Sales Coaching Blog

Human beings are creatures of habit and routine. When our routines get disrupted we can become uncomfortable, agitated, anxious, and at times down right angry. Don’t believe me? Well, consider this blast from the past article that outlines the initial backlash Facebook received when they rolled out their newsfeed functionality in 2006. Hundreds of thousands of their users were upset about this new feature, boycotts were called for, and user groups were formed in protest. All this dissent in the name of Facebook being innovative and developing their product with the best interests of their users in mind. How dare they!

“Your manager is very specific when talking to you about ways to improve your sales skills.”

Sometimes it’s in the world outside of data and research where the most meaningful impact of EcSell's work hits me. This time it was the importance of giving specific feedback to those on your team that you are coaching, leading or managing. 

By now most everyone is familiar with the United Airlines tragedy. Yes, it is a tragedy for it needlessly impacted many lives in a negative way, with more to come. At this moment, United is in extreme complexity (very uncomfortable) and they have yet to prove if this will turn into a positive growth experience (watch this TEDx Talk on Order vs. Complexity).

Due to the extreme coverage, there is no need to re-hash details, but there are several components regarding United and the public’s response that have provoked this visceral response from yours truly. 

EcSell Institute research shows that more than 50% of sales managers knowingly execute less than 48% of the high performance coaching activities that will drive the most sales. The result of this statistic is obvious; sales revenue is left on the table due to the sales manager’s lack of willingness to execute. 

For perspective, how would a President, CSO, EVP Sales, etc. respond to the above stats if they were applied to sales people?  What if they learned half of their sales reps were doing only half of the activities that led to the best outcome? It would be unacceptable, heads would roll, yet in the sales leadership profession this double standard is unknowingly accepted because coaching performance is not measured. How much more would be sold if sales leaders fully committed and behaved like high performance coaches? An additional $4.1 million per manager (read this whitepaper).

Sometimes my boss really annoys me.

Don’t worry about him reading this – we have a really great relationship, so I’ve said this to his face a few times. Specifically, he annoys me when I’m working on a new project and I think I’ve come up with the right idea, only to have him ask me a bunch of questions that poke holes in my thinking. Just when I think I’ve arrived at a conclusion, his challenging questions put me back at square one – that’s annoying!

(Full video transcript from Bill Eckstrom's TEDxUniversityofNevada Talk)

So I was on a roll — I was an executive with a nice salary, annual bonuses and stock options, all the perks. Everything was on track…

And on Monday, January 7^th, 2008 at three o’clock in the afternoon, in a small conference room on the top floor of our building, the President of the company wanted to have a quick meeting with me which wasn’t unusual since he was my boss, but the meeting turned out to be even more brief than expected. 

He fired me. 

This was only going to be written if my Talk was successful, which TED determines by number of online views. Screw that. It was successful because we worked our butts off and did it. Yesterday we won, we all won—every speaker, the TEDx committee, the EcSell Institute team and me. Every audience member’s expectations, almost 2,000 of them, should have been exceeded and if they weren’t, shame on them.

The EcSell Institute continually preaches the obvious, “the performance of individuals and teams are a reflection of how they are coached," and this University of Nevada TEDx event certainly follows that theme. Dr. Bret Simmons, the event’s director, is a rock star. He is the kind of Coach I would (and did) follow into battle. He strategized, challenged, hugged, prodded and loved. As a result of him, the TEDx committee is equally as strong, and combined they made the event the most memorable professional experience I’ve had to date.

One of the EcSell Institute’s most renowned summit speakers, sports psychologist Dr. Peter Jensen, has often spoke about how athletics are the best laboratory for sales and sales management. He should know considering he is a coach for the Canadian Olympic team as well as a top-rated instructor in seven programs at the Queen's Smith School of Business, where he helped design the Queen's Executive Leadership Program. I thought about Peter this past Monday when preparing to watch the rematch of last year’s College Football Playoff Championship between Clemson and Alabama.

Allow me to state the obvious, effective coaching and leadership mean everything when it comes to high performing teams at all levels of athletics and business. Growing up and residing still in Lincoln Nebraska, Husker fans have been in search of a great head football coach since Tom Osborne retired many, many moons ago.

Just like when you treat a wound, sometimes the best thing you can do is apply pressure. The same is true in sales coaching. New findings from our research indicate that the most highly impactful sales managers are ones who gently push their sales teams in a way that elicits a positive reaction or growth.

First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page when we talk about this pressure or pushing. At EcSell, this is a part of a concept we call the Catalytic Factor, or the C-Factor. Sales managers who have the C-Factor create an environment on their team that propels people into higher performing zones and zones of growth through the introduction of challenges, new experiences, or strain. Here, we focus on two behaviors in this concept: encouraging reps to move outside their comfort zone and stretching a rep’s selling skills and abilities.