The Coaching Effect Blog

One of the most important things a manager can do to help their team members perform better is to coach them to improve their selling skills. Sales training is a critical first step in building a team member's selling skills, but without consistent coaching and feedback from a manager to support that training, the development of those new skills will stagnate.

To deliver the most effective feedback, try these tips:

Over and over again in our research, we find that the relationship between a team member and their leader or manager (aka: coach) is one of the most important variables that impacts performance. Understandably, we often are asked by leaders how they can be better relationship builders with their team. One of the easiest, most meaningful, and highly effective ways to go about this is by simply asking more questions. 

What do influencers and business owners like Elon Musk, Arianna Huffington, Bill McDermott, and Richard Branson all have in common when it comes to their personal brands?

I posed this question during a personal branding breakout session I led at EcSell Institute’s 2019 Sales Coaching Summit (now rebranded as The Coaching Effect Summit) in Charlotte, NC back in April. There were some solid guesses, but no one guessed that all of these individuals have larger social media followings than the company brands they own, lead, or manage. Is that not crazy?!

Do you broadcast happiness? Do you share good news, support, encourage, congratulate or thank the people in your life? Could you possibly be underestimating the power of positivity?

Each of us could make improvements in this area, and Michelle Gielan’s recent keynote about "happiness" during EcSell Institute’s Sales Coaching Summit (rebranded as The Coaching Effect Summit now) in Charlotte, NC, was just what many of the attendees, including myself, were craving. As a former CBS news anchor and author of Broadcasting Happiness, Michelle's objective was to educate and emphasize the science of happiness by working to create success in sales through positive engagement.

Consider the following two questions: 1) On any given day, who do you think about the most? 2) On any given day, who do you have the most conversations with?

Most of us can point to leadership moments from movies and TV shows that have inspired us. One of my personal favorites is from Hoosiers. In this movie, Gene Hackman’s character, a basketball coach named Norman Dale, benches a kid during a game for not being a team player.  When another player fouls out, Coach Dale is left with only four kids available.  As the kid that was benched gets up to return to the game, Coach Dale lets him know he should stay put and tells the ref, “my team is on the floor.”

One of our favorite parts of the Sales Coaching Summit (now rebranded as The Coaching Effect Summit) is announcing and celebrating our coaching award winners. In sales, there’s lots of recognition of the performance of individual sales people – from internal awards to incentive trips – but little focus is placed on celebrating excellence in sales leadership. Our goal is to change that, so each year we honor companies and people who truly excel, or should I say EcSell, in the coaching and development of sales performers. This year, we celebrated two very deserving winners:

The next time you find yourself with a free moment, head over to our newest, interactive content by participating in the Growth Rings Indictor quiz. This is a web-based, survey-like tool developed by the research team at the EcSell Institute and designed to help all types of individuals learn more about their current location within the four Growth Rings. The Growth Rings are based on the concept, originally introduced in the TEDx Talk below, that without some challenge, discomfort, and exposure to new experiences, we limit ourselves from our fullest potential (Tweet This).

This week we proudly announced the release of our upcoming book, The Coaching Effect, written by EcSell Institute's very own Bill Eckstrom, President and Founder, and Sarah Wirth, VP of Client Services. 

Both authors have spent over a decade researching the activities, behaviors, and performance of leaders. They’ve studied more than 100,000 coaching interactions in the workplace, primarily of sales teams, and have been able to determine how coaching affects team outcomes and growth.