Sales Coaching: Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Coach

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Here at the-Coaching Blog-run by Gerard O’Donovan, our aim is to constantly bring value to those seeking to improve their lives. Therefore we have a policy of publishing articles and materials by guest authors whom we value and appreciate. Today’s guest author is Malcolm Nicholson (United Kingdom).
The economies of most of the western world are now firmly on the road to recovery. Sales professionals need to adapt to cope with the volatile circumstances that their customers are facing. How does coaching fit in with this? Successful businesses the need to develop sales professionals who are trusted advisors and knowledgeable consultants.
Businesses are facing a Global VUCA future (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous). Their requirements will consequently change – and pretty rapidly compared to the recent past. Interconnectedness affects us all.
Let’s start by looking at the challenges facing sales organizations currently. Right now the standard model is to service larger organizations through face-to-face sales channels whilst small companies and repeat orders are handled through telesales. These sales resources are expensive and are custodians of a critical relationship with the organization’s customers. How they behave, operate and perform directly impacts the business success. As the market changes so MUST the sales team. The banking crisis of 2009-2010 acted as a catalyst to accelerate a number of changes that were already underway:-
Customers want more for less. And this is at a time when many raw materials are becoming more finite and therefore expensive, or demand from developing nations is increasing the price.
The Internet is impacting three main areas within the sales function.
Firstly, customers will have researched the marketplace. They will have an opinion. This may not be accurate or correct, however, they have an opinion, stronger than they did previously. This could include the price for which they are prepared to pay.
Secondly, customers want the revolution that has been brought about by 1-Click online shopping in consumer sales replicated in the business to business sales environment for simple or repeat orders.
Thirdly, customers are more aware of and comfortable having virtual interactions. Web or video conferences can pull together product expertise from around the world at short notice. Ease of doing business will be a critical differentiator.
Organisations are experiencing greater legislation. Within financial services and the public sector, there is a major drive towards legislation in compliance. All companies now have to work within some form of bribery and anti-corruption legislation and are criminally culpable for acts committed without their knowledge by employees or company representatives. This becomes especially complex in emerging markets where none- western business norms apply to “opening doors”. Additionally, many organizations are aware of the need to display ethical selling practices. There is a creative tension caused by the need to operate within a regulated environment whilst not removing the entrepreneurial element.
What do the Sales Director and HR Director of today need to change to deal with this landscape?
Old fashioned Hire and fire performance management don’t work, as it is expensive, destabilizing and damages relationships that may have taken years of investment to establish. Therefore, sales leaders need to understand their role is to help their teams evolve to where the market and the company needs them performing as trusted advisors, knowledgeable consultants and the first call the customer makes.
Whilst potential or existing customers have access to more than 20% more information about your business than they did 5 years ago, what they don’t necessarily have is the contextual information around a product or service. So the ‘how to apply’ information around best practices, the trends in the industry and creative solutions – may be even involving third-party organizations – is becoming more valued by customers and is the differentiator over competitors and simple web sales.
Consequently, there is a need to make sure that the sales team’s knowledge is greater than the customer’s in this context. The traditional ‘lone wolf’ salesperson needs to develop the ability to manage a virtual team of a resource from their offices to make sure they have appropriate sources of up to date data as well as pull together complex bids in order to become the value-add Subject Matter Experts.
Implementation of technology to enable one-click ordering – as with an Amazon purchase –  for simple or repeat orders will also be a key differentiator, which will also have an impact on the sales professional’s role.
Sounds complex? It is. And of course, it will get more so.
So how do leaders meld the entrepreneurial and flexible with the framework of process and legislation, when 70% of change initiatives fail?
Cometh the hour, cometh the approach. Coaching may not scream out bottom line but it certainly delivers it. “Coaching at its best, informed by good theory and practices and case studies around …business, is brilliant and uniquely placed to encourage people into new kinds of conversations that deepen and build their cognitive capacity and enable them to make sense out of circumstances that are extremely complex.” (Dr. Geoffrey Abbott, from interview with the author, ICN, 2nd edition)
Not all team members will or can make the journey so the sales director’s role and competency set must now include coaching, mentoring and change management. These are not always the skills or traits that these leaders have honed over many years as they built their careers, but they are now at the core of their career success for the future.
A flexible, probing approach is required to react to market vicissitudes. Executive coaching methodologies can promote the cognitive complexity needed in executives, consequently better equip them to tackle uncertainty. It can provide an avenue for people to explore the interrelationships with the different forces that are going on at the moment, and deal with the changing environment in a very broad way.
There is a growing body of empirical evidence on the impact of coaching on sales. Anecdotal examples can be taken from my own practice. A proposal I submitted to a capital equipment business required a 0.002% increase in revenue performance to pay for itself. A sales director credited me with having been the catalyst to changing the business from a £200M to a £400M turnover business.
So executive coaching at a leadership level will provide the space to develop cognitively complex strategic approaches. Now, if we go down a layer in the organization, we get to the space that should be occupied by The Manager as Coach. Research by CEB (a leading member-based advisory company), shows that sales professionals with highly effective coaches had on average 20% higher goal attainment than those with less effective coaches. They found there are specific skills that set these highly effective coaches apart, including their ability to prepare for the coaching conversation, observe and pinpoint specific behaviors to develop, and embed the new behaviors using actionable feedback.
Continuously developing the ability of the sales team is a key enabler for business growth. The ability to develop the Industry expert, who is able to prove the insights a web-based sale can’t, will be accelerated by the manager understanding the individual, tailoring an approach to that person based on feedback and having great conversations to deliver great results.
Going forward, the value that coaching can bring to a discipline that is in change, in industries that are in change, in economies that are in charge cannot be underestimated. Combined with ongoing feedback it will continuously change behavior and so strengthen relationships with the sales team, virtual team, and customers. It could actually prove to be the most critical skill the business can have.
 
Recommended Reading
Sales Coaching: Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach. Linda Richardson McGraw-Hill Professional; 2nd edition (1 Jan 2009)
The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. Portfolio Penguin (7 Feb 2013)
‘Sales Coaching at Work’ Malcolm Nicholson. ibid.
 
Credit Source:
About the Author
Malcolm Nicholson is the owner and Coaching Director for Aspecture, and has worked successfully with a wide range of senior business people for over 15 years, enabling them to improve business results through transformational changes. (see www.aspecture.com). To find out how he can help your organization contact him at malcolmnicholson@aspecture.com or on +44 1932 267597.
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