Focus - Summer 2012 - 24

FEATURESTORY

The Lost ROI from Poor Coaching Practices
I By Don Kyle ypically as an industry we task our rst line managers with spending three to four days a week out in the eld coaching their representatives. Why do we do this? Probably because extensive research from sources such as the Sales Executive Council (SEC) shows that coaching is the single biggest driver in terms of improving representative sales performance. Coaching has an enormous scope yet some people still associate it predominately with old fashioned eld visits and perhaps subconsciously relegate its importance in some way. is approach is completely outdated and somewhat narrow minded, as virtually any manager-representative interaction can utilize the art of coaching. e sales manager is ideally placed to focus on any identi ed skill de cit whether it is selling ability, some aspect of planning or overall business processes. is is particularly important as the role of the representative must now continually adapt to a exible market, coaching has now become the primary change mechanism within a sales force. It is exactly this ability to be so exible that makes coaching so powerful. Coaching is in

ance. is makes no sense when we e ect a tailor made day-by-day “curknow it is background coaching that is riculum” based on the observed needs ultimately responsible for the impact a of the representative (or the business representative has when they are in needs of the organization). Few things front of a customer. can be as focused and speci c; thereNo one would be so arrogant to before rst line managers who coach are lieve that all managers make fantastic the key people in unlocking sales force coaches; indeed it’s performance gain. fairly obvious that e same SEC reThe success of a some are better than search tells us that efsales strategy others. Assuming that fective coaching outperforms none ec- depends on the quality of because we coach, we execution, not the quantity therefore coach e ective coaching by as tively can easily have much as 19 percent. negative rami cations on productivity. With each representative typically reis is tantamount to saying that just ceiving almost 100 hours of coaching because a representative makes a sales per year, this can turn into a very excall they have sold something, it isn’t pensive use of resources if there is a about quantity it’s all about quality. limited performance gain. It is thereWe must understand the relationfore critically important that coaching ship between coaching and sales outtime is not only ”protected” but that put. What impact does coaching have our manager’s coaching skills are of the on our revenue and can we identify highest possible standards. is means managers who themselves may need to not only “how” to coach, but who, what be coached. and when.

How Do We Improve?
In order to improve low yield coaching we rst have to identify it. Bizarrely most organizations tend to ignore the elephant in the room by failing to put measurements in place that can objectively assess the quality of coaching delivered and the impact it has on sales. We measure a representative’s sales results constantly but pay no real attention to one of the key drivers for this perform-

What Does It Cost?
We can equip our sales teams with the latest tablet technology and invest in a new CRM system, we can also segment and target until we are blue in the face but unless a qualitative approach is adopted this can only ever have limited impact. e success of a sales strategy depends on the quality of execution, not the quantity. And not a single sale will be made unless our sales team has the skills to motivate a customer to “buy.” e evidence is overwhelming; the Manchester Study tells us that every dollar, pound or euro invested in e ecFOCUS | SUMMER 2012 | www.spbt.org

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Focus - Summer 2012

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