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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Now we’ve reduced this to a simpler problem and we can re-invoke item 3, everyone needs to be coached.
6. 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).
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. In looking at 8 and 9, everyone needs coaching, everyone can sharpen their performance–so don’t forget your A’s.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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).
15. Be human–no one is perfect, no one has all the answers. Sometimes shit happens.  Laugh!
16. Set an example, sometimes the best coaching is what they see you doing — and not doing.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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)

Related posts:

1. Who Should We Be Coaching?
2. Coaching And Being Coached
3. Initial Thoughts On Coaching Approaches

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.

Related posts:

1. Sales Is Changing, Are You Maximizing Your Impact?
2. Performance Management And Accountability
3. Performance Management Friday — Sales/Management Alignment

I’ve written quite a bit about Challenger Selling and it’s many related concepts–it is after all a different articulation of the solution, customer focused, consultative, value based, provocative selling approaches we all know.  Every once in a while, I think–wouldn’t it be novel to look at things from the customer’s perspective?  What might Challenger Buying look like?

There are a couple of perspectives we might think about.  One is Challenger Buying has existed for a very long time–we, as sales professionals are waking up to the fact and addressing it.  The other is how difficult it is to do Challenger Buying–from a customer perspective.  I’ll talk about both in separate articles.

I’ll start with the second–we can’t underestimate the difficulty of doing Challenger Buying.  The premises of any kind of solution selling, including Challenger, is that we are bringing the customer new ideas.  We are challenging them to think about their businesses differently.  We are helping them to discover new opportunities.  There is no doubt, we create the greatest value for our customers when we are engaging them in this manner.  Customers don’t need us pitching our products, spewing all sorts of data about features, benefits, and so forth.

But Challenger Buying is, to say the least, very challenging for the customer—more so than it is for the sales person to do Challenger Selling.  At it’s core, it’s about risk, change, readiness, and priorities. 

As sales people, I think we often lose sight of what we are doing to the customer.  We’re doing the best that we can to help them discover ways of improving their business.  We get our customers excited about the opportunities, we show them how our solutions can help capitalize on the opportunities.

But then, from a customer point of view, reality starts to set in.  How do we (the customer) make this happen?  What are the risks?  How do we manage those risks–can we manage them?  What are the consequences of failure—or even a slight miss?  What does this mean to our organization?  What does it take for us to do this?  Are we ready and prepared?  How do we manage the change?  How does if fit into our priorities–often it may mean a complete shift in priorities.

The challenge of Challenger Buying became very clear in a conversation I had with a top executive recently.  He was struggling and called me for some advice.  It seemed that a sales team had done an awesome job in helping him see new opportunities for his business.  He shared with me how exciting the concept was, how clearly he could see the impact on the future of his company, and how he could see the value of the solution the sales team was presenting.  He said the business case was obvious and compelling.

I asked him, “So what’s bothering you?”

He responded, “I worry about our ability to make it happen.  There is so much more than just the solution the sales team presented.  We have to make it happen.”  He went on to talk about the risks of failure–he could see ways to manage those and accept those.  He was worried about the change and how to prioritize this initiative with the other priorities they faced.  He clearly understood he’d have to shift the priorities, but there was a very high risk in the short term (about 9 months) revenue impact.  These impacts were in other parts of his business–not related to the challenging idea, but in shifting his priorities the ripple through the organization had impacts far beyond the idea itself.

I asked, “What’s the sales team doing to help you find answers to this?” 

He said, “They can’t do much.  The things risks, shifts in priorities, and change management involves things far outside their ability to contribute.”

This example is pretty dramatic, it involved a fairly substantive shift in the company strategy.  Most Challenger Sales may not be that dramatic, but we have to understand Challenger Buying!  We aren’t doing our job and we won’t be successful unless we help our customer in their buying (funny how it always comes back to helping the customer buy).  We have to help them understand the risks, change, readiness, and prioritization issues.  We have to help the customer solve and manage these.

Challenger Buying is tough–if we are going to be successful with Challenger Selling, we need to shift our focus to Challenger Buying.

Related posts:

1. Sending Your Sales People Out Naked, The Problem With “Challenger Selling”
2. Buying Isn’t Important, It’s The Results Of Buying That Are Important!
3. Buying Has Nothing To Do With The Product We Sell!

I read a fascinating Op Ed piece by Tom Friedman in the New York Times, Average Is Over.  It’s a fascinating piece.  As I reflected on the piece it struck me how important this concept is to professional selling.

Friedman makes the point, “”…everyone needs to find their extra–their unique value contribution that makes them stand out…”   Friedman is not writing about organizations, he’s writing about individuals, each  of us.   It’s a profound concept, understanding it is like discovering the secret decoder ring for sales success.

In a buyer’s world, where too many products are undifferentiated, where the differences between the companies that stand behind the products are relatively small, where quality is similar, where everything balances out–and on average they are the same, there are two things that stand out as real differentiators:  price and what each of us contributes as sales professionals.  And in competitive situations, where pricing is roughly the same, the difference between winning and losing is each of us.

It’s no longer sufficient to be “average.”  Each of us has to find a way to stand out and differentiate what we do.  It might be our knowledge of what the customer is trying to do, it might be the confidence we instill about the new solution, it might  be the trust we have earned in working with them.

Just good enough is no longer a winning strategy (a number of years ago, I worked with an industry leading company that had that as their strategy–and they were remarkably successful.  We have to set ourselves apart, we have to create the value and differentiate ourselves.  As Friedman points out, it is ultimately what each of us contributes that makes a real difference.

It’s a tremendously powerful concept for sales people, partly because it’s a simple concept, partly because it puts success or failure squarely in our hands.  We can control and manage the difference we make with our customers.  We can control and manage the value we create to set ourselves apart.  Competing and winning becomes much more clear–we are in control because it is the differentiation that each of us create that separate us from the average.  It can actually be quite easy–particularly if everyone else is striving to be average.  In essence, we become the value proposition–or we can be one of the crowd, average.

Sales people–and the people they engage in working with a customer are the ultimate differentiators.  How we and our team work with the customer is what separates us from the rest–the average.

Do you know what separates you and distinguishes you from everyone else?  Are you demonstrating that in every interaction with your customers?

Do you know what distinctive value you create–for your customers, for the people you work with?  Do they understand that value?

Are you constantly looking to  set yourself apart?

Average is over.  Average is not a winning sales strategy.

No related posts.

I’ve been writing a lot about changing the conversation, about challenging our customers, about getting them to think differently.  A lot of readers have been sending me notes, asking for advice on how to do this.

While I agree with many of the principles outlined in Challenger Selling and Provocative Selling, I take a little different view on things.  The basic premise of many of these approaches is that we have to know our customers businesses better than they do, we have to have better ideas for their business or function than they do.

I tend to think of this as a little arrogant and misplaced.  I also tend to think this short changes our customer and us of some opportunities.

Don’t get me wrong.  To engage in these business conversations, we have to understand business—both business in general, but more specifically our customers and their businesses.  We have to analyze their businesses, we have to look at opportunities they are missing, things they can do differently, things they can improve.  It takes research, high levels of business acumen, and deep understanding of what’s going on in our customers.

Often, as I’m preparing to approach a prospect and engage them in these types of conversations, I think, “What would I do if I were running the business?  (or the function that we might focus on)  What would I change?  What new opportunities might I consider?”  I try to put myself in the customer’s place, seeing things through their eyes and develop some ideas on issues, opportunities, possible solutions.

It’s a great exercise, it gives you the opportunity to start to develop some premises around shaping the conversation.  Now here’s where it starts getting interesting.  First, customers tend to like these conversations–as long as you’ve gotten them at the right moment.  No one is having conversation like this with them.  No one is bringing them new ideas.  They’re hungry for ideas.

Here’s where I have a departure from many others writing about this topic.  Many say, you have to know your customer’s business better than they do, you have to have better answers than they do.  It strikes me a both a little arrogant and unrealistic.  If we truly knew better than they, then we should be looking to run the company, not sell to it.  But the real issue is we always view their businesses from the outside.  As much research as we do, as great as our ideas, we never have a perspective from the inside.

The real conversation starts at the intersection of these points of view–our outside perspective, experiences and idea–unhindered by “legacy experience,” and that of the customer who is, after all most knowledgeable about the internal dynamic of their companies.  It’s this combinatation where the real magic can happen.  It’s the combination of the best thinking from the inside and the outside that enables us to help the customer achieve more than they could ever imagine.

There’s an interesting dynamic that happens–the conversation no longer is challenging–it’s collaborative.  It’s the customer and us worling together to determine a solution that neither of us could have come up with separately.

It sounds kind of idealized, but I see these happening all the time.  I have them weekly with my clients–some of the highest performing executives in their functions in the world.  I see great sales people having these conversations about problems they can help their customers solve.  Clever sales people are working with customers to create solutions–leveraging the customer’s ideas and capabilities along with their solutions.  I’m working with a small company in the health services sector.  They support some of the back office functions in hospitals.  They are engaging their customers in some different conversations about their function.  Completely changing what how they deliver services and the services their customers acquire.  Another client, a company that sells commoditized electronic components is having conversations with some of the largest mobile telephone manufacturers in the world.  They aren’t talking about electronic components, but re-looking at the way mobile phones are designed and manufactured.  Another client in the bulk chemicals industry engages their customers in conversations about the future of detergent, or foods, or other things.  Still another, a provider of enterprise software is talking to their customers about a different way of running their companies.

These conversations are happening everyday, they aren’t idealized conversations, but they are sales people who want to talk about more than their products, and their customers who want to explore different ideas to grow.

I’ve written before about sales people as solution creators—but in reality solution creation is really the result of a collaboration between the customer and great sales people.

These conversations can be remarkable.  Whether it is looking at running a function more effectively, whether it is about something people have viewed as commodities, but changing the perspective of the customer.  We can have great ideas and great solutions.  We can challenge our customers and present things they should be doing. 

But the real magic is not having the customer buy our ideas, but engaging the customer in a discussion and collaborating to develop even better solutions and approaches.  To do something neither of us could have done individually.

Perhaps the real conversations need not be challenging conversations, but collaborative conversations.

Related posts:

1. What Conversations Are You Starting?
2. Challenging Idea
3. Sending Your Sales People Out Naked, The Problem With “Challenger Selling”

There has been an important revolution in marketing thinking over the past years.  The move from thinking about campaigns to rich content programs and nurturing is important.  It recognizes something important, that customers want to learn, they want to be educated.  These programs enable us to develop “relationships” with customers and nurture them up to the point of their deciding they need to take action and start a buying process.

In our nurturing programs, we design them to have the customer take different actions through the program that help us gauge their level of interest, their urgency, and their readiness to buy.

This is important and needs to be the cornerstone of our marketing programs.  But there is a problem with this–it requires a customer to have an interest–to want to learn–to want to consider a change, to be thinking about their needs.  Not necessarily to do something today, but to be thinking, “perhaps we need to change at some point in the future, I should start learning and looking around now.”  In essence, nurturing works best when the customer raises their hand.

But what happens when the customer should be raising their hand, but isn’t?  What about the case where the customer is so busy just surviving day to day?  What about the customer that isn’t looking to learn, that isn’t thinking about the future, who isn’t thinking about how they might improve their business?

They may never be a part of our nurturing programs because they don’t recognize the need to be nurtured.  They may be part of our programs, but they aren’t taking the actions they should be taking—but aren’t.

Pull is an important part of developing the customer need, knowledge and enabling us to enter a buying cycle when decide they need to buy.  But I think push is still critical.  But it’s push in a very different sense.  It’s helping the customer recognize that they need to change.  It’s helping them understand they are missing an opportunity.  It’s helping them understand that them see new ways of running their business or function.

Sales people must bring ideas to their cusotmers!  Sales people must provoke and challenge their customers.  Sales people must create the reasons for customers to raise their hands, to say–I need to do something now–entering into a buying process.  Alternatively, to say–that’s something I need to start looking into.  I might want to do something later.

I get concerned as I start to see the sales pendulum swinging to “pull” oriented sales strategies.  I think exclusively relying on pull–which I see many organizations seriously considering is irresponsible.  It’s not because we “aren’t” driving our sales growth as aggressively as possible–though that is irresponsible.  But it’s really irresponsible because we see that our customers are missing opportunities to grow and improve and we aren’t taking action to help them understand this.  It’s irresponsible because our customers often look to their sales people for ideas–to understand things that are happening in their markets, best practices for their functions, how to be more efficient.

We have to help our customers understand new opportunities–if we are truly customer focused, value based, trusted advisors, we need to get them to raise their hands.  Our nurturing programs may not do this.

Creating great value for the customer, developing meaningful relationships requires a careful balance of push and pull.  They can’t exist by themselves–we can’t have push only strategies, nor can we have pull only strategies.  We have to purposefully execute both.

Related posts:

1. The Importance Of Push And Pull In Sales
2. Who Owns The Customer?
3. Moving From Customer Acquisiton To Customer Engagement

Take a look at the two pictures below (courtesy of RapidRepair.com).  In one sense they are exactly the same.  Both are pictures of the Apple iPhone 4s.  One shows the iPhone as a set of parts and pieces.  The other shows an assembled iPhone 4S.

You know the next question, “What’t the difference between those pictures?”  The obvious answer is that only one works. It’s the assembled iPhone.

A lot of organizations are similar.  When I talk to them, they have all the pieces/parts.  They have a sales process, they have hired the right people, they have a good organizational structure, they have a compensation plan, they have training, they have demand generation programs, they have marketing and nurturing programs, they have CRM and other Sales 2.0 tools.  They have everything—all the pieces parts, but somehow things aren’t working. 

Having all the pieces/parts does not give you a working system or a high performing organization.  The missing element is those pieces parts aren’t assembled and working together.  See each part is dependent on the other parts to perform its function.  If they aren’t assembled and working together, the organizational goals can never be achieved.

The problem gets worse, in many organizations there are parts that are missing.  Or there may be incompatible or the wrong parts.  You can’t even put these together, the organization can never achieve it’s goals.

To many organization are not achieving their goals because of these issues.  The most difficult organizations are those that think they have all the pieces/parts, and keep focusing on these pieces, rather than looking at how they fit together and work as a whole.  I see sales organizations with a sales process—but it’s not used.  Managers don’t use it in doing opportunity and pipeline reviews, sales people don’t use it to help improve their effectiveness, it’s not integrated into the CRM system or other tools.

Organizations implement sales training, but it’s not integrated with the other pieces parts.  Marketing works on demand generation, developing content, nurturing customers, but aren’t producing sales qualified leads.  Customer service isn’t aligned with the commitments sales has made to the customers or the overall customer experience strategies.

Smart executives come to me, saying “We’ve done everything, we have all the different components, why aren’t things working?”  The answer becomes obvious when you think of it just like the two pictures of the iPhone above.  The parts don’t produce results on their own, they have to be assembled and working as a system to produce results.

We break up what we do into components and parts.  It’s the only way we can manage complexity and solve problems.  We have to design each part to perform it’s function ideally.  But we have to go further, we have to make sure each part complements and works optimally with the others, then we have to put all the parts together and make them work as a whole.

We have to manage all of these over time–if a part fails or breaks, we have to replace it.  If our sales process is failing, we have to fix it, because without it, the other elements won’t work effectively and we will fail to achieve our goals.  If we’ve hired the wrong people, we have to correct that for the same reasons.

The pieces/important.  If we are missing some, things don’t work (or don’t work well).  If we have the wrong ones, things don’t work.  We have to have all the right pieces.  But we can’t stop there, we have to assemble them and have them working efficiently together.  We also have to be using them.  Having a sales process and not using it is just as bad as not having one.  Likewise, not using your CRM system is the equivalent of not having one–actually worse, you’ve paid a lot of money for it.

• Do you have all the pieces?
• Do you have the right pieces?
• Have you put them together so they work together efficiently and effectively?

All three are critical to maximizing performance.  Without them, it’s virtually impossible to achieve our goals.

(Thanks to RapidRepair.com for letting me use these pictures)

Related posts:

1. How Do All The Pieces Fit Together?
2. No Sales Model Is Forever, What To Do When What Worked Isn’t Working
3. Do You Really Want To Sell?

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?

Related posts:

1. Sales Coaching, Dirty Secrets Or Misunderstanding What Coaching Is About?
2. Coaching And Being Coached
3. Do You Trust Yourself And Your People Enough To Let Go?

Top performers–whether they are individual contributors, managers, or executives are always looking for new ideas.  They are driven for improvement and innovation.  But too often, our efforts are stymied.  It’s hard to improve or innovate.  Often, I think it’s a result of looking in the wrong places.

When I get into discussions about this with people, I pose the question, “Where do you look for new ideas?”  Often, the response are, “We look at our competition!”  Sometimes, it’s, “We look at others in the industry.”

When I hear these responses, I’m reminded of the terrific quote from Gary Hamel:  “Ideas that transform industries almost never come from inside those industries.”  There are dozens of examples of this–the start up that has a completely different take on things, the game changer that was never on anyone’w radar.  The Amazon’s, Apple’s, Facebook’s and others.  It’s a dismal but too accurate observation–but we can do something about this.

Benchmarking our competition, looking within our industries is an important element of our business, sales and marketing strategies.  We have to have competitive practices, we have to understnad the critical issues in our markets.  But at the same time, it limits us.  We restrict ourselves to the familiar, to the known, to our experience base.  We become prisoners of our own experience, blind to what is happening outside our worlds.

The good news, our competitors and our customers do the same things!  They are also blinded and limited.  This creates a tremendous opportunity — both to outcompete and outperform our competitors, and to bring ideas and innovation and value to our customers.

If we just started looking in non-traditional places–the web and social media may be one of those new places for us to hang out.  Different industries, different regions, different cultures, different business models all give us new ideas.  The ideas we may be looking at could be old and stale in their own industries or regions—but they could represent great innovation in our own.

Innovation doesn’t need to be tough, it just means looking in different places, exposing yourself to new ideas.  If you live in a B2B world–look at retail and B2C.  If you live in a box/product solution world, look at services, subscriptions, knowledge based industries.  If you live in high tech, look at high fashion.  If you are a Boomer meet some X, Y, Z’s (and vice versa).  Expose yourself to different things–different art, different music, different people, different ideas.

You could learn a lot.  You might find ideas that twisted, tweaked, artfully adapted could have great applicability for you and your customers.  They could set you apart from everyone else.  You might also get a chance to see your new competitors–perhaps before they become competitors.  That opens a whole new realm of possiblities.

Are you looking for innovation innovation and ideas in the right places?

Related posts:

1. Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply
2. Are You Committed To Upsetting The Status Quo?
3. Prisoners Of Our Own Experiences

I’ve been writing this series of posts on metrics, and how sales people and managers leverage metrics to help maximize our performance for a number of months.  I’ve never written about Quota measurements–the “grand-daddy” of all sales measurements.  Part of the reason is that it’s something that’s pretty well understood (or so I thought), the other is that it’s a trailing or historic metric.  It’s difficult to use on a day to day or week to week basis to monitor and improve our performance.

I thought I’d write about Quota for a couple reasons.  As we approach the Fiscal Year End for many businesses, people are consumed with getting those last minute sales (some customer are consumed with spending money they might have left over–kind of serendipidous.)  Also, there’s an important aspect about Quota too many sales people overlook.

Quota is usually measured in Revenue or Orders.  Often, we may have multiple quotas, they may include certain product line quotas, customer or account, or some other measure.  Historic measures tell us what we have done, how we have performed, but they aren’t helpful on a day to day basis.  By the time we find out that we are under performing, it’s difficult to do anything about fixing it.  For example, if we are really off in our quarterly Quota performance, it may take us more than a Quarter to fix it.  That’s why we want to look at leading measures that are tightly linked to historic or trailing measures.  For example, we know the number, quality, and flow of deals in our pipelines is closely tied to Quota performance, so that’s why we spend a lot of time on funnel/pipeline metrics.  If we don’t have enough deals, we aren’t going to make our Quota—so we prospect for new deals.

But salespeople lose track of something important about Quota.  Quota is about jobs!

“Well duuuhhh Dave, tell me something I don’t know.”

Yes, we all know our jobs are at risk.  Fail to make Quota for a long enough period of time, and you find yourself looking for a new job.  But there’s something equally important, that sales people don’t think about (not unusual, because we usually think about ourselves).

Quota attainment is about the people in our company–ultimately the people in the entire supply chain, and their ability to keep their jobs.  We don’t bring in the orders, factories get shut down.  Engineers and product people are laid off, marketing budgets are cut, the list goes on. 

Too often, as sales people, we live in our own worlds.  We forget that if we fail to achieve our objectives, that has a ripple effect through the rest of the organization.  If we aren’t generating revenue, managers have to reduce spending to a level that is supported by the revenue that’s being produced.

In a large organization, sales people can “hide.”  There can be the mentality, “My quota is just a small part of the overall quota or the sales goal of the company.  It can be made up by other sales people in the organization.”  There’s some truth to that, but you get enough sales people doing that, there’s a significant shortfall.

In smaller organizations there’s no hiding.  Don’t make your quota, you start seeing empty cubicles around you. 

The funny thing, is often sales people can survive bad performance longer than the other people in the company can survive sales people’s bad performance.  So often, other people go before a bad sales person goes.

The global economy is struggling.  There are some bright spots, but there are lots of troubled spots.  We get upset with our elected leaders and other prominent people for not providing the leadership to help the economy recover.

Yet sales people are in a unique position–we can contribute to the recovery.  We can contribute to keeping and creating jobs, albeit in a small way.

There is no magic, if customers aren’t buying they aren’t buying.  But perhaps we can go that extra step to help create reasons to buy.  We can show them something they haven’t thought of before.  We can show them new opportunities or ways they can improve their business—helping them grow and improve their revenue (you can see where I am going).

Sometimes we do everything we possibly can, but we just can’t create the sales.  I get that.  I look at top sales professionals–they are constantly stretching doing everything they can, making no excuses.  They know they are working not only for their own job, but to grow the company.

But then there are the rest.  They complain about the thing the company is doing to them, they whine about what they don’t have, they are busy, they are “trying,” but they aren’t producing results.  It’s never their fault, but it’s the stupid customer, the bad products, or something else.  They worry about themselves, and are blind to their impact on other people’s jobs.  They work for themselves–not realizing they are working for other in the company.

Over the Holidays and New Year, we have a chance to regroup and think about what we need to do in 2012.  Perhaps if each sales person started thinking about their own “economic recovery program,” collectively we might have an impact on the recovery.

For those readers celebrating the Holidays, Best Wishes To You And Your Families!

Related posts:

1. Does Success Blind Us To The Real Opportunity?
2. In Winning, It’s The Little Performance Differences That Count
3. No Grin-F#!?ing Allowed!