Winning Sales Coaches Don’t Manage
Winning Sales Coaches Don’t Manage
How would you like to coach a team that wins at the income game like top-ranked teams win in the NBA, NFL, and NHL?
Why wouldn’t you? Who’s superior at producing consistent winning efforts than professional sports teams?
Business?
Education?
Government?
You gotta be kidding!
Professional sports teams excel where business, education, government and science change because professional sports teams invest in developing breathtaking coaches who develop breathtaking players capable of winning games, lots of games.
And that’s a nugget of truth that ought to excite even the most tired income manager . . . don’t you think? If an breathtaking coach in the NFL can develop breathtaking sports players, why couldn’t you or any other breathtaking Sales Coach develop breathtaking Sales Players?
It’s no happening that successful professional teams win off-field before they ever win on-field. No team reaches the NBA playoffs, plays in the Super Bowl, or wins the Stanley Cup simply because it pays huge bucks for talented athletes. To make it to the top of its sport, a winning team, like a winning business, has to play well in apiece characteristic of its operations or . . . lose.
You know superior than anyone that that the income game is tough these days. In fact, it might well be tougher this day than ever before for even the ideal income professionals to generate consistent revenues and profits. You and your income force work your hearts out, day in and day out, struggling against determined competitors to sell your products and services to prospects and customers who demand everything and more: the lowest doable price, immediate delivery, unblemished quality, plus instant, first-rate service.
Talk about tough!
How can you rise above the fray, how can you set yourself and your income team apart from your competitors, and how can you achieve the consistent success you so richly deserve?
Simple . . . you find new business models, new strategies and new tactics to cope with the unprecedented challenges you grappling in the income game today.
Where can you find these new business models, strategies and tactics?
Like we stated before . . . look no farther than professional sports teams.
When you compare the way business plays the income game to the way professional sports teams play their games, you discover some interesting dichotomies.
First and foremost, no matter what it says, business doesn’t really demand the most from income professionals . . . not really. And, because business isn’t seriously serious about holding individual income professionals accountable for their failures to perform, the typical income organization loses nine out of apiece ten income it attempts to close.
If you applied this win/loss record to the National Football League, which plays 18 to 20 regular season games a year, the typical NFL team would win 2 or fewer games a season.
Unlike professional sports coaches, income managers typically stay out of the action on the income playing field. Sales managers don’t have time to work the sidelines like an NBA, NFL, or NHL coach because they’re too busy behind their desks with income projections, profit and loss statements, organisation problems, works politics, and company politics.
If professional sports teams played the same way most income organizations play the income game, NFL quarterbacks would run unsuccessful play after unsuccessful play, quarter after quarter after quarter, with no input from coaches. If professional sports teams operated the same way most income organizations operate, Major League Baseball pitchers would accomplishment player after player, inning after inning, while managers shuffled papers behind desks in offices far away from the action at the ballpark.
Because management is typically out of touch with the income game, most income organizations seem to be perfectly willing to place up with income managers who consistently run bad plays or no plays at all. And, as if that isn’t bad enough, these so-called income managers seem to be willing to hang on to field income people who consistently change to generate a return on the company’s investment because they consistently change to achieve performance goals and income projections.
Business doesn’t lead . . . business follows economic cycles . . . and that’s why business gets income people-bloated during good times and goes income people-lean during tough times.
When the economy is strong, when income are simple to come by, business tends to get greedy and tries to snatch apiece acquirable dollar by throwing too many income people after what finally turns out to be too few income opportunities.
And then, when the economy falls into a slow cycle, business panics, decides to place survival ahead of greed, and cuts back.
But then, when the inevitable recovery comes along, business gets caught flat-footed and winds up throwing too few people at too many opportunities and scrambles to catch up with demand, creating a pricey cycle that plays havoc with sales, profits, and people’s lives.
Business is scary different from professional sports in one particularly harmful way: When business loses, it tends not to accept responsibility for its own failures. In fact, instead of looking to itself to make necessary changes and improvements to strengthen its capability to sell, business tends to blame outside forces including ad agencies, competitors, the government, even customers, for its problems.
The world sees that when a professional sports team loses a game or a season, it doesn’t waste time playing the blame-game. Professional sports teams take immediate responsibility for their failures because nothing, not politics, not money, not even relationships, changes a professional sports team’s motivation to achieve defined performance. Failure to perform (Win) causes the team to make immediate changes in management, coaches, players, training, or whatever else it takes to turn things around.
Business bounces from loss to win to loss because it is unwilling or unable to look at its problems objectively and invest the resources necessary to consistently train and motivate income professionals who are capable of and interested in performing at the top of their games.
Professional sports teams, on the other hand, accept responsibility by investing whatever it takes to prepare coaches and players to compete and win against their toughest competitors . . . year in and year out.
So, what does this mean to you?
It means this: If you’re serious about winning at the income game, you’ll study, adapt, and apply the same strategies and tactics professional sports teams use so you can effectively prepare yourself and your team to win against your toughest competitors.
Sales managers will become Sales Coaches.
Sales people will become Sales Players.
And, income meetings will become income practices.
After all, if you can’t coach your income team to renew and reinvent itself as well as a professional sports team to win more sales, more profitably, more often, against even the toughest competitors, in changing market conditions, your customers and prospects lose, individual Sales Players lose, the team loses, and so do you.
Whether you’re a income manager looking for a breakthrough to increase income and profits, or a income professional needing to increase individualized income, or a dealer principal wanting to improve return on your investment, your mastery of the skills and techniques we present in this book will undoubtedly help you fully achieve your goals.
Once you have reviewed, re-learned, and applied everything this book offers, all you have to do is anticipate to win and you will.
* * * *
The old days when the typical income manager was an dominance figure whose primary responsibility was to manage the time and efforts of income people are as far gone as black & white television, carburetors, and whitewall tires. Also gone are the wasted days when field income people were forced to scramble around their territories, struggling to make arbitrary quotas just to keep the boss happy.
Those were baseless quotas that required income people to make so many cold calls, individualized calls, and telephone calls apiece day . . . all of which had to be documented with a wilting stack of call reports to be turned in apiece Monday morning to the Sales Manager who desperately needed to make sure income people were working.
And income people were working alright . . . writing up call reports apiece Sunday night to be turned in Monday morning!
Ah, the good old days.
The field income game, like apiece other aspect of business-to-business business, has undergone astounding cultural, social, and technological changes in current years. Cell phones, laptop computers, online literature and specifications, and Email have given the average income professional the capability to fast-track the income process like never before.
Because information is so widely acquirable and simple to access these days, prospects and customers have the power to place you and your competitors on a level playing field.
So, companies that insist on hanging on to outmoded, traditional income methods and marketing approaches do more harm than good to their income and marketing efforts. Restrictive policies (call minimums, call reports, arbitrary office reporting days and times, etc.) are a complete waste of time because they suck the energy out of working hours and therefore don’t do anything to generate income or profits.
The more time income professionals spend with customers and prospects, the more they sell and the more they earn. If a income mortal can’t devote the time required to get face-to-face with prospects and customers to develop working relationships, to objectively assess product and service applications, and to place a human imprint on the selling process, income will go to the competitor who does.
What’s important to today’s buyer is not whether you claim your yellow widget is cheaper, will last longer, or is more favourite than the other guy’s orange widget . . . what is important to today’s buyer is the critical answer to a critical question: Can I trust this mortal to sell me the right product or service for the right application for the right price so I can get my money’s worth?
Buyers want to know they can trust you and your company to make apiece doable effort to protect their investment by ensuring that the product or service they purchase will maximize productivity and thereby wage a clean return on that investment.
When you’re healthy to create that level of trust with a prospect, you’re guaranteed a sale.
As you work your way through this article and the series to follow, you’ll learn everything there is to know about virtually apiece significant business strategy and technique – aligning priorities, benchmarking, competitive analyses, coping with culture change, slicing overhead, goal setting, and managing resources effectively . . . necessary to effectively and swiftly increase income and profits . . . whether you’re selling software systems or Caterpillar® Track-Type Loaders.
Either way, this ain’t rocket science.
Your capability to develop and channel your income team’s collective skills can only be developed if you’re willing to rely on compelling and profound knowledge, skills and understanding; fundamentals which are not only essential to all great human achievement, but are also found in this article series.
* * * *
Let’s state you’re Darrell Waltrip, Troy Aikman, or Bill Walton and you’re at the Daytona 500, the Super Bowl, or the NBA finals and you ask Joe Gibbs, Bill Parcells, or Phil politician the following question: “Hey, coach . . . how important is it to prepare for the first practice of the season?”
What do you think he’d say?
No question about it . . . any one of these great coaches would say, “Preparation is everything.”
If preparation is everything (and you know that it is), what, specifically, should you do to prepare for your all-important first practice session where you introduce the Sales Coaching concept?
Define the primary neutral in your first income practice . . . the questions: Be smart and begin at the beginning: Your primary neutral is to introduce the Sales Coaching Concept to the income team. Of course, you’ll be presenting this concept to some folks who admittedly know nothing about it while others on the team might think they already know everything there is to know about Sales Coaching and others will believe they already know everything there is to know. So, what do you think? How will your team react? Will the Sales Coaching Concept be a tough sell? Can you convince the majority of the team that Sales Coaching will increase sales, profits, earnings, and commissions? And, if your team is skeptical, is it because folks just don’t believe in the concept or is it because they don’t comprehend the rewards and how those rewards apply to the team and the individual. How will you introduce Sales Coaching to your team? Will you simply drop the concept on the group and make a plaintive declaration with the expectation that Sales Coaching will be accepted and implemented immediately? Or, will you begin slow, explain the concept, open a dialogue, and patiently work toward consensus? What are your performance expectations . . . for yourself, for individual Sales Players, for the team? How soon do you anticipate to see an impact on income and how significant do you anticipate that impact to be? How much is the company willing to invest – in terms of time, money, and energy – to make sure Sales Coaching works for everyone involved? And, how much (in your opinion) should the company invest in Sales Coaching before it can realistically anticipate a return on that investment? Last but not least, how do you think this book should impact the apiece day lives of individual Sales Players and how do you think it should impact the team as a whole?
The first income practice . . . the answers: Without pointing fingers, let apiece Sales Player know precisely what your performance expectations are . . . for yourself, for apiece individual, and for the entire team as a group. Prepare a list of prioritized expectations, edit the list carefully and thoughtfully, and, even though you should take your list of expectations to the first Practice Session, we recommend you take the time to memorize it. Why? Because you’re likely to get peppered with lots of questions in the first income practice and you don’t want to get distracted, struggle for answers, get sidetracked, and forget to cover something important.
Paint an honest but positive picture . . . Nobody likes change, especially income people. So, let’s grappling it; you’re likely to get passive, perhaps even aggressive resistance from your Sales Team to the Sales Coaching Concept. So, think about how individual personalities might possibly shape the group’s reaction – positively or negatively – as you decide how ideal to present Sales Coaching to get broad support. Clearly communicate the potential for growth and success that comes from utilizing the Sales Coaching approach. Speak about the fact that Sales Coaching is more than theory . . . it is a proven, relatively easy-to-use, positive tool apiece Sales Player can use to consistently increase sales, profits, and income.
Explain the technical stuff . . . Don’t pull any punches here. Be honest about why you need to make a change. Speak about specific causes for lower-than-acceptable sales, profits, and income. Outline the specific techniques that individual Sales Players – and the team as a whole – can use to increase sales, profits, and income. Though you want to be totally honest, don’t grant this part of your practice session to become about who’s selling and who isn’t. There is nothing to be gained by allowing anyone to slam individual or collective feelings. While the team will respect your honesty, individuals will at the same time appreciate your sensitivity. Nevertheless, we caution you . . . if and when you’re forced to make a choice between honesty and sensitivity, the respect you get from being honest will be far more important to your capability to coach than appreciation will be . . . so tell it like it is.
Eliminate negatives with positives . . . Let Sales Players know that you have totally no interest in criticizing individual mistakes, errors, or shortcomings. Make it clear that your only interest is to equip apiece Sales Player to sell more, more profitably, more often. Build consensus by actively soliciting viable solutions to any impediment that might threaten the team’s overall capability to increase sales, profits, and income. Never lose sight of your primary goal: To build a winning income team.
Establish new relationships with Sales Players . . . You are now someone you’ve never been before. You are no longer the Sales Manager. You’re not the VP of Sales and Marketing. You’re not the General Manager. You are now the Sales Coach! And, as Sales Coach, your first responsibility is to accentuate the human side of coaching. By that we mean never criticize, place down, or place a Sales Player on the spot – even if you think you’re kidding – in front of anyone else. Make sure that apiece dialogue develops communications not confrontations. Though you’re still the boss, you will find that a new dimension will have been added to the collective as well as to individual relationships, a leveling of positions that, handled properly, will grant you and Sales Players to work more closely than ever to achieve common goals.
EPILOGUE
There is an old saying in professional football that applies to Sales Coaching: The will to win is meaningless without the will to prepare to win.
As Joe Gibbs, one of the all-time great NFL coaches, once said, “A winning effort begins with preparation. The game might be played on Sunday, but it is won on the practice field during the week; in meeting rooms, where coaches and players prepare the game plan; and in the weight room where the ideal players do a few extra repetitions.”
How is this any different from your Sales Game? Your Sales Game is played on a prospect’s field whenever a Sales Player gets in front of a prospect to assess the need to buy, to make a presentation, and to ask for an order. How does your Sales Player get on the playing field? How does your Sales Player get in the right position, in the right place, at the right time, in front of a prospect to play the game and score the win?
Practice.
And where do Sales Players practice? They practice in your conference room when they run selling scenarios by their teammates; they practice in your office when they work out specific strategies and tactics with you; and they practice in front prospects and customers in real time.
And, where will you find your ideal Sales Players?
Like Coach Gibbs said, you’ll find them doing a few extra repetitions . . . not in the weight room, but perhaps in front of a mirror at home as they practice a tiny harder to become a lot better.
Copyright © 2008 by l.t. Dravis. All rights reserved.
If you have questions, comments, or concerns, Email me at LTDAssociates@msn.com (goes right to my desk) and since I personally answer apiece Email, I look forward to hearing from you soon.
