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 A sales manager who coaches his people will reap a reward of improved salesmanship.
Sales managers have a tough job. They've got numbers to crunch and people to hire and paperwork to shuffle and meetings to attend with the marketing and manufacturing departments and they've got to sell their own major clients and they have to set next quarter's quotas.
Because of the extremely intense price pressures existent in nearly all industries, I have seen many sales managers reduced to the job of providing price reductions. These sales managers are frustrated because they spend huge amounts of their time just making sure the reductions off the book price are worth the effort. As a joke going around one office went: If you see your sales manager on the phone, he's probably giving a reduction.
In the midst of all this, sales managers have to help their sales team get better at selling. That's the tough part, when they've got all the other demands. The best sales managers I've seen, however, are the ones who take the time to coach their people.
Sales staffs can get better on their own, but like any other acquired skill, selling is learned by the process of feedback, which is what managers are there for. Yet, most sales people don't improve as quickly as they could or get to the level of skill they are capable of because of a lack of meaningful feedback.
Many years ago, when I was trying to learn how to play tennis, I had trouble with my backhand. I asked a lot of my buddies how to hit a better backhand and ended up getting too much verbal advice, none of which helped for very long. I finally wised up and went to a tennis coach. He put me on videotape - and as we all know, the tape does not lie.
Seeing myself hitting a backhand made all the difference in the world. When I finally saw my crummy stroke up there in living color on the video screen, right alongside a coach with the perfect stroke, I could figure it out.
Psycho-motor geniuses don't need this kind of visual feedback. John McEnroe was batting a tennis ball around at age 2, and he didn't need much video training. And we all know about Tiger Woods' phenomenal success with golf. But most mere mortals need feedback in a very vivid form, and that's the way we learn.
And so it is with sales people. They need vivid, timely feedback so they can improve on their sales calls.
There's a saying in the selling ranks that there are basically three types of sales presentations:
First, the one you were going to make;
Second, the one you made;
And third, the one you make in the car after the sales call, when you go over in your head how you could have done it better.
Good sales managers are there in the car every once in awhile to go over the process of the sales call in detail with their sales people. They become the equivalent of the videotape in tennis. That kind of immediate feedback, where the sales manager is an actual coach sitting through the sales call (when appropriate) with the sales person, is a tremendous means of providing good sales-call feedback - unless, of course, you want to ask the client to videotape your call.
So managers, get out there and observe your people selling! To be sure, it is delicate showing up on a call with your salesperson. You have to tell the client ahead of time what you're doing, but you'll be creating a positive framework of improved service to the client or prospect by training your staff. The salesperson might be intimidated as well, so you have to ensure that you are there to advise and counsel, not nit-pick and criticize. But the old saying that "feedback is the Breakfast of Champions" is still very much true. There is no substitute.
Let your people grow, and let them feed on generous amounts
of nutritious feedback. It's your most important job. Don't
be an office busybody, letting the work get in the way of
your job. When you take the time to leave a meeting, leave
paperwork behind, and work with your people, you become a
real coach. |
