One of the most valuable skills a Sales Manager can learn is Sales Coaching. Great Sales Managers are great sales coaches. Like us, Sales Managers are increasingly becoming time poor; they are under more pressure to get results than ever before. So they have to use their time wisely and be effective 100% of the time. Being able to coach and mentor sales staff is great, BUT consider these 2 questions before rushing into coaching:

• How do we know we’re not wasting our time?
• How do we know someone is coachable and we will see results?

What do you think would happen if you knew the answer to these two questions?How valuable would this information be to you when coaching sales staff?

Starting Sales Coaching With Hard Facts

What do you coach? You coach the gap. Build a bridge that takes your people from where they are today to where they want or need to be.
- Keith Rosen -

Ask a salesperson why they can't sell or why their figures aren’t up to scratch (again) and they will tell you they don't have a clue. Or worse they will blame it on the product, the the service, the pricing, the advertising or even on you.That sounds familiar, doesn't it?Coaching your sales people blindly will not deliver the kind of change you may want and need. Whenever I am asked to provide sales coaching I always commence by trying to understand:

• What sales skills do they have?
• And are they "coachable"?

Investing in a credible and validated profiling tool is a great place to start building an effective sales coaching plan. Having reliable hard data can save many hours of wasted time and lots of money. The tool we use benchmarks a sales person’s sales skills against 300,000 other sales professionals. That kind of information standard is a sound base to sharpen the focus of any sales coaching plan and truly lift your team's sales success.

The Secret Of Top Sales Performance

Successful salespeople have a unique blend of charisma, resilience, motivation and skill. In fact there are 13 critical areas to a successful career in sales. TOP PERFORMERS only achieve optimum productivity when these 13 areas are in precise delicate balance and worked in harmony.Areas such as being able to:

• Approach, involve and build rapport
• Identify buyer needs and motivations
• Handle and close objections
• Know how and when to close
• Properly qualify buyers
• Give productive presentations

Tuning Up Sales Performance

When you use Sales Profiling as a base for your team's sales coaching plan, you understand 2 powerful pieces of information about your team:

• What makes your top sales people effective.
• Why your lowest performing sales people achieve mediocre results.

Whether your team is exceptional, typical or underperforming, identifying coachable areas will ensure your sales people are the best they can be. The first place to start tuning up sales performance is identifying those areas through specific sales profiling.Click here for more information on the Sales Success Coaching solution we provide.