Sales Performance Coaching

Introducing salestutor from Ian Segail on Vimeo.

Sales Performance Coaching is defined as the ongoing practice and process by which Sales Leaders empower and support the learning, growth and sales performance improvement of an individual Sales Person, by clearly defining their goals, mapping out a strategy for their accomplishment and then providing regular guidance, feedback, insight and direction to ensure successful execution.

Sales Performance Coaching Is More Than Simply Training!
To achieve sustainable and real behavioral change will requires much more than simply sending your people off to another sales training seminar or workshop program to be “trained.” Download Ian's whitepaper: Why Sales Training Doesn't Work
To get a measurable improvement and have your Sales People begin to do things differently will require a different approach. As the saying goes, “if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve got!”
If we want to see “real” behavioral change we need to use proven adult learning strategies and behavioral change tactics to boost and enhance Sales People’s capabilities.It is no secret that we learn best by doing. There is no question that we learn best when we are actively involved in what we are learning. However it’s not just enough simply to “just do!”

To summarize the research of David Kolb, a world authority on experiential learning, people learn best by having actual experience and experimentation, as well as by observation and reflection. In Sales Performance Coaching we call this, “learning in the real world as and when we have to deal with real world issues” Sales Performance Coaching happens on the job not in the classroom!

Sales Performance Coaching is very much an experiential “learning on the job” experience. As Sales Performance Coaches we coach in the field and in the meeting room. A Sales Performance Coach meets regularly with their Sales People in their working environment and focuses on the critical issues the Sales person is currently facing and the actions required to improve that specific area of sales performance.

As a Sales Performance Coach you will support your Sales People to cut through all the “stuff” that comes at them on a daily basis. You will empower them with clarity and focus and where needed equip them by instruction and the tools required to execute their specific action plans.

Sales Performance Coaching is a function of 4 core practices of development:
1. Tuition. This involves providing the Sales Person with the direction, instruction and the knowledge they require in an effort to help them understand what they need to know in order to change their current approach.

2. Consultation involves identifying and analyzing the specific issue or situation at hand and assist the sales person to clearly define the goal and map out a plan for their accomplishment

3. Coaching involves helping the Sales Person to effect a change by self discovering the answers and thereby make adjustments to their current behavior or approach. The Sales Performance Coach does this by providing them with regular guidance, feedback, insight and direction to ensure successful execution

4. Performance Management. This involves ensuring the Sales Person stays on track and accountable to the measurable performance activities required to achieve the goal.

Sales Performance Coaching helps Sales Leaders solve the following sales problems
When Sales Leaders drive their Sales Team using Sales Performance Coaching it helps to solve the problem of:

Sales Teams that continue to miss their revenue and/or profit targets, regardless of the economy.
Sales People who do a lot of presentations and demos and write a lot of proposals but are simply not closing deals, and when they do they tend to give away too much margin.
New product launches that don’t achieve the expected results.
Sales People that are unable to convey product differentiation to justify your price to customers.
A Sales Team that consistently overestimates their “closed sales” forecasts.
Holding onto your top sales producers
Sales People who are under-performing because of fear or are stuck in a comfort zone.
Sales People that leave sales lying on the table because they depend too heavily on the capabilities of the product/service to win business.
A Sales Team is struggling to grow revenues in a predictable, consistent manner and sustain sales performance over an extended period of time
And more...

Sales Performance Coaching will not guarantee overnight success. For a Sales Performance Coaching programme to deliver the huge impact promised, it will require the Sales Leader to drive the process hard for a minimum of 4-6 months to achieve traction.
There is no “silver bullet” solution to increasing sales production. However, working regularly with your Sales Team, coaching, mentoring, guiding and supporting them, you will not only help them to grow their individual businesses, but you too will grow.

The McKenzie Sales Performance Tutoring program is so effective that it is the only “Sales Development program” that will actually guarantee you achieve a pre-determined result. To find out how being coached by a Sales Performance Tutor will support you to get your Sales Team up and firing in the most competitive of selling environments, and produce stellar sales results click here

Sales Performance Coaching Process

1. Identify Core Behaviours for Development - identify the key behaviors you and your individual Sales Person have determined to be lacking. These will provide you with the basis for and focus of your coaching. There are 5 Mission Critical Skills of Outstanding Sales People

Extensive research has identified the five Mission Critical Selling Skills that you, as a sales professional, must master to effectively move beyond your current limitations and to achieve your sales goals. When understood and mastered, these five skills will dramatically help you to increase your sales productivity and sell more, more often.

The 5 Mission Critical Skills of Outstanding Sales People are:

Time and Self Management

2. Set clear performance expectations

3. Set aside quality time weekly to debrief the week that was and the week that’s coming up

4. Set specific behavioral goals and measure progress weekly

5. Collect Sales person behavioral data by engaging in joint sales calls

6. Provide honest and data specific feedback - Effectively challenge and guide others to improve performance

7. Offer training where applicable - Demonstrate the ‘ideal” way

8. Follow up; follow up; follow up

Sales Performance Coaching is a skill. Like any other business skill it requires a degree of training and competence for it to deliver effective and measurable results. To learn coaching, one can attend one of the many “Coaching” workshops available in the general market place, or one can go to a book store and read any number of books on the subject. One of the most dynamically effective ways to learn is to be coached yourself. Sales Managers are hiring Sales Performance Coaches to help them solve their sales performance issues.

Sales Management Tutoring helps you not only learn the fundamentals and process of sales coaching but it also helps your business succeed by tailoring proven, effective and time tested sales growth strategies and implementing into your Sales Team to help regenerate profits and steady and continuous streams of sales.