Part 2: Common Language and Small Wins
Common Language
The greatest sports coaches, conductors, and teachers share a common thread; they all have a defined process that allows them to coach to repeatable behaviors built on fundamentals. This same process includes key phrases that become a common language among their team, orchestra, or classroom. As a manager, having a common language will assist in providing a consistent message that is easily understood by your entire team. And, much like a football coach running drills on the field, it will allow for timely repetition in practice scenarios giving your reps confidence in their ability to execute the process on a live call or face to face client meeting.
Small Wins
Success in sales is often measured by winning or losing a sale. With this as the only measure of success, it would be very easy for reps to get discouraged instead of motivated to consistently improve. When managers can coach to steps of a sales process, it gives them many more opportunities to catch reps doing more things right and celebrate small wins along the way. This breeds confidence and a desire for more coaching from the managers. Additionally, reducing the scope of coaching to one step at a time can minimize the risk of managers overwhelming reps with too many things to focus on or providing only negative feedback. Coaching to a sales process allows for praise on successfully accomplishing parts of the call, even if the overall call was not the result they were hoping for.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks to learn about the What, Why, and How in Coaching to a sales process.
You can reach Steve at [email protected]
