Oisin is proud to announce the inaugural Dr. Talmadge DeWitt Cooper III Internship. This position will provide the opportunity for recent university graduates from Organisational Development, Human Resources or Psychology streams to experience working in faced paced consulting environment.

From conducting research into the design of adult learning interventions to learning how to design workshops for Australia’s leading companies, the successful applicant will be included in every phase of the consulting process.

Introduction

As markets become more competitive, organisations seek to drive sales performance by creating a dynamic sales coaching culture. Such a sales focused environment is designed to bring about the consistent demonstration of desired sales behaviours. In this month’s edition of the Oisin e-Newsletter we will investigate some of the factors required to establish a successful sales coaching culture and we will illustrate a 6-Step process for creating one.

Critical to the development of a sales coaching culture is a clear sense from sales leaders of the overall sales strategy, the critical success factors and the specific performance being targeted. This informs the goals of sales coaching and the process utilised.

Sales leaders must also commit to building sales capability at every level within the sales organisation. This is achieved by determining core sales behaviours and processes and then ensuring they are firmly embedded in the organisation. Without such a commitment, the ability to establish a coaching culture is nearly impossible.

Another key component relates to Sales Managers themselves being coached to drive required sales performance. This includes being held accountable for both the quality and frequency of their coaching.

Challenges for the Sales Manager as Coach

While Sales Managers may possess excellent sales skills, this potential strength fails to be of value if their default response to a salesperson’s performance gap(s) is to immediately adopt the role of a super salesperson, remedying the immediate sales situation but failing to coach the salesperson to improve their sales skills. What is required is for Sales Managers to effectively coach salespeople to develop a sharp awareness of the factors that drive and impede sales performance, so that salespeople can successfully adopt the desired behaviours as their own and ultimately demonstrate them independently of the Sales Manager.

The Sales Leader as Master Coach

• Have a clear sense of the overall results required.

• Know both the drivers of those results and the behaviours required to achieve them.

• Clearly focus on building an aligned understanding of what the sales organisation means by coaching effectively.

• Hold Sales Managers accountable for successfully coaching their people.

• Model a coaching approach in their interaction with their own direct reports and set a corresponding expectation that this quality of coaching be consistently demonstrated by Sales Managers. For example, questions such as the following should regularly feature on the agenda with Sales Managers:

• What are your coaching goals for Jim?

• How did you engage Jim in these coaching goals?

• How are you measuring your success as a sales coach?

• Walk me through your coaching approach with Jim.

• Let’s have a look at your infield coaching forms with Jim.

• What behaviours have you focused on with Jim?

• What are the challenges you are having in coaching Jim?

• How can I help you with your coaching of Jim?

Creating a Sale Coaching Program:

The manner of introducing a sales coaching intervention will be different for each organisation. However, a number of the steps need to be kept in mind in almost all cases. Let’s take a quick look at a general approach for creating a sales coaching intervention:

1. Identify those behaviours that distinguish high performing salespeople from average performers at each stage of your sales process. What specifically do the high performers do that the average performers do not?

2. Evaluate sales training to determine whether it is sufficiently behaviourally based. For example, have you isolated the specific behaviours underpinning each stage of the sales call process? Are you training around those specific behaviours? Are you providing sufficient practice on the specific behaviours? Are you providing sufficient observation and feedback within the training to enable your organisation to identify behavioural strengths and potential gaps for individual salespeople?

3. Provide coach training to Sales Managers to enable them to successfully coach around behaviours of significant interest.

4. Having agreed upon high performing sales behaviours, ensure that Sales Managers coach around those behaviours.

5. Ensure that infield coaching protocols encourage Sales Managers to think in behavioural terms and coach around behaviours rather than just ticking boxes on an assessment sheet.

6. Provide a mechanism for improving the quality of Sales Manager coaching (e.g., 360 degree feedback).

Conclusion

As you can see, the establishment of a successful sales coaching culture requires a well organised approach with specific attention paid to the key drivers of sales performance. In addition, an organisation-wide commitment to sales coaching is vital in order to realise ongoing improvement of sales performance.

If you would like more information about how to design, implement and sustain a sales coaching culture that reflects your organisation's identity and strategic goals please call one of our consultants on (03) 9855 1346.

Next Workshop: 11 and 12 March

The aim of this workshop is to introduce participants to the concept of transformational coaching and to help them develop advanced coaching skills. These skills can be used to achieve extraordinary results both within participants' organisations and in their personal lives.

We strictly limit the size of each workshop to 15 participants so as to ensure a group dynamic that strongly contributes to the development of core coaching competencies.

This Program is Suitable for:

• Senior leaders
• Managers
• Organisational development professionals
• Any person who seeks to drive high performance within their organisation

Program Overview: Putting Transformational Coaching in Context

Coaching is a process that enables individuals, teams and organisations embrace the current dynamic business environment and experience transformational change. It involves interacting with people in a way that shows them how to transform or stretch their vision, values and abilities and produce spectacular results in their lives and in their organisations.

Topics to be Covered in this Two-day Program:

• Current trends
• Coaching in the business context
• Building an in-depth understanding of coaching
• Critical coaching skills
• Facilitating the coaching conversation
• Managing each phase in the coaching process
• Assessment models
• Providing feedback
• Facilitating breakthrough thinking
• Managing the psychological framework
• Developing ourselves as coaches

Location: Fenix Conference Centre, 680 - 682 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria

Cost: $1175.00 (plus G.S.T.) - *groups of 3 people or more attract a discount

Booking Info: 61 3 9818 5667 or booking@oisinsuccess.com

The Free Management Library is an online resource providing leaders and managers with practical information about personal, professional and organisational development.

From “Sales” to “Leadership Development”, the library is divided into a number of easily searchable topics with a plethora of links to other online resources (check out this link we found leading to the Mentor Associates website; it details a number of core selling skills, techniques and “golden rules”: http://www.saleslinks.com/links/s_techniques.htm#6).

While the library is hosted on a website primarily concerned with non-profit organisations, the information contained within the library is of equal value for for-profit organisations.

Sales Coaching: Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach by Linda Richardson

As companies shift from hierarchical management into teamwork, managing is not nearly as important as coaching. Here is the first book on the coaching process written exclusively for sales managers--a brief, easy-to-digest primer on making the transition from a traditional boss to a sales coach. Created by an author/instructor who teaches sales management as the prestigious Wharton Executive Development Centre, this guide shows sales managers how to: understand the nuances and payoffs of coaching: conduct coaching sessions and improve key skills such as listening and giving feedback; dealing with problems such as discipline and reluctant behaviour within the sales team; and coaching peers and oneself.