Increase Your Top-Line Revenue by 20% with Effective Sales Coaching
By Bernard Chanliau, Monday 15 June, 2009
Few companies truly capitalize on effective sales coaching's potential to increase top-line revenue by up to 20%
International sales and leadership coach, Bernard Chanliau, explores why many sales coaching programmes fail to hit the mark
In the current climate, most companies are looking how to optimise their top line - the pressure on sales teams to perform is huge. Coaching has found an important niche in the development of sales people, however many programmes fail to hit targets, and worse still fundamentally demoralize staff. Why?
A survey of more than 2,600 sales reps and managers from 40 global Fortune 500 Companies by SEC Solutions found that three main drivers of sales force effectiveness led to the business case for coaching:
1. Sales teams receiving high quality coaching (as determined by each manager's direct report) are far more likely to over-perform than teams receiving low quality coaching by up to 20% on their objectives.
2. The best coaches drive up retention and effort from their team, boosting employee engagement and retention. However, low performing coaches (as determined by each manager's direct report) create a fundamentally demoralizing environment.
3. Heads of sales still see front-line managers' as their most critical development area and cite coaching skills as the most important development challenge for these managers.
Leading-edge organizations today recognize that in a downturn, efforts to improve the coaching skills of first-line sales managers have a greater ROI compared to other similar training investments made on sales reps, in terms of their direct impact on overall sales performance.
While the link between effective sales coaching and better sales performance is widely known, the majority of sales organizations fail to realize the full potential of their investments in sales coaching training. Often, this means missed opportunities for dramatic improvements in top-line revenue growth, margin enhancement, conversion rates, as well as sales forecast accuracy, and sales rep retention and engagement levels.
The root of the disconnect occurs in the delivery structure of coaching in an organisational setting. As coaching matures as a profession, there is a greater awareness growing of the need to embed coaching in the organisation's processes, power structures and objectives and a need for the coach to have a greater picture of what is happening, not just at a strategic level but to understand the forces and factors at work in the organisation system.
The majority of coaches are sole traders and work alone. Maintaining objectivity can therefore be a challenge. This is why most coaching associations favour some kind of supervision for professional coaches, as a matter of ethics. Often when I talk about 'business coaching' with internal coaches or trainers I always ask if they have ever been coached or supervised with a coach supervisor to my surprise the answer is usually "no". A fact not helped by the lack of agreed standards, ethics, and qualifications in the coaching industry.
Add to these two points, the confusion about what constitutes coaching and how it differs from training and mentoring, and it is not surprising that many organisations struggle to choose suitable coaches or coaching skills for managers' programme. One size does not fit all.
In the SEC solutions survey, the following were cited by Sales Managers as the most common pitfalls that cripple a coaching program's positive impact on sales outcomes and why coaching programmes fail:
1. Generic Coaching Training Content: Effective coaching programs must link to the organization's sales model and address individual sales manager coaching challenges. Programs must be tailored to the sales manager, their team and the go-to-market strategy of the organization.
2. Discontinuous Coaching Approach: Managers often see coaching as a sequence of separate events, similar to training, rather than an ongoing, continuous process where one coaching conversation is a continuation of the last. Coaching is a journey as much for the coachee as the coach and it needs to be ring-fenced as a leadership style.
3. Blurred Lines between Coaching and Performance Management: Managers must clearly differentiate these interactions and ensure that salespeople recognize a "safe" coaching environment. Managers deliberately need to affirm their relationship with their sales rep as this is one of the biggest disadvantages of internal coaching as oppose to external coaching.
4. Lack of an Effective Coaching Infrastructure: Without the appropriate supporting "coaching infrastructure," it is near impossible to sustain long-term coaching benefits. The most progressive organizations actively measure coaching effectiveness on an ongoing basis and fully engage second-line and senior managers in the process to ensure that coaching remains an ongoing priority, not a passing fad leading to a cultural shift.
5. Gross Under-Estimation of Coaching Difficulty: Managers often revert to teaching sales tactics that worked well for them rather than focusing on the new skills required to effectively coach in today's environment. Critical to coaching today is the ability to correctly observe behaviour and specify behaviour change.
Companies selecting coaches or considering "Coaching Skills for Managers" programmes should therefore take the following into consideration
1. What are the qualifications and experience of the coach? If you are looking for sales coaches, do not be misled by the title "business coach".... this does not mean the person has training in sales or business. Look for coaches that are accredited with their coaching organisation - that means they have clocked up a good number of hours of experience and their work is verified and referenced.
2. Coaching is a journey not an event. Consider that sales coaching should take place over the long term and include a mix of group and 1-1 coaching. When training managers to coach, find an external coach supervisor or mentor who can help keep their coaching skills tip-top through regular supervision sessions.
3. Get senior management buy-in. What responsibilities/onus is on the organisation to learn too, through the awareness that coaching creates? There's nothing worse than empowering employees when their managers don't listen and quickly disempower them.
4. Take time to brief your coaching trainer on your sales processes, so that the coaching and training can be bespoke to your situation. A coach training relationship should be a partnership for growth, not just a supplier.
5. If training front line managers, help them to differentiate between time spent "managing" and time spent "coaching" by bringing coaching into a wider culture of creating the "learning organisation". Culture supports or thwarts change developed through coaching and training - be clear whether yours is a supporter or thwarter.
Bernard Chanliau, Director of Xenergie Consulting Ltd, www.xenergie.com is a professional accredited Sales Leadership Coach and sits with the board of the International Coach Federation Irish Chapter, member of the Association for Coaching and part of the global faculty panel for SEC Solutions, leading NASDAQ sales research best business practice firm. His latest projects with SEC Solutions covered the training of 130 sales directors for a Global Fortune 100 firms on Coaching Skills for Managers and rolling out a sales coaching culture.
