The Coaching Effect Blog

We are sitting at Summit 2015 in Scottsdale at the Fairmont Princess. Every year, I so look forward to this, knowing there are fantastic presenters lined up and a wealth of information to learn from them. And this year is no exception once again as we feel the energy revving up with Tony Jeary walking to the stage.  

 Many of the world’s top achievers seek a strategic expert to help them accelerate their sales coaching results and when they do, they are drawn to Tony Jeary. He is an authority on getting results and he has committed his career to studying and helping others achieve more. I can see why people have said, if you want to better your life, your career and your results, he is definitely someone you need to know.   

People in powerful positions, such as Sales Managers, tend to dismiss others' advice when making decisions,  a management study finds. Don't let your ego go to your head. Rather, welcome ideas from all levels of your sales organization by embracing a collaborative leadership style.

Between 85% and 90% of sales training has absolutely NO lasting impact after 120 days.   So a cool 4.25 billion dollars simply being thrown away and it happens year after year.   Why?

Training can be disappointing when months down the road, results return to the same place they have always been.  Sales people are blamed for being highly motivated and energized in the beginning but not being able to sustain that level of momentum.    However, maybe it isn’t about salespeople at all.    Maybe ( gulp) it really is about you, the manager, coach and leader.  

Recently we introduced our sales coaching cloud technology known as ONE-UP. This technology was developed solely as a tool for our members when, as with so many solutions, there came a total moment of clarity created by need. While in conversation with a member who is an EVP, and asked what percent of time his managers spent in coaching, and focusing on high pay off activities, his response was “ I simply don’t know.” But he continued, “While I would like to think that my managers are spending the majority of their time doing the things that will make the difference and move the needle for their teams, literally I cannot tell you.” This was eye opening for us, because while we teach and train that nothing impacts performance more than coaching, and we know the activities and behaviors that need to happen to increase sales, we had not given them an easy way to measure that.

Once upon a time, a savvy sales VP decided she wanted to improve her sales team performance by instilling a company culture of coaching.        A great coach surely would get her people all the latest and very best in sales methodology so she enlisted the aid of the finest sales trainers and consultants in all the land.   They trained, they learned, and the savvy sales VP even went so far as to get an app, where she and subsequently her managers could do on demand coaching with her people through their smart phones.    Very efficient, very techy and very cool.  

Sales Organizations are unique in ways that create unique challenges.

According to Harvard Business Review contributor Scott Edinger, and noted in this previous blog post by Kristi Shoemaker, the most difficult leadership position is head of sales.   

First of all, in most cases, sales reps are often spread out physically all over the place, since sellers tend to stay close to customers, not to headquarters. Not being all together makes substantive interactions between sales producers, management staff and sales team leaders difficult.

 “The greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive and engaged brain.”

                                                                                                            Shawn Achor

Shawn Achor, helped design the famed happiness course at Harvard, ( which at one time was the most popular course at the university.) and is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards received there.  He is hilarious, quick, witty, and if you have not had the opportunity to watch his TED talk on happiness take a peek here.     He is a researcher, consultant to Fortune 500 companies and author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work.

We all remember sales managers along our career path.     Some were good, some bad and even a few were memorable.    But how many over your lifetime actually fell in the category of being a mentor coach?    The one or ones that actually made a difference in where you are today.