Seo Company

What's the best way to sales coach? You may have heard some people saying you can only ask questions and then you may have heard some others saying you have to tell your team what to do. How are you supposed to know which way to go? Don't go with either. Neither one alone works for sales coaching.

What's the best way to sales coach? You may have heard some people saying you can only ask questions and then you may have heard some others saying you have to tell your team what to do. How are you supposed to know which way to go? Don't go with either. Neither one alone works for sales coaching.

You miss out on sharing your team's best practices if you only ask questions in your sales coaching. The opportunity to share those best practices is lost. Imagine if you were trying to use a new machine with someone only asking you questions. How quickly would you master the use of the machine? Probably not as quickly as you would if they shared with you some specifics about how to better use the machine. Sales coaching functions in a similar fashion. When you sales coach, provide your team with the helpful best practices of others on the team. More about this in a moment.

If you just tell (give advice and suggestions), you reduce the learning curve of your sales reps and rob them of the opportunity of making new neurological connections so they can change their behaviors. When you tell, imagine you are shutting off their thinking. Remember your days as a student when a teacher would slip into lecture mode? What did that do to your focus? Most students have to study after class to retain the information downloaded via a lecture. The same holds true for your reps. And, if your company is like most corporations, your reps don't have that kind of time for review and study.

Here's the solution for you: Have your sales coaching be mostly questions (so you know what has worked and not worked for them) with one or two relevant ideas, suggestions or information. Make your telling concise and impactful. Choose what to say to be the most sales impactful.

You have five steps to your sales coaching to make sure you're giving information that is going to help them sell more:

1. Listen with your ears, eyes and heart to what happened during one of their sales interactions (to facilitate your listening ask lots of targeted questions)

3. You'll quickly discover what they don't know and what information would be helpful to them. Once this is clear to you, ask them if they would like you to tell them about a best practice that worked for someone else in a similar situation.

3. If they say yes, share the idea or information with them

4. Ask if and how that idea or information might apply to one of their sales conversations

5. Facilitate them explaining in detail how they would apply it including what they would say, ask or do

Try this sales coaching goal on for size: focus on "telling" only once per coaching session. This way, your team focuses on learning and then applying ideas. It's not about them knowing more. It's about them doing better. They'll learn more quickly from what they have done and do even better when they are faced with a similar sales situation. This sales coaching focus will help them learn better and sell more.

And if your sales team needs to digest more information, meet with them more often for shorter periods of time. This way they will still be focused on learning in small enough pieces that they can apply the new ideas before they learn the next one. They'll learn and apply a lot and get sustainable sales.

Your role as their sales coach is to provide your team with the most effective and profitable sales coaching on a regular basis. The more often you coach your sales team, the better their results will be. Following these five steps will help your team increase their sales more quickly.