new data on sales managers and their impact on their salespeople. If you were one of the sales managers and executives with growing teams that were there- thank you for your questions, the conversations in the hallways after, and the multitude of messages saying it was one of the best sessions all week.

For those of you who missed out, this post is for you.

Last year a sales manager asked for sales coaching because he “...didn’t want his shortcomings to become the collateral damage to his team.” After going through a 3-6 month program to ‘coach the coach’ and the team at the same time, his SaaS sales team is now #1 in their company, with a 98% customer retention rate.

Many of us have heard the phrase, “As goes the leader, so goes the team,” and much has been written about empathy in leadership (put yourself in their shoes), servant leadership (put others first), and ethical leadership (do what is right). And there are studies that show that these things help team members be more creative and more efficient when doing their jobs.

Imagine if your teenager was taught to drive by spending only a week or two watching training videos and sitting in the passenger seat watching you and others drive. Would you want them driving you across the country? Or even just across town in a snow storm?

It is pretty normal at the beginning of the year for many companies to start hiring salespeople, or to at least start thinking about hiring. When I ask VP of Sales and CEOs what their ideal salesperson is like and what they will need to accomplish, I have gotten answers that included;

Lately several VPs of Sales have approached me or been referred to me. Some want help understanding what is happening with their sales force. Others are new to the role and “need to make sure this goes right” to prove they can do it. Others are concerned that they might “short change the team with gaps” in their skill set.

“Do I need to hire a coach, or a trainer?”

A little background: This question has come up several times over the past few weeks, but with different variables because everyone’s business and situation is different. When I start noticing patterns in conversations, it sparks my curiosity and I start to create my own hypothesis of those patterns based on 1-1 conversations and research.

For example, when this question first started coming up I read Mike Weinberg's “Sales Management Simplified” (highly recommended!). As the question continued to surface, I started (and am halfway through- so don’t give me any spoilers!) Keith Rosen “Coaching Salespeople into Champions.” After more than 3 of these requests came to us, I started to notice a pattern through all the differences. (You can read about two of them here, but for this post, the most recent happened again last week at the #bossales Enterprise Meetup.)

First thing on Monday morning one of our inside sales clients, let’s call him Scott, told us that their manager insisted that they send a proposal to all the opportunities in their pipeline that “might possibly close this month.” Didn’t matter what was happening or not happening in the conversation.

Yesterday was the beginning of 4Q16 (the beginning of the end), and I got up early to make sure I had time for plenty of coffee, yoga and reflection before I started the day with 90 minutes of back to back coaching calls at 8am. It`s not very often that every one of those calls are around the same issue, but yesterday and into today was one of those times.

One of the clients that we have been coaching recently changed jobs. They had taken the new role in the larger company initially because it was a challenge with room for them to grow. Ultimately though, even with our coaching, they became very frustrated. They didn’t have the opportunity to put into practice what they were learning.