Top Five Ways Of Becoming A Better Sales Coach

Sales Managers execute several roles and wear many hats: manager, trainer and coach. These multiple roles can create challenges for some sales managers. Where should they invest their time? Should it be in attending internal meetings? Analyzing reports? Training and coaching the sales team? If you are serious about hitting and exceeding your revenue goals for 2012, invest your time in training and coaching your sales team. (It makes analyzing reports a whole lot more fun when the numbers are in the black.)

Sales managers may have attended sales training courses on their journey to mastering the art and science of sales. How many sales managers have attended training and coaching courses to learn how to transfer the skills that made them a top producer? In the words of Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

We have found the best sales managers make the leap from producer to teacher. If you can't teach and grow others, you are doomed to be the major rainmaker versus a sales leader.

Here are five tips to help you grow your sales team.

#1: Know when to train and know when to coach. Training is telling and imparting knowledge. Coaching is asking questions to make sure that the knowledge landed in the salesperson's gray matter. When a sales manager identifies a performance issue, they usually go into training mode, telling and teaching the salesperson a sales technique or concept one more time. The problem may not be about selling skills. In working with sales teams for over a decade, we have found that salespeople know what to do, however, don't execute selling skills because they don't believe it works or it make them uncomfortable.

It's time to take off the training hat and put on the coaching hat. Ask questions that help change the salesperson's paradigms and beliefs. Presumptive questions are a great coaching tool for shifting perspective.

For example, "When you asked the prospect how much the problem was costing, what did she say? When you shared with the prospect that you couldn't put together a recommendation until you met with the CFO, what did he say?" The answers from the salesperson range from, "I can't ask that question" or "I forgot." A couple of good follow-up coaching questions are:

• What makes you believe that? Is that perception or real data?"
  
• What is the reason is that you keep forgetting? Is it knowledge or comfort zone?
  
• What will you do differently the next time?

• Unconscious incompetent (don't know what they don't know) to
  
• Conscious incompetent (they know they don't know) to
  
• Conscious competent (they know how) to
  
• Unconscious competent (the salesperson is masterful)

• Dealing with objections
  
• Developing and delivering customized value propositions for various buyers
  
• Quantifying the cost of the problem or opportunity
  
• Ask impact questions

Article Source: http://bizymoms.com/business

Colleen Stanley is president of SalesLeadership, Inc., a business development firm specializing in sales and sales management training. Colleen is the creator of Ei Selling", a unique and powerful sales program that integrates emotional intelligence skills with consultative sales skills. The result is consistent and predictable sales growth. Colleen is a monthly columnist for Business Journals across the country, author of 'Growing Great Sales Teams' and co-author of 'Motivational Selling.'

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