Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions

To build your sales team for success, you’ve got to discover exactly what they need.

Imagine you’re a sales manager who wants to grow her lead generation and sales efforts, but you’re struggling without a defined approach or game plan.

It’s clear you need advice, so you decide to enlist a consultant, a trainer and a coach. While your decision is a good one, it’s important for you to discover precisely which type of support your salespeople really need.

For instance, a consultant will likely tackle your problem with market research for your target market. He’ll then present his findings to you, as well as offer a strategy for employing them.

The trainer will build on the consultant’s conclusions to identify areas in which you and your team need to improve. He’ll then provide specific exercises to move you toward your goal.

In fact, there’s a lot a trainer could do to improve your sales approach. For instance, he might help you practice your sales pitch, creating role-playing exercises to do so.

Clearly, hiring a consultant and a trainer can be helpful, but too many managers underestimate the third step, which is coaching. That’s because after your training, a coach plays an instrumental role in ensuring you and your team understand your training and effectively apply it.

You need to understand the differences between a consultant, trainer and coach as you identify which tools you and your team need to improve sales.

If you want to coach your salespeople, don’t underestimate the workings of a coaching process. Be aware that your weekly sales meetings are not the same as a coaching program, despite what many managers believe.

You’ll have to do the coaching on a daily or weekly basis. You’ll see, though, that these weekly coaching sessions will give you the chance to uncover and solve problems you might not have seen before.

So remember, if you’re going to undertake the challenge of both managing and coaching, it’s essential you learn how to switch between routine managerial work and the work of coaching.