Coaching Salespeople in the Field

1. Plan a one-day a month minimum field coaching visit with every one of your team for the next 12 months.
   
2. Speak to each person individually telling them of the dates for the whole year and ask them to tell you of training/caching points they would like particularly to cover and types of customer they would like help to sell to.
   
3. Design a checklist of all the elements you cover in basic training under the headings – knowledge, attitude and skills.
   
4. One week beforehand, send the salesperson a note asking them to rate themselves and indicate which elements he/she would like to.
   concentrate on – no more than 2, and how they believe you can help. This can then be included with your own pre-planned coaching topics.
   
5. Discuss and agree the elements to be covered before each sales interview as being the ones that will form any basic training at the end of each sales presentation/customer meeting.
   
6. Sit or stand where you do not distract from the sale. If you are brought into the conversation by the customer pas the ball back to the salesperson – e.g. what do you think?
   
7. Sometimes role plays can seem a bit false but you can lead into one by giving examples first – “if I said this to you – how would you respond?” simply follow the reply and develop the role play in a conversational style.
   
8. Arrange an interview sometimes where you don’t sit in, but agree with the salesperson what is going to happen. Get them to carry out a post interview analysis telling you what happened and what they learned, and what future action they intend to take. This will help the salesperson to develop their own critical analysis.
   
9. During the course of the day points will arise which cannot be dealt with on the day or may not be relevant to the purpose of the day. Such points should be noted and taken back to the classroom to add to and possibly revise training at that level. Sales training after all should be a cyclical process.
   
10. Get out of the office. You should be spending 80% of your time with your team

Choices in Business Coaching

There are two main ways to approach business coaching. Each depends upon the culture of your organisation and the needs you might have in relation to bringing other people in to help build your business.

Route 1 is about you determining the rules and implementing them. You know what works and performers have to learn to play by your rules. The only time that the performer can negotiate is when they are operating above the line. For most of the time you feel in control. The only occasion when you begin to question this route is when you get resistance from ‘star’ performers who baulk at the ‘straight-jacket’ approach that this route feels like to them.

Route 2 is about allowing the performer to determine the rules. You’re not sure what works. You have individuals who are performing well, but they are not keen on letting you get close to them. You allow them a lot of space

Whichever route you choose, both eventually end up at the same point – implementation of rules. Having said that, there is another route. Route three is not a coaching route – it’s the Entrepreneurship route.

Route 3 is similar to route 2 in one respect – there’s a lot of flexibility, but it goes beyond flexibility. It relies upon individuals who have their own way of doing things; you allow them total freedom; and they play the game according to their own rules. In reality, the people who operate successfully in these environments have no rules other than – ‘this is the way I do things. You can take it or leave it’. This is not a route for the faint-hearted manager. There are no controls. For significant periods of time performance is high, however each success can be tinged with a few problems, which inevitably you as a manager end up sorting out on behalf of the performer. You do this willingly at first because results are coming in. The only time that problems exceed results is when the performer moves on to pastures new. It’s likely that not all of the problems created by this laissez-faire attitude came out of the woodwork during the tenure of the performer. Sometimes the trading practices of people allowed to operate in this environment still leave much to be desired.