Sales coaching is an important key to improving sales performance. The coach is the salesperson’s most important connection inside the organization, and the coach’s success or failure impacts the success and failure of the entire team.
Unfortunately, many companies are really bad at hiring, promoting, and developing sales managers. Most often, we look to our highest sales performers and promote them, expecting that they will be well positioned to help other salespeople perform better. That is often not the case.
Much has been said about the fact that high performing salespeople don’t have the right skills to be good coaches, but skills are only a part of the picture. A bigger problem is that they often don’t have the right mindset.
A person’s mindset impacts everything they do. Without the right mindset, employees won’t work hard, they won’t develop their skills, and they won’t perform well.
A high performing salesperson often has a strong individual performance mindset. This mindset includes: will to succeed, desire to help customers, competitiveness and a will to achieve mastery in personal development. In complex B2B environments, the mindset requires higher levels of business acumen, curiosity, problem solving and navigating company politics.
For better and worse, the salesperson mindset is not the same as the coach’s mindset. A great coaching mindset is team-oriented rather than individual, and consists of at least five key elements:
A manager who is stuck in a salesperson’s mindset will have the tendency to want to step in and take over, rather than coaching others to success. They may get caught up in their own numbers to the neglect of the team’s performance. And they not choose to master the coaching skills necessary to drive high team performance.
Coaching mindset can be improved on your team in two primary ways: By promoting more purposefully, and by supporting and developing the correct mindset on the existing coaching team.
The practice of promoting high performers to management is well entrenched in the sales industry. But, as we’ve seen, it can be counterproductive. In order to promote more effectively, you can look for individuals who already demonstrate the right mindset, and consider them for promotion. These people may not be the highest performers on their team, and that’s okay. By promoting those with a coaching mindset, you leave your highest performers doing what they do best, while placing your coaching-oriented team members in a position to do more good.
One idea to spot mindsets is to hold team sessions to brainstorm about specific sales opportunities. People who actively contribute, support and coach during these sessions can be solid sales management material…
By promoting people who already demonstrate the appropriate mindset, you’ll build a team that is already ahead of the game and who can more quickly learn the skills to become excellent managers.
Wherever your management team is in terms of mindset, there is always room for improvement and support. A well-designed management program supports the development of better coaching mindset and skills. Such a program cannot simply consist of a day-long “leadership” training exercise. It must account for the needs and strengths and gaps of your existing team, your sales environment, and the day to day activities and responsibilities of your management team. Then it must be supported by a complete system including appropriate coaching enablement tools and technologies.
For a step by step approach to improving your organization’s sales coaching and therefore sales performance, download the white paper, How to Build and Effective Sales Coaching System.
George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.
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