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Coaching Is Tough Enough, Why Do We Make It More Complicated That It Need Be?

David Brock — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:45:31 +0000

I’ve been reading a lot of different stuff about coaching recently. It’s good to see the different points of view, I learn something from each of them. But in the end, sometimes I wonder if we are taking something that is already very tough and making it more complicated than it need be.

I read endless debates about who we should spend our time with, A’s, B’s, or C’s. Everyone has a different view. Some people even try to measure the optimal time spent coaching each person each week—it’s 15.23675899 minutes per person per week–OK I made that up, but you can find similar statistics in various posts.

There are lots of discussions about coaching approaches–directive, non-directive, and so forth. Actually, I think these are very important discussions because they focus on maximizing the impact of each coaching discussion. But some of them take the approach too far and are too formulaic, “use these words, with this emphasis, at this moment…”

In the end I’m more confused than I started (and I’m actually a pretty good coach).

I guess I subscribe to the KISS approach–Keep It Simple Stupid. I like it because I can really relate with the Stupid part.

Here are some principles that have worked on me and for me. Some will be helpful to you–by all means adapt them (send me royalty checks), for those that aren’t don’t worry about them.

The manager’s job is to get thing done through their people. The only way we achieve our goals is through our people. Our job then becomes maximizing the performance of our people. Virtually everything else that manager’s do is supportive of this primary function.
If our job is to maximize the performance of our people, then coaching is the highest impact activity that we can engage in. Sure there are things that help–training, systems, tools. But coaching is where we as managers maximize our impact.
Everybody needs coaching–EVERYBODY, even you. Make sure your manager is coaching you. Coach the people who report to you, make sure everyone is coached.
Now for the first contradictory guideline. This is in direct violation to 3. Don’t waste your time on people who aren’t willing to be coached. In fact, go one step further, get rid of them. People who are willing to be coached aren’t willing to grow and improve. Even if they are top performers today, tomorrow they’ll be dinosaurs.
Now we’ve reduced this to a simpler problem and we can re-invoke item 3, everyone needs to be coached.
Go where the problems are! We tell our sales people to go where the money is, so likewise, if we want to maximize performance, go where the problems are. This means we probably have greater impact by working with our C’s and B’s. (But remember rule 3–and I’ll come back to A’s).
Spend whatever time it takes and is appropriate for the situation. Sometimes great coaching is one or two questions/observations expressed in a casual hallway conversation. There is no quota for coaching, 15.23675899 minutes per person per week is not the answer or the goal. Having an impact on performance is the goal. Do you coach A’s for 12.5267 minutes, B’s for 15.23675899 minutes and C’s for 4.237 minutes? No, spend the time you have to–after all it’s the best way to use your time.
Every conversation and discussion is a coaching opportunity. After a meeting, you have coaching opportunities, in a pipeline review, in a territory review, windshield time, in the hallway or drinking a cup of coffee (substitute the beverage of your choice). We don’t schedule coaching sessions or meetings, we look for every conversation and interaction as an opportunity to coach.
Timeliness is key. Coach when you see something happen if you want to have an impact. Recalling that sales call 30 days ago where someone could have done something differently is a waste of everyone’s time.
In looking at 8 and 9, everyone needs coaching, everyone can sharpen their performance–so don’t forget your A’s.
Sometimes your best coaching for low performers is coaching them to move into a role where they can maximize their performance, where they can become A’s or B’s. It may be a different sales role in the organization, it may be with another company. C’s and low performers can’t be ignored. You have to deal with them and you deal with them by coaching–improving their performance in their current jobs, or moving them into other roles–it’s part of what coaching is.
Here’s one for everyone, but it’s a way to really rocket A performers to even higher levels of contribution. Remember you aren’t just maximizing current performance on the job, you are also maximizing the ability for them to achieve their full potential–maximizing their contribution over time to the company. For example, you may be coaching some of your better performers to prepare them to step up to greater levels of responsibility–perhaps broader or different sales responsibilities, perhaps moving into management. So we coach for both current performance and future performance.
When coaching, ask more questions than tell, listen more than you talk, probe and understand before leaping to conclusions, understand their point of view, be prepared to admit you are wrong. Get them to think, get them to explore.
Here’s the second exception, sometimes the most appropriate coaching might be, “You really screwed that one up!” In the right situation it is very powerful. Sometimes telling is right–I’ll leave you to figure that out (or you can hire me to tell you).
Be human–no one is perfect, no one has all the answers. Sometimes shit happens. Laugh!
Set an example, sometimes the best coaching is what they see you doing — and not doing.
Realize and revel in opportunities where your people may, in fact, be coaching you. It’s subtle, it’s to be treasured. It means they care.
The corollary to 17 is you have to care! You have to care about your people as people, you have to care about their success. If you don’t, you have no business being a manager, and you will never be successful as a coach.
Above all KISS.

(If this isn’t enough for you, email me for our Coaching eBook., I’ll be glad to send it. Just give me your full name and email address, send the request to me at dabrock@excellenc.com)

Maximizing Sales Management Impact

David Brock — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:29:16 +0000

Sales management is one of the toughest jobs around—particularly that of the first line sales manager. Fundamentally, our job is to maximize the performance of our sales teams–both tactically and strategically. I read a post, How the VP of Sales can Inspire their Sales Team with 4 Simple Habits. It got me reflecting on how managers maximize their impact, and where managers should spend their time, not just the Vice President of Sales, but all levels of sales management.

The post offers some interesting suggestions, frankly a number of them I disagree with very strongly. Let’s start with the areas in which we are in real alignment.

The biggest impact a sales manager at any level can have is by being out with their people in front of customers. Yet too often, exactly the opposite thing happens–managers spend too much of their time internally focused. They are chained to their desks, conducting internal meetings, conducting internal reviews, spending time reporting on what’s going on. Some of this is necessary-we need to communicate to the rest of the organization, we need to get resources and support for our people, we need to get help for our customers. But too often, managers are consumed with this. They stop visiting customers, they stop visiting their people.

Being chained to the desk, being focused on reporting, staying internally focused on internal politics do not produce revenue or improve the capabilities of sales people.

Without a doubt, the number 1 and the number 1 priorities of sales managers are Customers and Your People! If the majority of your time isn’t spent in the field working with your people and visiting your customers, you are prioritizing things incorrectly. Nothing trumps spending your time here–period. A number of years ago, I was EVP of Sales for a large organization. I was scheduled to do a presentation at our Board of Directors. It was an “important” presentation. As the day approached, a critical customer situation arose. It was clear that my involvement was needed and, unfortunately, the only time available with the customer conflicted with my ability to present to the Board. The decision was easy for me–I conveyed my apologies to my boss, the CEO, and to the Board Members, saying Customers and this situation were more important. Fortunately, my boss and the board applauded that decision–and we did get the order.

So managers need to prioritize time with customers and with their people. We need to unchain ourselves from our desks and spend the majority of our time in the field. Take a moment right now and look at your calendar for the past 30 days. If you haven’t spent a minimum of 50 percent of your time in the field with your people and with customers, you’re not maximizing your impact.

Now once we’ve committed to spend our time in the field, where do we have the most impact? This is where I think the article is dead wrong. It suggests that managers spend the bulk of their time with A players and calling on their customers. I don’t want to ignore the A players, but this is not where the problems are, this is not where managers have the most impact—both in driving performance of sales people and in contributing to closing business. By definition, the A players really don’t need your help, so it’s irresponsible to focus the bulk of our time with them, unless all you want is “feel good” meetings.

Where we as managers have the greatest impact and leverage is with our B and even C players. Maximizing the performance of that huge middle range of our people—the B players has the highest return on a manager’s time. Working with them, we have so much more impact, so much greater room for helping them improve. Likewise, the impact we have working with them, on their deals, helping strengthen their competitive positioning and moving the deal through the customer’s buying cycle. (For a different perspective the value of focusing on your B players, look at what the authors of Challenger Selling have to say.)

It may be more fun hanging out with A players and their customers, but that’s not our job as sales managers. Our job is to maximize the performance of our organization. We have to invest our time where it has greatest impact, and frankly where we’re needed. By definition, it won’t be with our top performers.

This doesn’t say we ignore our C players either. Our job is to maximize performance, this includes dealing with performance problems. Coaching our C players–either getting them to be B’s or A’s, moving them into roles where they can be B’s or A’s (and that may be out of the company) is our responsibility as managers.

Whatever level of manager you are, spend your time where you have the greatest impact–it’s always with customers and sales people. Once you get out to the field, don’t hide out–head straight for the people and customers where you can bring the greatest value and impact, and where you are most needed. Don’t ignore your A players or your great customers, but they don’t really need you as much. It’s your B and C players that need you and your attention. It’s the tough customers where you can help both your people and the customers the most.

Serve your people, serve your customers, the rest takes care of itself.

Who Should We Be Coaching?

David Brock — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:45:24 +0000

I’ve been reading a number of different posts on the topic of “Who Should We Be Coaching?” There seem to be a variety of views, most of which I struggle with. Some say focus on the middle, suggesting the return on coaching time for both high performers and low performers is not high. Some focus on the high performers and middle. In general the low performers lose out.

I’m struggling with some of the ideas, these ideas, frankly, I think it’s the manager’s job to be coaching everyone. This doesn’t mean each person requires the same amount of time in coaching. Nor does it mean we have a cookie cutter approach to coaching everyone on the same thing.

Also, I think too many people tend to view things as relatively static. If competitive sales practices stood still and we didn’t need to improve or innovate, then perhaps we could reduce our coaching for top performers. But things are always changing, everyone needs coaching and development to continue to improve and innovate. Without this, top performers soon become mediocre performers. The bar on selling is continually being raised. In fact a large part of our job as managers is raising that bar–continuing to innovate and improve, consequently, helping our people develop new capabilities, skills and coaching them in these improvement initiatives.

It seems to me, that coaching needs to focus on several areas for each person:

Top performers: No one is perfect, top performers, in fact, always look for the little edge or the little improvement. Managers need to spend time helping these top performers discover these improvements. The world of selling never stops–leveraging your top performers for constant improvement and innovation is an important aspect of coaching–managers should be leveraging top performers to help innovate and improve, taking what these top performers discover and leveraging this across the sales organization. Finally, part of the manager’s job is to coach people not only in maximizing their performance today, but to maximize their potential contribution in the future. Manager’s need to look at developing top performers to take greater responsibility–whether it is moving to a higher level as a sales person, moving into management, or moving into some other role. Coaching is not just about today, but it is about preparing people for tomorrow.
Mid-range performers: There’s no argument here, we want to see continued improvement in the performance of our mid range performers. Unlike our top performers, there is clearly a need to improve what they are doing today. As managers, most of our time will be focused on performance in their current roles. At the same time, we must also prepare them for the future–if the bar is being raised, we have to prepare these people to meet these new challenges.
Low performers: We can’t afford to ignore them, we can’t write them off. As managers, we need to coach them—getting them to improve their performance, meeting our expectations. Alternatively, we have to move them into a job where they can be a top performer (sometimes that’s moving them out of the company). All of this is part of the manager’s role in coaching, doing nothing is not an option, that is if the manager is doing her job.

As managers, we are responsible for the performance of all our people. We have to make sure each person is performing at the highest levels possible in their current roles, we have to prepare them to grow in their job and to grow in their ability to contribute to the company. If we can’t get them to reach the levels of performance required, we have to move them into areas where they can perform. All of this is part of what managers do in coaching.

I wish it were simpler, but they aren’t. Managers have to coach everyone. The time we invest has to be appropriate for what we are trying to achieve with each person. We can’t “schedule 15 minutes of coaching” for each person–it doesn’t work that way. What we coach each person on is different–we have to coach to maximum impact for each individual.

What do you think? Am I missing something?

Working On Trust

David Brock — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 06:45:45 +0000

Trust is the cornerstone in developing healthy relationships,whether they be personal or professional. It’s particularly important in our effectiveness as sales people. However, there’s a lot of bad information about establishing and maintaining trust–both with your customers and within your organization.

The launch of their new book: The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook, gave me the opportunity to sit down and talk with my good friend Charlie Green and his co-author Andrea Howe to talk about key issues we face in being trustworthy.

Dave: Charlie, you know my passion about the role of sales managers in coaching their teams in improving their effectiveness. How can managers coach and develop their sales people to becoming more trustworthy in engaging and working with their customers? Does it even make sense to be thinking of coaching trustworthiness.

Charlie: I like how you assume the “whether” and jump right to the “how.” You’re quite right. And the “how” has a couple of simple answers. The way you coach people to become more trustworthy with their customers – first and foremost – is to be a role model. Walk the talk. Show them how it’s done. Act that way yourself.

Think about it: why would anyone trust what you say about how to do something if you yourself aren’t following your own advice? Answer: they wouldn’t. Nor should they.

When you say does it make sense to be even coaching it, I think what you’re getting at is nature-nurture – is this something that can be taught at all, or can it actually be learned? When it comes to trustworthiness, the answer is clearly yes, it can be taught and learned. It’s more a matter of noticing what others look for than anything else.

Interestingly, it is harder to teach trusting someone than it is to teach someone to be trustworthy. That’s because the risky part of trust lies in trusting, not in being trusted. There’s one exception to that, which is that you can’t just be trustworthy – at some point, if you want to be trusted, you’re going to have to take a leap and do some trusting of your own. We don’t trust those who never trust us.

Dave: Great insights Charlie. The point about walking the talk is critical, too often we see the exact opposite behavior–managers or execs saying, “Do as I say, not as I do…” I don’t think we can ever overstate the importance of the example executives and managers have to set within their own organizations. Thanks for sharing those ideas Charlie. Andrea, how should managers deal with people who either really are, or are perceived as, being untrustworthy themselves?

Andrea: Dave, this is my favorite question. Do you ever notice how we almost never have bad intentions or harbor ill will toward others. But others, hooh boy, they may be out to get us, or have it in for us, are laying in wait for us, or just don’t like us.

Since sometimes “we” are “them”, this just doesn’t add up. All those untrustworthy people typically have spouses, or kids–at least a dog, for heaven’s sake–who seems to like them. So honestly–much of the fault lies in ourselves.

We need, first and foremost, to understand where they are coming from, to understand it from their side. And yes, there are those cases where people really are untrustworthy, but even then, don’t shoot them before they’ve committed the crime. Here’s where another saying comes into play: the fastest way to make someone trustworthy is to trust them.

Dave: I hadn’t really thought of it in that way before, usually we tend to think of it as “them,” we never think we may be part of the problem. It’s something we have to constantly examine in ourselves. Charlie, let me go back to the role of the leader, what personal example should managers at all levels set in establishing a culture of trustworthiness?

Charlie: Dave, you know, I wish people would take that as a very serious question. I would like to. There are two simple things that any manager can do to drastically improve the level of trust in their organization:

Do a great job of listening. Even if you know the answer. Especially if you know the answer. Because no one is buying your answer until you’ve done them the simple decency of hearing them out. That builds trust.
Tell the truth. Don’t tweak it, don’t hide it, don’t try to massage it. Just speak the truth, straight out, all the time, to everyone. If you get in the habit of doing that, you’ll be amazed at how it gets picked up in the organization.

Dave: Let’s drill down into that a little more, how can managers best motivate their salespeople?

Charlie: Well, some people smarter than I (e.g. Dan Pink) have done a great job of demolishing the notion that people are best motivated by money. A few decades ago, Alfie Kohn wrote that “incentives work–they work to make people want more incentives.” Nothing motivates like intrinsic motivation, and the best intrinsic motivation is helping people to get better at doing what’s important to them.

Help is the best motivator there is.

Dave: I couldn’t agree more. Too often, I think managers try to use financial incentives inappropriately. Being helpful is often the most important way to support and motivate your people. Andrea, let me shift gears. I often hear from sales people who work for companies that aren’t ”trusted.” Can you be trustworthy in a company that isn’t trusted?

Andrea: Yes, you can. In fact, one of the surprising facts uncovered by our research on the Trust Quotient and the Trust Equation was that industry is not destiny. I thought there would be more correlation between individual trust scores and low-trust industries like pharmaceuticals and finance. But the correlations are very weak. Individuals can be very trustworthy.

Of course that raises a question about long-term fit and influence, and the story isn’t simple, but I would put it this way: if you think your organization or your colleagues are not trustworthy, you should not use that as an excuse for yourself not being as trustworthy as you can be. We have a whole chapter on constructive ways to be trustworthy in tough situations. Too many people throw up their hands and say, “Oh, that’s a career-limiting move, being trustworthy.” Well, if you give up at that point, you’re absolutely part of the problem, when you could have been part of the solution.

Dave: Andrea or Charlie, let me tee this last question up, how can you make a customer trust you?

Charlie: Ha ha nice setup; the whole answer has to start from the premise that you can’t. Bonnie Raitt sang a gorgeous song back in the 90s, called I Can’t Make You Love Me. The inspiration for the song is a great story in and of itself. It’s a great reminder that if you set out to make someone do something, you’ve already set yourself up to fail.

Any parent of a teenager realizes this, though they may try to deny it. And it’s the same for all of us, all the time. You can’t make someone trust you.

But you can have influence. And influence starts with recognizing you can’t make it happen. All our little metrics and incentive systems aimed at closing sales are fundamentally flawed–they encourage us to pursue a goal that is our goal, not our customers’ goals.

Trust is loaded with irony. Ironically, the best way to get the sale is to stop trying to get the sale. The best way to get your goals met is to help others meet their goals. The best way to get someone to listen to you is to first, listen to them. The best way to get someone to trust you is to trust them.

These truths are practically self-evident–but we’ve forgotten them. Go re-read Neil Rackham. Go listen to Zig Ziglar. Go read Cialdini on influence. They all say the same thing: people don’t care what you know until you know that they care. Those are the rules of trust, and the rules of human interactions. The ultimate irony for sales is, to be successful in sales, you have to give up trying to be successful at sales. Instead, help your customer.

And if that sounds like a Beatle song or a Buddhist koan, well, they know a few things about life. The fact that it’s also good business shouldn’t surprise anyone except someone who’s gotten a twisted view of what business ought to look like.

Dave: Charlie, I knew I could trust you to end this interview with some great reflections on how we can lead more effective lives. Thanks Andrea and thank you Charlie! I really appreciate your insights. I know we can go on, but we’ll stop here.

Postscript: The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook needs to be a desktop guide for sales managers and sales people. Andrea and Charlie have created a comprehensive road map and pragmatic guide to profoundly changing your relationships with your customers. We all aspire to become “trusted advisors” to our customers. Follow Andrea’s and Charlie’s instructions, you’ll be well on your way!

Do You Have A Plan?

David Brock — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:45:03 +0000

Do you have a plan?

Do you have a plan for winning this deal?

Do you know the key activities you must execute to win the deal?
Do these activities align with the customer’s buying process?
Do these activities align with your selling process?
Do these activities align with the target decision date?
Do you know who is inovled in the decision, their priorities, concerns, attitudes and role in the decision?
Do you know the customer decision making process?
Do you know who the competition is and how you will position your solutions?
Do you know what the customers value and how you will position your unique value?
Do you know how the customer will evaluate the business case? Can you create a compelling business case?
Do you have contingency strategies, to address changes you discover in executing the plan?
Do you know the resources within your organization or partner organizations you need to execute the plan? Do they understand their roles and are they committed to them?
Have you documented the plan?
Are you executing the plan, updating it based on what you learn?

Do you have a plan for this sales call?

Do you know how this call fits into the execution of your opportunity plan/strategy?
Do you have clear goals for what you want to achieve–does this move you forward in the execution of your opportunity plan?
Do you have stretch goals for this meeting?
Are the right customers participating in this meeting–do you have the people involved that enable you to achieve your goals and objectives?
Have you prepared the questions you need to ask?
Have you anticipated questions or objections the customer may have? Are you prepared to deal with these?
Have you thought of the worst possible question the customer might raise in the meeting?
Do you have a written call plan?
Do you have an agenda? Have you reviewed and agreed upon the agenda with the customer?
Do you know what value you will create for the customer in this meeting?
Are you adjusting and updating your opportunity plan based on the outcomes of this call?
Have you written a follow up thank you to all who participated in the meeting, updating on agreements and next steps?

Do you have a plan to achieve your quota?

Do you know the number of opportunities you need to close to achieve your goals?
Do you have a sufficient number of opportunities in the pipeline to achieve your goals?
Do you have the right opportunities qualified and in your pipeline? Is it a quality pipeline?
Do you know the prospecting activities you need to conduct to make sure you have the right flow of qualified deals coming into your pipeline?
Do you know your win rate? Do you have a plan to improve it?
Do you know your sales cycle time? Are you working on strategies to compress it?
Do you have good flow/velocity through the pipeline? Are you avoiding stuck deals?

Do you have a plan to manage your time this week?

Do you plan your calendar and meetings at least 2 weeks in advance, do you write it in your calendar?
Do you know how many prospecting calls you need to make this week? Have you scheduled them into your calendar?
Do you have an efficient meeting plan? Are you managing your time and travel most effectively?
Have you allocated/scheduled time for internal meetings and administrative tasks?
Do you have a meeting with your manager schedules? Do you have objectives for what you want to achieve in the meeting?
Do you have buffer time allocated within the week to handle unanticipated items?
Have you scheduled time for social business activities?

Do you have a plan for yourself?

Have you established short term, intermediate, and long term goals for what you want to achieve—both in business, in the community, with your friends and family, and for yourself?
Do you have an agreement with your manager on what you would like to achieve in your job, how your performance will be evaluated, and your manager’s role in coaching and supporting you?
Have you identified things you need to learn and develop? Do you allocate time for this every week?
Do you have a plan to exercise and have you scheduled it into your calendar?
Do you have outside interests and hobbies that you pursue?
Do you have a reading list? Are you checking things off?
Do you have a bucket list? Are you checking things off?
Do you have a mentor? Do you leverage your mentor(s) in your development?

There are other plans you should have–account, territory, and others.

If you have a plan, are you executing it? If not, then your plans are just wishful thinking.

If you don’t have a plan, you won’t get to where you want to go!

We Are Who We Hire

David Brock — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:30:28 +0000

The other day I received a call from a troubled CEO. He ran a small company. “My sales people aren’t producing results! My sales manager is worthless! Can you help me straighten this out?” After asking a few questions and probing a little further, I politely declined, I made some excuse and suggested he find someone else.

I didn’t take the project because as I spoke to him, I discovered the root problem was the CEO. Yes, there was a problem with the people. They didn’t have the skills, they didn’t have the attributes, there were a lot of problems. Some appeared to be doing things that skirted some ethical and business practice issues. Others were just plain lazy or sloppy. Potentially 75% the sales team was wrong and should have been terminated. The manager was all wrong as well. He wasn’t doing what the owner expected, he wasn’t doing what he should have been doing.

There were a lot of problems with the sales organization. It started with having the wrong people. But I couldn’t help this CEO fix these problems. He basically was the root problem–he had hired all the people, he had created the environment in which all these people operated.

The people we hire are a reflection of us and our companies. They are a reflection of what we value, our culture, our operating style, what we think of our customers. We tend to hire in our own image. If we are hiring all the wrong people, what does that say about us and our company? What does this say about what we think of our customers, or how we want them to be handled.

Too often, I see people complaining about their sales people, when the root problem is them. It starts with bad hiring decisions, it continues with providing them poor leadership, not defining performance objectives, not managing performance, not taking action with problem performers.

When I see this problem, systematically, in an organization, while there may be problems with the sales people, the root problem is with management.

Are you hiring the people that will represent you and your company the way you want to be represented?

Are you setting the right performance expectations, providing the right tools, systems, processes, training?

Are you providing the leadership, coaching and developing people, making sure they are acting in a way that is consistent with your strategies, values, and culture?

Do you act on problem performers?

If you see lots of problems in your organization, the first place to look in fixing the problems is in the mirror.

Performance Management Friday — It’s Not About The Numbers

David Brock — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:18:25 +0000

Today, I want to take a pause in this series. Over the past couple of months, each Friday, we’ve looked at different performance metrics. We’ve focused on establishing numbers and goals for these metrics. It’s worth taking some time to reconfirm what we are doing and why. Too often, I see sales people and managers making mistakes–everything is about the number or goal itself. The focus becomes–have we made our weekly telephone call goal? Have we met our target for the right number of meetings?

When the focus starts to be on achieving the goal, then things can start going off target. If we focus on making the number of telephone calls–we may be making the wrong telephone calls–any call just to make the number. I once was coaching an inside sales team. As you would expect, they each had a daily telephone call goal. I started listening to some of the calls to see how well they were executing the calls. One person was interesting–he was just hitting his goal, he seemed to be making his other goals, but when I listened to his calls, at least 10 percent of them were to friends and family. He knew they would show up on his daily metrics as “calls,” so he knew he would make his “goal.”

Some of you might say, “well that’s what happens when management establishes meaningless goals!” The problem was, he had set his daily call target himself. He was finding it difficult to make the number of calls he needed to make, so he was gaming the system–and fooling himself, just to hit “the number.”

Each of us do this–it sometimes is unconscious, it happens over time. Over time, we may lose track of why we established a particular goal–and our focus becomes the number. That number and that goal become meaningless in terms of helping us improve our overall performance. In the example I cited with the telesales person, it would have been better for him to have not gamed the system. He should have focused on the “right calls,” not just making the number. His manager thought he was doing well, the manager had no idea the sales person was having a problem. When we filtered the false calls out of his performance we were able to sit down and look at the real performance. It turned out over the past 60 days, he could make about 90% of the “right calls.” He was filling the rest with calls just to make the number. When we started looking at the reason he wasn’t achieving his number, it became very clear–he didn’t have a good supply of leads to be able to make a sufficient number of calls. He was calling all the leads he had every day, but there were just not enough for him to achieve his daily call volume. It turned out he was also being measure on percent of leads processed–he was handling 100%, so things were looking good, from that point of view, but he didn’t have enough leads to achieve the call goal he had established himself.

It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t able to make the right number of calls–he just didn’t have enough leads. No one knew this, no one could help him address that issue.

In another situation, the sales people were making their order quotas, but they weren’t reaching their revenue targets. Corporate management was beating sales management up for revenue–”You aren’t meeting your sales revenue goals!” When we looked at the causes, the reason was far beyond sales’ control. It was in manufacturing–a supplier had failed to deliver critical parts, they could make and ship the products, consequently revenue was slowing. Sales couldn’t do a thing about this, but people were so focused on the number, they forgot to understand why.

It sounds crazy, but this happens too often. We lose site of what the numbers mean.

See the numbers and our performance against them are just indicators. When we aren’t attaining our goals, it’s important to understand WHY. What are the underlying reasons, what is preventing us from making the goals, what might we do to eliminate those root issues? We establish goals based on what we think should be happening, what we should be doing, and what levels of performance we should be achieving. When we aren’t achieving the goals, when our numbers are off, these are warning signs. These warning signs mean we should be looking and underlying reasons. Have things changed, are there problems we should be addressing, are the goals appropriate or should we change the goals.

The numbers are important–but primarily because they are the indicators of underlying problems, challenges or opportunities. If our focus in only on achieving the numbers, and we fail to look at the underlying reasons, then we will only move further off course.

We do that as individuals. We forget why we established certain goals, in the rush of every day business, we get on auto pilot, failing to stop and take the time to understand why we aren’t making our numbers—we just blindly chase the numbers.

As managers, too often our focus on our people numbers loses focus. We demand that people hit the number, we coerce, cajole, persuade, threaten when people aren’t making the numbers. We forget the numbers are indicators, we forget to look at why people aren’t making the numbers. In the example above, it wasn’t the sales person’s fault. He wasn’t responsible for getting leads, he was responsible for following them up and nurturing them. He wasn’t “hitting the number” because he didn’t have enough leads. Our jobs as managers is to help our people achieve their goals—removing or solving problems, helping develop new skills, changing bad habits.

The numbers aren’t ends, they are just means for us to understand performance–our own, our people’s. Are you using the numbers properly?

Performance Management Friday — Getting Personal

David Brock — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 06:45:56 +0000

For this week’s Performance Management discussion, I’m shifting gears quite a bit. It’s a topic few sales people think about as an aspect of managing their personal performance, but it’s critical. All the best sales people I’ve met spend time setting specific goals in this area.

I’d like to focus this discussion on Personal Development. Too often, sales people surrender their personal development to whatever the company does—the annual sales training meeting, tools or resources on internal websites. If their managers are doing a good job in coaching, the manager may recommend resources they might use to improve their skills and capabilities–but too often, managers just aren’t doing that, choosing instead to focus on “what have you done for me lately?”

Regardless what your companies or managers do, each sales person has to have a personal development plan and goals that allow them to achieve their full potential. Whether it’s developing new skills to help achieve your quota, to become more effective as a sales person, or to prepare for the next job or role.

Top performers are always learning, they are always investing in improving themselves. They set goals to acquire new skills, learn new things, expand their capabilities. They look for traditional and non traditional ways of learning and developing.

What should a sales person do in setting personal development goals? Here some ideas:

Do a personal assessment of your current skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Match them with what is needed to be a top performer in your company, industry, etc. Identify 2-3 new skills or capabilities you want to focus on for the next 6 months or year.
Ask friends, mentors, your manager for their views on item (1), get their input. They may see things you are blind to. Push your manager hard on this—it’s part of your manager’s job, so get them to help identify developmental areas.
Don’t focus just on current or tactical capabilities, but think about where you want to be in a year or two years. I’m not talking about promotions or changing jobs, but think about where you want to be in your personal development and performance. Use these ideas to help shape what you might focus on.
Think “outside the box.” Too often, I see sales people focusing only on selling skills. Are those the skills important to your success with customers? Are those the skills important to your future growth? You may want to expand your horizons–look at general business, marketing, financial analysis or anything having to do with improving business acumen. Consider areas like change management, project management, time management, procurement/purchasing. Consider learning new tools that improve your effectiveness. Consider industry skills. At one time in my career, I sold to banks. I got a customers (a very large NYC bank to allow me to sit in a new hire class for 4 days–it’s where they taught new hires the basics of banking). It didn’t cost anything, my customer was pleased to have me participate–they wanted me to be more knowledgeable about their industry. I learned a huge amount that I never could have gotten anywhere else (plus met some future customers).
Consider putting together a peer group to focus on devleopmental issues. There’s a group of sales women in Boston–they call themselves the Fab 5. They’ve done something awesome. They get together to learn and coach each other on selling. They attend seminars together, they read books, they have discussions about what each faces in their job and use each other for personal development. They get together once a month, then have frequent phone calls. It’s won of the most fantastic ideas I’ve heard of in taking responsibility for personal development.
Read, read, read. Reading is one of the cheapest, easiest, and best ways of learning and developing yourself. Read books, blogs, professional magazines. I have a friend that has a goal to read 100 business books a year–I don’t know that it’s necessary to read that many–sometimes I wonder if there are a 100 good one’s published a year. Set a goal of 1 a month–or whatever is appropriate. There tremendous numbers of “free” resources on the web–blogs–hopefully this one is on your regular reading list, but many others. One thing I don’t see sales people reading much on are the blogs, journals, magazines their customers are reading. If your customer is in the banking industry, read banking journals and blogs. As part of this, participate in discussions on the web, share ideas, learn from others.
Related to the previous point, there are a lot of great free or near free webinars–leverage them.
Take some formal courses. Go to your local college, audit a course. Get your company to pay for you to go to a good seminar.
Devour any training your company provides. It’s interesting, I’ve trained over 100,000 sales people. Those that always pay attention the most, those that challenge me the most, those that get the most out of the class or workshop are the one’s that need to workshop the least. They’re the top performers, they’re the one’s committed to learning and devleoping, they’re the one’s that know they can always learn something from everything they do. By contrast, the one’s that complain, say it’s a waste of time, secretly do their email, are usually the mediocre or poor performers. They are the one’s that don’t realize personal development and continuous learning is what sets them apart and drive success. They will continue to struggle, falling further behind, never quite performing and blaming everyone else.
Get a mentor–not necessarily someone you pay for, but someone who you respect, who’s been around the block a few times. Get someone who is willing to challenge and push you. Someone who is not going to tell you how wonderful you are, but will challenge you to reach your goals, who will ask you tough questions. Make sure both you and the mentor commit to a relationship for a good period of time–think of a year at least. Don’t limit yourself to one.
Finally, while I’ve mentioned it before—look for development in different places. Look outside your industry, look outside sales. Diversify your personal development—focus on building business skills, focus on building yourself as a whole person. These are what set you apart.

You are responsible for your own development. Make sure you have a personal development plan in place. Measure your attainment on the plan–set 1-2 goals every quarter. Make sure you achieve them!

For managers, make sure your people take responsibility in identifying their personal development plan and establishing goals. Coach them, help them understand what they need to do–both to maximize their performance and their potential. Help them identify resources that help in their development, provide funding to support this, invest in your people. Make sure you have a personal development plan for yourself—personal development never stops, regardless the role you are in.

Innovation And Improvement — Whose Job In Sales Is It?

David Brock — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:59:39 +0000

Before I jump ahead, let me first tackle the basic notions of innovation and improvement in sales. Too many may look at this post thinking, “I’m struggling to make my numbers, don’t bother me with this talk about innovation and improvement.”

I can empathize with this feeling. We are overworked, we have too much on our plates. Research says fewer than 50% of sales people are making their numbers. We’re so caught up in “fighting the alligators” that we forget the “swamp needs to be drained.” But these are the very factors that mandate the need for innovation and improvement. We can’t go on working harder, faster, longer. We can’t go on doing the same things faster, cheaper, better. No technology in the world will enable us to keep up.

Something has to change! Sales people cannot survive working like this!

It’s worse, our customers are changing faster than sales. How they are buying is changing faster than many organization’s abilities to respond–perhaps that’s why so many are not making their numbers. There are dire predictions that the number of jobs in sales will plummet in the coming decade.

Customers are driven to find the most effective paths to buying. Some will purchase electronically, using the Internet for research, advice, learning, and purchasing. Some will leverage electronic auctions more, others will reduce sales to responding to RFP’s they develop. There will still be need for sales, but that need will be different. Perhaps many field sales jobs will move to inside sales–and that is probably appropriate.

Things are changing. My friend, Dave Stein of ESResearch, says “More has changed in selling in the past three years, than in the entire history of selling.” I’m in absolute agreement, and in the next three years, the rate of change probably needs to double.

So innovation and improvement are critical, not just for survival of the sales function (frankly that’s not important, customers will always find a way to buy), but for our own individual survival.

I don’t think it’s a matter of either innovate or improve. Both are mandatory. Improvements focus on what we do and get us to do them better. Innovations have us do things differently. Frankly, I think both work hand in hand.

Whose job is it–it’s everyone’s job. Each sales person, each customer service person, each customer facing or customer engaged person needs to constantly look at improvements—how can they do their own jobs better? Each needs to be creative, how can I do my job differently?

Sales executive management (and corporate management) need to be the catalysts in driving this. They need to create a culture of improvement and innovation, they need to stimulate everyone, they need to set examples for the rest of the organization. We need to engage in thousands of little experiments–the majority may fail, but those that succeed can drive massive improvement. We need to get away from the notion of “innovation as a big bang,” focusing on “THE” initiative that will change everything. We need to engage everyone in the organization. We need to engage our customers in this.

Perhaps we can learn from history. The Toyota Production System (TPS), is often cited as one of the biggest innovations in the way products are manufactured—driving much of manufacturing thought leadership in the 70′s, 80′s, even into the present. However when you look at it, I think the real innovation in was the leadership and culture created by Toyota executives. They created a culture that demanded and empowered everyone in manufacturing to think, improve, and change. Anyone could stop the line, if something was wrong. They stimulated employees to get together and think about better ways to do things.

In reality, the Toyota Production System was not the result of massive change to the way vehicles were manufactured, but the results of hundreds of thousands of improvements, changes, innovations. These were driven by each person on the factory floor, by people in support and logistic functions. Collectively, each of these improvements, over many years, revolutionized contemporary manufacturing thinking.

Sales and corporate executives need to create cultures of innovation and improvement in their organizations. They must make sure that everyone knows that innovation and improvement is part of their jobs. They must recognize and reward these–both the successes and failures. They must bake it into the business–what is expected and what is done every day.

Innovation and improvement isn’t tough–we make it tough or we find excuses not to do it. There are innovations and improvements all around us, we just need to open our eyes to the opportunity.

As you do your job today, think about: What is the one thing I could do better? Also think about: What is the one thing I can do differently? Then do it, master it, share it. Then tomorrow, do the same thing again.

Special Announcements!

Tamara Schenk, one of the most thoughtful people on Sales Enablement, has just started a new blog. In her opening article, she talks about improvement and innovation in the Sales Enablement Function. It’s a provocative article, I encourage you to read it and to regularly read her blog.

Tomorrow, October 5, I’m hosting a discussion on Innovation and Improvement in Sales at Focus.com. It’s at Noon EDT. If you miss this, or are reading this after October 5, click on the link anyway, a recorded version of the discussion and a transcript will be available. I’m privileged to have Tamara as be part of that discussion, as will Alex Shootmen, Chief Revenue Officer for Eloqua, and Robert Koehler, Business Analytics Sales Enablement for IBM, join me in the roundtable discussion.

Performance Management Friday — Balanced Performance

David Brock — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:45:17 +0000

As sales people, we may be responsible for a lot of different things—we may have a number of product lines we can sell, we may have responsibility for retaining and growing current customers, as well as acquiring new customers. There may be a number of different strategic objectives our company may have for us.

However, sometimes, we get stuck in a rut–we have our favorite product lines–the one or two products we know very well, those that we have had great success in selling. Or we are stuck calling on the same customers–people who we know, customers with whom we have great familiarity.

While we are comfortable with certain product lines or customers, it creates real problems for us and our companies. Great sales people continually look for balanced performance. They try to sell the entire product line. They try to balance the results they produce between acquiring new customers and growing the relationships with existing customers.

When we fall into bad habits, we limit our ability to be successful. If we just sell our favorite products, we’ll miss opportunities to expand wallet share (we’ll cover this in another post) with our current customers. We’ll miss the ability to find new customers–they may not be interested in our “pet product lines” but may be interested in other product lines.

When we focus on our favorite customer, not acquiring new customers, we miss many new sales opportunities—leaving them for our customers.

Balanced performance is critical to our companies. To support new product development and extension of the product lines, and the execution of the company’s strategies.

It’s easy to fall into bad habits–we have the product lines we’ve been most successful with, so we look for more of those opportunities, we have the customers we’ve been most successful with, and keep calling on them. Sometimes when companies have been merged, we see this happening—we sell the products from our former company, and are slow to pick up the products from the new company. Or our company announces new producst–but we aren’t comfortagle in selling them, so they languish. There are all sorts of other reasons we may fall into those bad habits.

Make sure you balance your performance:

1. Look at the opportunities in your funnel, are they dominated by a few product lines, or is there a good mix of opportunities across all the product lines you are responsible for. If more than 70%* of the opportunities are from one product line, you may be missing a lot of sales opportunities.

2. Look at the opportunities in your funnel and the balance between new and current customers. Unless your territory assignment is strictly new customer focused or current customer focused (for example, covering a few key accounts), make sure you have a good balance across new customer acquisition and current customer growth. Consider roughly a 50-50* split.

As a manager, making sure your people have balanced performance is very important. Think of this, from the point of view of executing the company’s strategies. is a sales person that makes their quota with a balanced performance in selling all the product lines and acquiring new customer a better performer than a sales person who makes their number with just a few customers or by focusing only on one or two product lines. Tactically, we like the revenue performance from both, but strategically, the sales person with balanced performance is contributing much more.

Set goals for your people, set goals for new customer acquisition, set goals–maybe guidelines for balanced performance, don’t get too detailed or prescriptive, but look at performance across major product categories. Keep coaching your people about the importance of balanced performance, not just from the point of view of the company, but from their point of view–having more to sell to more customers is always helpful when we are trying to fill our pipelines?

Take a few minutes this weekend and look at your funnels:

1. Do one or two product lines dominate the opportunities you are pursuing?

2. If so, what are you going to do to look for opportunities with other product lines?

3. Have you looked at your current customers and how you can sell them more of your product portfolio?

3. Are you going back to the same customers all the time? What percent of the opportunities you are pursuing are from potentially new customers?

4. Look at your territory, what are you doing to go after new customers?

* There’s nothing magic about these numbers, choose whatever might be appropriate for you.