5 steps that will make your managers into better coaches

“I’ve been involved in more than 30,000 deal reviews, 30,000 sales call reviews, thousands of forecast reviews, and more. That means I have a rich and varied… and sometimes painful… experience with coaching.”

That’s Dave Brock, author of The Sales Manager Survival Guide and CEO at Partners In Excellence, on why he’s qualified to talk about coaching. Since his first job in the 1980s and launching his first consulting company in 1991, Brock has had the opportunity to work with thousands of sales managers and develop a deep and insightful understanding of what works and doesn’t work in coaching.

We caught up with him recently and asked him to share his insights into developing an effective coaching system. He shared with us his 5-step process that has successfully helped hundreds of his clients maximize their sales performance through better coaching.

Step One: Recognize the Importance of Coaching

It sounds like a no-brainer but, sadly, says Brock, the majority of organizations continue to fail to give coaching its due.

“There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it,” says Brock. “At all levels of the organization, everyone needs to know that coaching is one of the highest leverage activities they can engage in, and that it is part of their job.”

The simple act of recognizing and respecting the importance of coaching is critical for organizations. Recognition should then lead to investing in an effective coaching system, starting with teaching the managers.

Step Two: Teach Managers to Coach

“In most cases, when I go in to work with managers,” says Brock, “what I see is that they’re not coaching at all. They’re just telling. Telling salespeople to go do this and then come back.”

The root of the problem is that managers are rarely given the training they need in order to engage in effective coaching. Real coaching involves helping salespeople to learn and develop the skills they need to consistently elevate their play. Managers need to know how to engage in both directive and non-directive coaching that guides salespeople to their own understanding, and holds them accountable to their commitments.

Step Three: Integrate Coaching Into Daily Workflow

“People tend to think of coaching as something separate, like a performance review,” says Brock. “And so they only find time to do it every six or eight weeks. We see this mistake a lot.”

When that happens, coaching doesn’t get done at all or, when it does, it’s ineffective. Successful coaching, says Brock, is integrated into everything the manager does. During deal reviews, pipeline reviews, call planning reviews, and even during casual conversations in the Starbucks line.

Step Four: Build a Coaching Cadence

Coaching is most effective when there is a consistent cadence. This means knowing how often to discuss pipeline, when to do call reviews, and so on, and approaching salespeople regularly to work through their issues on a consistent basis. Also, make sure to create a Coaching Cockpit™ in Membrain.

“When you start doing coaching on a regular cadence,” says Brock, “it becomes muscle memory. The more you do that, the easier it is to integrate it into everything you do.”

Step Five: Build it Into the Culture

Brock emphasizes that as important as it is for managers to coach well, coaching is not an activity only for frontline managers. In fact, he says, it should be integrated into the way everyone in the organization interacts, from the top to the bottom.

“If the top executives don’t view part of their responsibility to involve coaching the people who report to them,” says Brock, “they’re going to have a hard time sustaining the system.”

The content of coaching will differ based on the level at which it occurs, but the approach is the same. By starting at the top and integrating coaching throughout the organization, it becomes embedded into the culture, creating a sustainable system.

“We often think of coaching as a painful adjunct that sits outside of what we do as an organization,” says Brock. “But the real key is to integrate it into all of the natural discussions we engage in everyday.”

Consistency Is Key

Brock likes to tell the story of his first sales job at IBM. Every week, he says, he’d sit down with his manager for deal reviews. The first time, she asked him three questions. He didn’t know the answers, and left the meeting embarrassed.

The next week, he knew to expect those questions, and came prepared. She asked the same three questions. His responses were adequate, and she coached him in how he could improve them.

The third time, he nailed it. She asked the questions, he knew how to answer them, and the meeting went well.

By the fourth time, “I was getting cocky,” he says. “I didn’t even wait for her to ask. I simply told her the answers to my questions.”

She nodded, smiled, and asked three new questions.

“That was effective coaching,” says Brock. “I didn’t even realize I was being coached. I just knew I didn’t want to look stupid.” By asking the same three questions, his manager forced him to develop “muscle memory” for those three points. Once he mastered that, she pushed him to the next level.

“Consistency is critical,” he says, “as is follow-up.” One of the biggest mistakes organizations make today is letting coaching become a haphazard task, one with little consistency and no follow-up.

Brock’s five steps help organizations create a system that develops managers into effective coaches, and develops salespeople into higher performers.

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