In our last post, we established that coaches don’t play their coaches. As a consequence, any coach has a much better chance of successfully coaching a player if they can see firsthand how the player is performing and what can be improved upon.
From a Sales Management perspective, nothing is different. You still need to see and hear what the salesperson is doing and saying while you watch for the prospective customer’s response. Only then can you identify what Micro Selling Skills need to be focused on to achieve a better, more consistent result.
Establishing the planned objective/outcome before any sales call is the first step in riding a shotgun with any salesperson.
Use this information after the sales call to ask the salesperson if they could walk back into that call and do it all over, knowing what they know now; what would they do differently to secure a better outcome?
Given that no two sales will ever unfold in the same way, salespeople need to be able to adapt quickly if the process differs from what they were expecting. The salesperson can adapt to those changes that often make the difference between winning and losing business.
As a nonparticipating third person in any sales activity, you can see what will happen before it does. You don’t have to think about what answer you would give to any question or what you would do to get the sales call back on track; you observe the process unfolding before you and take mental notes about what could have been done differently.
Are you tempted to rescue one of your salespeople when something goes wrong? Do it once; the salesperson will let you do it for them every time. Your role is to coach and coaches don’t run onto the field and make tackles or score points, they coach!
The challenge when coaching salespeople is using your observations constructively. Lead the educational journey by encouraging the salesperson to tell you what they could have said rather than tell you what they should have done.
If you don’t get the answers you need, it just further highlights the selling skill development required for this individual. Lead with what if, and give them some part of the answer, but importantly, don’t overplay your hand because it can hurt the person’s confidence.
Coaches don’t play; they coach, and in the coming posts, I will share with you techniques that will help you not only make your salespeople more successful but also help them realise their true potential.
Next week, we will start building a Micro Skills Development Program
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