Coaching your team is critical to their success. What makes a good coach?

1. Avoid singling out employees for coaching. Each and every employee should be receiving coaching not just those who are struggling. You may coach them more frequently but everyone should receiving feedback.
2. Feedback should be both formal and informal. If they are prepared to receiving feedback/coaching in their regular 1 on 1 meetings as well as spontaneously they will expect and be more comfortable with it.
3. Coaching should not be in a group setting. You can speak to the team in a broad sense but singling out individuals will not get you what you want.
4. Coaching should include things they are doing well. By telling them what they are doing well you will ensure that they will repeat that behavior. Sometimes actions/word tracks/behaviors are on autopilot and they are not even aware that they do them. Highlighting what you want them to continue to do will bring those activities to light and give you a chance to praise.
5. Coaching items that need to change should be manageable. I like to give them 3 things to keep and 3 things to change. In subsequent meetings you discuss progress that has been made on items to improve and how they are making sure they repeat those activities that are desirable.
6. For items to change, put together a plan that rewards steps getting to the right behavior. If you put together too many items to change that are complicated they will feel overwhelmed and likely change nothing.
7. Put together a formal agenda of topics for the 1 on 1 meetings. If they know that coaching is on the agenda they will come in expecting and receptive to it.

Hiring your team whether to replace or add is one of the most important steps of a sales manager. To reduce the risk there are some key steps that can result in a successful hire.

1.  Take the time to put together a hiring process. Identify questions ahead of time and score the applicant on their answers. This makes sure that you ask the same questions for every applicant. Otherwise you might be comparing “apples or oranges” or miss a key question that may have swayed you a different way.
2. Try to look past personality. It is important to find someone you “like” but doesn’t mean they are a good fit. Look deeper than just that initial impression. Some candidates are really good at interviewing and others need a bit of time to warm to the situation.
3. Have someone from the existing team also interview to help get buy-in. Trust your gut if your existing team member’s feedback is negative. They may feel threatened or competitive with the individual. Rotate who is assigned to assist with interviews so everyone gets an opportunity. Make that person their peer coach when you hire. They will want them to succeed.
4. Think outside the obvious box. Having variety on your team is good. If all members of the team are the same personality profile you will magnify both their strengths and weaknesses. A great team is balanced. Think of the big picture when hiring. Ask yourself what skill is missing and how that new employee can help jump start getting your team to the next level.
5. Ensure that you have a rock solid onboarding/training plan in place. Many new hires fail during the first 90 days. You need to make sure that they feel welcomed and that legacy employees share the tribal knowledge. If you have built a successful team they should welcome and assist new individuals.

Sometimes it is easy to believe you are a great manager because rarely are your employees going to tell you differently, at least to your face. What common mistakes might you be making that keep you from being “all that you can be”

Treating your employees like your friends. You spend a lot of time with your employees so sharing too much about your personal life is tempting. It is, however, hard to coach an employee one moment and then complain about your spouse later in the day. Just like parents need to stay a parent and not be their children’s bestie the same is true here. It doesn’t mean you can’t take an interest in their lives or talk about your weekend, just don’t cross the line to personal confidante. After all, the rest of the team will know the individual that has entered your inner circle and will feel you have favorites.

Treating your employees exactly the same. Yes, you want to be fair and in that regard, treat them the same. However, when it comes to coaching and recognition you need to understand how they are inspired to motivate themselves and what form recognition should come in. Some employees like public accolades while another might prefer to have you recognize them one on one or perhaps drop off a quick gift card. Do you know what they prefer? You need to ask.

Being a “duck and cover” manager. If you are too busy except to point out issues/mistakes…typically in public, you are a duck and cover manager. What that means is that the team tries hard to avoid you because it might be their turn to be called out. Instead of a collaborative environment employees will ensure they bring nothing to your attention to avoid interactions. You might feel too busy to ensure you are reinforcing both positive and negative behavior but I would encourage you that coaching your team and creating that collaborative environment is the cornerstone to everything else.
Is it time to review your management style?

I’ve sat in many meetings listening to senior executive discussing “how can we motivate the sales team”. The goal might be for the sales team to be motivated to add new accounts, hit a particular sales goal, stop selling the “easy” and sell the “difficult”, the list goes on. The point that they are missing is you can’t motivate anyone to do anything. You can inspire them to motivate themselves….but being motivated must come from an internal place. Motivation requires action and the action must come from the individual.

I’ve often found that educating the individual on the “why” helps inspire. Rather than just ramming sales goals, new products to sell or asking them to hunt rather than just account manage without the “why” will fail to motivate. If they understand selling more of the higher profit items leads to job security and increased commissions will inspire them to be motivated to sell those items. Hitting sales goals helps ensure that the company is profitable and will allow us to branch into other desirable areas, invest in the “new” they would like to sell and more. The discussion needs to be around why I need you to motivate yourself towards the desired behavior.

Leaders can help by providing inspiration. Leaders must come from a place of authenticity. Listening to the sales team’s concerns so they feel supported. Setting realistic goals and ensuring that the bonus/pay structure does not drive unintended behaviors. Next time someone wants to talk about how we motivate an individual or a team remember our role, inspire them to motivate themselves.

The faster you make a change the sooner you can reap the rewards, right? Not necessarily. A lot depends on the type and amount of change and it needs to be thought through carefully.

I’ve worked with companies that took so long to make a change that by the time a decisions was made and the change implemented it had lost the desired impact on the industry, customers or employees. Some companies have such a long process that the process itself gets in the way. Larger companies have a tendency to have a slow process and get bogged down on protocol but I’ve seen small companies have the same issue. This can happen when there is an individual that is responsible for too many decisions and is either unable or unwilling to make the call to move ahead with change. They become the narrow opening of a funnel and nothing gets through in a timely way.

I’ve also worked with larger organizations that pride themselves on being nimble and quick in regard to making changes. That should be a good thing but being too quick can result in unintended consequences to the market, employees or customers. In one instance the organization decided to roll out a major price change without adequately testing the impact on customers. This particular change doubled the operational costs of responding to customers who were calling to complain. Had the organization done a better job of testing they would have better understood the impact and made some adjustments prior to making the change. Although the desire for the change was valid (elimination of less profitable customers) the result was elimination of a wider demographic of customer and higher operational costs.

Somewhere is the middle ground where change is adequately vetted without making hasty decisions while still moving swiftly enough to make a difference. What makes a good change management process? Making sure that an adequate review is done of the changes to be made. What are unintended consequences of the change and what can be done to mitigate them? How do you get early adopters on board including key influencers within the organization. Make sure that the change is communicated to the right people in the right order to ensure messaging is what you want it to be, especially change that is internal in nature. Set a timeline for the change and keep communicating throughout the process updating with early wins and keeping people supportive and in the loop.

Change needs to be managed to ensure the best of all possible outcomes!

Once you’ve been on a good team you’ll wonder why all teams can’t be that way! What makes a good team? First of all, being on a team and being a good member of that team is a choice! I once worked in a department where half of the team worked out of one location and the other half in another. Both locations would complain about the other half of the team. They were not working hard enough, the other half had to pick up their slack, they try to tell us how to do our job, they think they are the better team, and on and on. I had the opportunity to speak to the group and pointed out to them that whether or not they saw themselves as a larger team wasn’t management’s responsibility, it was theirs. They had to make the choice to accept that they were, indeed, a team and if there were issues getting in the way why were they not stepping up to help resolve the issues. We’ve all heard the adage to deliver a solution not just a problem and that was true in this instance.

Another attribute that makes up a good team is the willingness to contribute to the “greater good”. While components of the team may compete for top sales, for example, to do so at the expense of the over-all team and organization does not work long-term. Once you have individuals that are perceived as “holding out” or not sharing how they are having success you have a team that is focused not on moving the whole team forward but inwardly just on themselves, likely at the expense of the rest of the team.

Communication is also key on a good team. Being able to provide your manager and other teammates with ideas and feedback is the mark of a good team. While management may not always be able to act on the ideas a good team feels listened to and understands why management is going a different direction. If you are not hearing ideas from your team likely you have shown to be unwilling to listen or act of the ideas and eventually they will stop.

A good team usually starts at the top with the right foundation and environment being led from the top down. Is your team not what you need it to be? What are you doing to provide the proper foundation for a great team?

Of course prospects and customers want to talk about the price of something. Whether it is a service, product or even a perceived commodity customer will want to play “let’s make a deal”. Why do they want to play that game…because we’ve taught them to! Every time a prospect/customer says “what else can you do for me” or “can you lower the price” and we accommodate them they learn that pushing back on price is a game they can play with us. Instead, we need to take price off the table, at least for the initial discussion. Try saying “I understand that price is a consideration but I would like to come back to price”. That gives you time to identify needs and develop the best solution for the customer which may take the pressure off of price. At the very minimum if the price is lowered there must be a perceived change that justifies the drop in price. Perhaps they pay in 10 days instead of 30, perhaps you change the packaging to a stock box rather than the custom box you originally included.

Many sales people feel that customer will only buy on price. Think about that, people pay more for items all the time that they perceive a value in. After all, we can get a cheaper meal places but elect to sometimes go to expensive restaurants. We choose to buy fancy cars when a bare bones minimum vehicle would serve. You need to identify “wants” not just “needs”. I need a car….I want a car with a sunroof that is a hatchback and is red.

In addition you can take the pressure off by price by talking about the cost of ownership not just the price. If you were shopping for a shirt and saw a $25 deal but it was a fabric that needed dry cleaning and was a color that was not frequently worn the price might be low but the cost of ownership would be high. Instead a $50 top that was a neutral color that could be worn with many things and was hand washable would have a higher price but a lower cost of ownership. Have that discussion with your customer instead.

What do you do when your superstar sales representative is a nightmare to work with….you can’t afford to lose that individual, right? Wrong! A superstar isn’t all that if they are bringing negative issues back into the team. I’ve had this situation several times with different results. Once the superstar actually gave notice and after being asked to allow the proper chain of command regarding communication of this change proceeded to tell everyone. What’s more, she also bashed the company, team, management and bragged about her new position. I decided to reduce her two week notice to leaving that same day. She was shocked. What was more surprising was the feedback I got from her peers after I walked her to the door. Apparently she had been bullying others, telling them that I had empowered her to coach and critique them and was reporting things to me (which was not true). She also indicated that she was being included in important conversations that the others were not (also not true). She was blunt, negative and full of self-importance while putting forward a completely different face to me. When they team heard she was gone they thanked me for removing her from the team sooner rather than later. The company, however, looked only at her sales numbers and felt I should have done something to convince her to stay but I knew that her star was tarnished.

Once she was no longer impacting the team I saw the rest of the team step up. No longer afraid to try things and share best practices between each other the remaining members became something they had not been before, a collaborative team all working at their potential. Numbers didn’t go down, they were just distributed differently.

Sales incentive plans are tricky. Make them too long (like annual) and you run the risk of reps who give up in the 4th quarter and sandbag sales for the next year. Make it too short (monthly) and you make it difficult for someone to take a week off without losing out on their bonus. Monthly also puts a burden on accounting. Quarterly can be the best option. Long enough that a week off is recoverable and not so long that they risk losing momentum.

In addition to when an incentive is paid out what the incentive is based on matters. Team goals can drive a stronger team environment but it can also create issues if some on the team are perceived as not keeping up their end of the team’s goal. It is also harder for newer employees to meet their goal making it difficult for them to find their rhythm and fearing that the more seasoned reps resent them. Individual goals can be motivating but may create a lack of sharing of tribal knowledge or success stories as individuals focus on themselves instead of the team. A combination of the two may be best. Individual goals based on where the rep is in his role (seasoned vs. new) plus a combined team piece that may be on something other than just sales numbers. For example, bringing new accounts, selling a new product or service to existing customers.

I once managed a team that had both individual goals as well as a team goal. One individual had not made her goal for the quarter and so stayed at her desk calling on the afternoon of the company holiday party in order to make her goal. The rest of the team voluntarily stayed behind as well as a sign of solidarity to encourage her and provide the energy in the room that was created when all where engaged with dialing. That’s the sign of a great team. How can we create that in your team?

Coming into an organization and providing information to your sales team, sales leaders or over-all organization is just a part of leading change within an organization. Change Management is a step that shouldn’t be ignored regardless of the amount of change or the size of an organization. My first step is always to get to know the stakeholders as well as some of the team to get their insights and buy-in. What else is currently going on within the organization that might influence or affect the receptivity of the team? What is the current message that is being provided that I can help tweak, support or even redirect? The art of learning starts before I begin my sessions be it a one-on-one meeting or group session. Have management and informal leaders led from a positive position about my assistance or has the message been one of “this is just something we have to do” which will drive to failure.

I can provide information, whether or not anyone chooses to be motivated to learn and make changes is up to the team. What happens when I walk out the door? Although I implement check-ins from managers into my training it is now up to the leaders to hold accountable, drive adoption with desired change and continue to support positive momentum. Without the full circle from start to finish the information provided will be something that folks listen to, perhaps even like, that fails to make an impact. We’re a team to make sure that doesn’t happen!