- [Norman] Welcome to SRG Insights where we answer your questions about sales,
sales management, and sales training. And today's question is...
- What tools and processes would you use to measure
frontline manager coaching quality?
- You know, that's a really great question and you know,
we're all looking to improve the quality of sales coaching. Sales coaching,
from our perspective, has one of the highest ROIs possible and you think
about that, the reason sales coaching is so powerful is the amount of leverage a
manager can drive through sales coaching. Let's say you're a sales manager with five
to seven sales reps and you're able to help them either improve win rates
or improve the quality of their selling skills, that's going to have a major
impact on your overall organization. You're also really going to empower them
to be able to solve their own problems and really take your organization forward,
and even build the next group of sales managers or sales leaders based on the
quality of coaching you provide. So what I really like about this question is that
when you think about quality, it really comes down to having managers who can use
the right processes and then associate with those processes the right tools.
So I think from a definitial standpoint, I'd like to first kind of categorize
coaching into two areas, the first being what I would call skills coaching,
and that's when a manager works with each sales person on their team to improve
selling skills. And then the second area is really one of opportunity coaching,
and most sales managers have really good instincts in this area because it's
about helping coaching on specific deals that are in the pipeline to either qualify
or disqualify those deals, but ultimately to improve win rates. So let me start
with the first one, really, about skills coaching and the associated process.
So think about what's the purpose of skills coaching, and the purpose
of skills coaching is to improve selling skills. So we like to recommend that the
first tool a manager uses is an assessment and ideally, this assessment is completed
both by the manager and the sales rep. So if I use the SRG assessment from our sales
coaching program as an example, we focus on 24 key behaviors with three behavior
statements for each of eight different selling skills. That could be prospecting,
call planning, managing feedback, negotiation, gaining commitment,
but these are all crucial selling skills for sales people. And then we have the
salesperson and the sales manager each complete that assessment,
and then they collaborate and they put together a very focused coaching plan
on one to two skill areas that they can improve on
over the course of a calendar quarter.
And then we go into a five-step process, and that five-step process begins with,
as we've just discussed, the creating of that coaching plan, then planning a
coaching visit. So now you're going to go out with a salesperson on a call and
you're going to observe them. You really need to plan for that call,
understand the background, what's happened in the past, what's transpired,
and then actually to go on the call and then observe the call.
And I think this is where many managers run into difficulty, is they'll
start...even though they're going there as a coaching call, they can't resist the
temptation to sell. But if you're really looking for skills improvement,
you have to actually look at the underlying skills. And then following that
call, what you want to do is to debrief. And, again, debriefing is really an art.
You don't want to start by saying what they did wrong. You want to offer one
or two areas of encouragement, things they did right, and then really get the sales
rep to analyze the call, and then you want to follow-up. So there is a five-step
process, but inherent within that five-step process are a couple of key
tools that also improve the quality of coaching,
again, the coaching assessment and then the coaching plan.
And then ultimately, as these skills improve and you see those
skills improve on future calls, you want to reset those plans,
again, with the sales rep, so you can focus on new skills and keep driving
to improve skills and quality over a period of time. So let me get to the
second area, which is the opportunity coaching. And opportunity coaching
is really when the sales manager meets with each salesperson and reviews
the specific opportunities in their pipeline with the goal of helping
them either better qualify or, in some cases, disqualify opportunities,
but ultimately with the goal of developing a strategy for each
opportunity to improve win rates so that the likelihood of winning goes up.
So that's the outcome you're looking for. And so the process really involves five
key questions you would ask ,and these five key questions can be actually set up
in terms of a tool or template that a sales rep would complete,
possibly in advance of or following each time you meet with them,
to really assess whether they have a handle on the overall opportunity
and really have a good strategy, and those questions are as follows.
First, what is the customer's business need? And even though it's a pretty simple
question, it's surprising how often the sales person's response to that question
is kind of fuzzy. So if they can't clearly articulate the business need,
they really need to go back and ask more questions and really understand what is
the problem the customer is trying to solve or how are we going to put that
customer in a better situation than they are now? The second question which closely
ties to the business need is what is the unique value that we're bringing
to the customer? So based on an understanding of their business need,
we need to really set ourselves up in terms of how are we uniquely different and
better-positioned to win that opportunity? The third question really gets to who are
the decision-makers and what's our relationship with them? And all too often,
we have great relationships maybe with one or two key influencers,
but do we really understand the decision-making process, who's involved in
that process, and have a strategy to gain access? And again, I think that often
leads to a mapping of the organization, and really making sure that we're making
contact with all the right people who are the decision makers and influencers.
The fourth question they should think about is who's the competition and how are
they going to try and beat us? Because if you have a good understanding of the
competitive landscape, you're going to start to map out what are your competitive
strengths and weaknesses and really develop some key win themes.
And that leads to the final question, why will we win? And I think when they can
articulate to you with confidence why you're going to win, then you're going
to really see that they've done the other four steps well. So again, we've talked
about a five-step process for skills coaching and the associated tools,
we've talked about a five-step questioning strategy for opportunity coaching and an
associated tool, and my hope is that this helps answer your question about the use
of tools and processes to really improve the quality and measure the quality
of sales coaching by your managers. Thank you.