When I ask managers how coaching has been received amongst their team and whether or not everyone on their team is being coached by them consistently, here’s one response that I have heard countless times from managers in practically every industry and profession.

“My top performers tell me they don’t want to be coached.”

These managers tell me how they continually run into a certain degree of resistance from some of their top producers around being coached. As a result, many managers make the costly decision to simply not coach their top people.

Conversely, other managers attempt to force or sanction coaching upon them. I can guarantee you, both of these solutions will wind up doing more damage than good. Instead, start by getting to the source of where their resistance is coming from.

When enrolling a resistant top performer in coaching, it may sound a little different than when you’re enrolling a mid performer or underperformer, especially if the manager has positioned coaching as “Remedial Only.” That is, those who are not performing get coached and as such, they make coaching conditional (when there’s a problem) rather than positioning coaching as a positive benefit, such as “Everyone always gets coached, consistently because it’s a way to deliver more value to you – and you are the priority here.”

Instead, take the following approach to identify where their reluctance to being coached is coming from. Once you uncover the source, you can then address the cause of their resistance to coaching. Here are five ways to do so:

1.Find out What Coaching Means to Them: Three of the leading causes of coaching reluctance on the side of your direct reports are:

a. their misconceptions of what coaching is,
b. how coaching has been positioned within your organization or
c. a possible negative past experience they had when they were being coached.

As a manager, it’s your responsibility to get to the source of their resistance to coaching so that you can then defuse it. Have an exploratory conversation with them one to one. Here’s an example of what that could sound like.

“John, I want to ensure that I’m being the best manager for you and that I’m providing you with the right support and resources you need to achieve your goals. To do this, that means becoming the best coach I can be for you. So, I’d like to talk to you about engaging in one to one coaching.”

Then, follow up with questions like these:

a. What does coaching mean to you?
b. What’s your perception of coaching?” (These questions align your definitions of coaching and eliminate any negative perceptions of coaching.)
c. What concerns if any, do you have around having me coach you? Let’s address them now so we can get through them together.

Here’s a tip from your coach: Don’t put them on the defensive by saying something like, “Why don’t you want to schedule our coaching sessions? Everyone else on the team has scheduled their coaching calls and are engaged in the coaching.”

When asking these questions, give the person time and the space to respond fully. Be silent after asking the questions. Make sure you get their full perspective on it, as well as their experience of coaching, whether from an external coach or their experience with a prior manager. Once you get their concerns out, then you have an opportunity to create a new possibility by setting up the rules of coaching, expectations of the coaching relationship and what that safe zone in coaching looks like.

2.Appeal to their Ego: Begin a conversation by saying, “I can really use your help.” Ask them for their help and support around this coaching initiative, since the other team members look up to them as a role model and their buy in is essential for the coaching to stick within the team.

3.Uncover The Blind Spots: Enroll them in the importance of observation, and how all great athletes have a coach on the sidelines, since it’s very difficult to self diagnose when you’re in the middle of the game. Here’s an example of some dialogue you can use. “By finding one or two things that I can see which you can’t when you’re in the middle of a presentation or when you’re focused on selling, we can then tweak or refine those areas that you may not even be aware of, which will make you an overall better player and performer and keep you on top of your game.”

4.Celebrate Them! Position coaching as an opportunity for the manager and top performer to get together and celebrate them and their successes and wins. Top performers love to celebrate their success! This is a chance to recognize the value they deliver, provide desired and needed acknowledgement, reinforce their best practices that you want them to continually engage in, while also preventing the chance of alienating your top players by not giving them the attention and recognition they need and deserve, which can leave your top performers feeling as if they are not being appreciated and as a result, erode the commitment they have towards the company as they start seeking out employment opportunities elsewhere.

5.Advance their Career: Coaching your superstars can help further their career trajectory by having them learn how to coach, (coach the coach) as well as by being coached themselves, if they want to move into management or even take on more of a senior sales position and a bigger role in supporting and coaching the other salespeople on the team.

If you’ve been following my blog and read my book on coaching, you may be asking yourself, “Okay, I get what coaching is, I realize that I need to upgrade not only what I do and how I coach but also how I need to think but wait; what, exactly, is actually coachable? Is everything coachable? Are some things ‘not coachable’?”

The short answer is, everything is coachable. Well, if that’s the case, then you may be wondering how you can recognize those powerful coaching moments and opportunities during a conversation. Here’s an experience I had that will begin to answer this question.

Monique, a director of sales for a large corporation came to me frustrated about the lack of execution and level of success around the new sales model she developed for her inside salespeople. During our coaching session, I asked Monique to share with me the steps she’s outlined in the new sales process that she wants her salespeople to follow. She did so, with great clarity, until I probed further around what she meant by her step three, the qualification process.

Monique responded by saying, “I want them to do a better job at qualifying every opportunity. I’m tired of my telesales reps filling their pipeline with customers and prospects who will never buy from us or are simply not a good fit.”

Of course, that made perfect sense to me. I then asked her what types of questions she wants her salespeople to ask when qualifying their customers and prospects. Being a top producer herself before moving into management, Monique took this opportunity to demonstrate her well developed skill at qualification.

After she did so, it was the next set of questions I asked that created the valuable coaching moment for her.

“Monique, those questions sound perfect, however, I’m curious. How much training did you provide your salespeople around asking these questions? Have you documented these questions so they can use them consistently when making their sales calls?”

Together, Monique and I identified the Gap, which is the space in every coaching conversation when you and the person you are coaching uncover with pinpoint accuracy the most relevant solution or exactly where you can deliver the most value that will foster breakthrough results. (You can read more about The Gap in one of my prior posts here. Coaching The Gap.)

For Monique, she made some costly assumptions about her salespeople’s level of comfort, skill, awareness and understanding when it came to asking the right qualifying questions. Monique took this a step further and created an additional coaching opportunity with her sales team during a team meeting by having them come up with the list of the top qualifying questions. This way, her team felt a deeper sense of ownership, since they were the ones developing these questions.

Not only will you get better at uncovering those coaching opportunities in the gap, but you may have already discovered that there is a big difference between training and coaching, and managers don’t often have a clear distinction between the two. As a result, when managers finally do uncover The Gap, they have a tendency to blend these two distinct solutions together, causing confusion in the minds of both the direct report, as well as the manager.

Managers must learn how to recognize when the right solution is training, coaching or a blended approach that may require both training as well as coaching. (You can read more about this distinction between coaching and training in some my prior posts here. Do I Coach Them Or Train Them, Part One, Part Two and Part Three.)

Whether you’re a manager, business owner or executive, I hope that you are beginning to realize the incredible power you can unleash through coaching– the power to transform the way you do business, develop your people and your career, as well as how you choose to live your life so that you can leave a lasting legacy that you’re proud of.

Marco, a manager who participated in one of my management coach training programs, shared this story with me two days after he competed this training, right after a coaching experience he had with one of his salespeople.

He told me he was at work, walking down the hallway towards his office. Miguel, one of his direct reports walked up to Marco and asked him if he could help with a problem he was having regarding one of his key accounts and moving this selling opportunity through his pipeline and towards the close. He needed to call this customer back later today and wasn’t sure how to drive the conversation forward.

Marco remembered what he learned from some of the coaching simulations that he did during the training and, instead of reacting by delivering a quick solution so that he can move ahead and get back to his office and all of the other pressing tasks he had on his plate for the day, he recognized this was one of his defining moments – a coaching opportunity. As such, he stopped, paused, and started asking Miguel some questions.

As a manager, what questions would YOU ask Miguel at this point?

Here were just a few coaching questions that Marco asked Miguel:

1.What is the specific outcome you’re looking for when you speak to this customer?
2.How do you envision accomplishing this?
3.Tell me what you’ve tried so far?
4.What are some other ideas you feel might work?
5.How have you handled something like this in the past?
6.Based on what we’ve just discussed, what’s going to be your strategy moving forward with this customer?

Marco told me that, at the end of this conversation, not only did Miguel come up with a solution on his own, one that he felt really good about, but it was a better solution than the one that Marco would have given him!

Miguel walked away from that conversation, with a greater sense of confidence, especially since he felt empowered by coming up with the best solution on his own. He also felt truly listened to and acknowledged, which strengthened the trust and relationship he has with his boss.

The added benefit that Marco reported on was, the very next day after his conversation with Miguel, Miguel informed Marco that he had another situation with a customer, similar to the one they discussed the day before. Because of the coaching Marco provided, Miguel reported that he was able to create the solution on his own without having to come to Marco about it!

Now, multiply the number of conversations you have like this, per day with every one of your direct reports. How much time do you think you’ll save so that you can focus on developing your people and your business, instead of continually running from one fire to the next?

Think about what we’ve achieved here. Think about your own management style. Now, think about the conversation that transpired between Marco, the manager and his salesperson.

This experience encapsulates many of the lessons when it comes to delivering masterful coaching. The coach’s mindset, such as being curious, being patient, being process driven; building trust, facilitating conversations through better questions and uncovering The Gap, tapping into people’s individuality and of course, the very essence of masterful coaching, abandoning your role as Chief Problem Solver.

Now that you have a deeper understanding of what great coaching looks and sounds like and the steps you can take to prepare yourself, as well as your team for coaching, start recognizing all the coaching opportunities you have in front of you.

Start challenging your current way of thinking and most important, start asking more and better coaching questions to further develop your team’s problem solving skills when you’re people come to you, looking for the answer.

Here’s a final tip from your coach: Realize that the best coaching moments aren’t always going to present themselves when it’s convenient for you, or during a scheduled coaching session.

That’s why I refer to these moments as defining moments. It’s your moment of truth, your moment to choose whether you react as you have in the past and continue to re-create the same results as before – or respond by taking a step back, and create the space for masterful coaching to occur.

Remember the A.B.C.’s of coaching. Always Be Coaching. In every conversation, in every interaction, allow coaching to become your new standard of thinking, communicating and how you engage your team.

To drive this point home, let me leave you with this final question.

How do you change a culture? How do you transform talent?

One person at a time. One conversation at a time.

The change starts with you. And that is great news because transforming the talent on your team really is all in your power.

In my last blog post, I shared a story about a management team that reinforced the fact that trust is the backbone of coaching.

Remember, trust and loyalty are earned, not inherited, so become mindful of those things that you need to stay away from that will erode the trust you need for your coaching to succeed and to foster a healthy, open coaching relationship from the start.

Here’s a short list of activities and behaviors that will erode the trust managers desperately need that will drive improved performance, loyalty, commitment and more sales.

What jumps out for you?

1.Not being present
2.Multitasking during conversation (You think you’re being efficient? That perceived efficiency comes at a major cost. Think of the message you’re sending to your people. “I guess I’m not that important.”
3.Not following through on commitments
4.Canceling (coaching) appointments
5.Violating/breaking your word. Not keeping your promise
6.Breaking confidence
7.Double talk
8.Threats and consequential negativity
9.Disposition. Tone. Being curt. Egocentric not showing your people are a priority (but an interruption or a bother.)
10.Being confrontational
11.Not showing patience (in a conversation or when coaching them)
12.Reacting negatively to something a person did wrong
13.The style of your management (pitchfork passive, pontificator, presumptuous, perfect, problem solving, proactive – See Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions for the 7 Types of Managers)
14.Not owning your own mistakes or your humanity (Your ego gets in the way)
15.Competition from manager
16.Not making the conversation/coaching safe
17.Not setting expectations in the coaching relationship
18.Not drawing a clear line between performance management/reviews and coaching

Tip from the Coach: What your people see and feel based on your actions always takes precedent over your intentions and what you say.

Tips and Questions For Managers When Setting Confidentiality in the Coaching Relationship

*What does confidentiality look like?

*What can you honor?

*Code of ethics – What nullifies confidentiality? (lie, cheat, steal, violate protocol and procedures, etc.)

*Establish how big, wide and deep the safe zone is up front

*You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game

You Gotta’ Have Trust.

At the conclusion of a training event that I delivered for a team of about 20 managers, one of their action steps at the end of the training was to introduce coaching to their team and enroll their salespeople in being coached on a consistent basis. About a week or so after the training was over, each manager emailed me to report on how their conversations went. 18 managers told me that their team was not only bought into being coached but were generally excited about the opportunity to get more personal time with their manager!

However, the emails that I received from the other two remaining managers did not sound as promising. These two managers felt that their team was not on board with the idea of being coached and experienced a general sense of resistance from them.

The question is, why? Was it that these two managers had a team of salespeople who just weren’t coachable?

I don’t think so.

After further due diligence and speaking in confidence with those two sales teams who were pushing back on being coached, it turned out that the real source of the issue came down to one thing; trust. For you to shine as a masterful coach, it cannot be overshadowed or clouded by doubt, fear or uncertainty that may exist in the hearts and minds of your people.

That’s why trust is the backbone of coaching. Without it, you’ll experience the same resistance from your team that these two managers did.

1.So the question is, do your people trust you?
2.How do you know? What is the evidence you see to support this? Are you the first person to know about a concern someone on your team has that’s inhibiting their performance or level of commitment to their job – or are you the last to find out?
3.Have you always been clear about your intentions when coaching or supporting them, or making changes, or did you leave it up to them to decipher?

Remember, listening to you and trusting you are two different things. Coaching by definition fosters a deeper connection, level of openness and transparency with your team. However, if there’s a lack of trust, if trust has been compromised in any way, if the ground rules for coaching were not clearly established up front, the coaching will not be as effective.

The real danger here is, now the manager runs the risk of assuming that it’s the coaching that does not work, rather than the fact that it is really is a trust issue.

What many managers fail to realize is, that there is strength in vulnerability, not weakness, as many would assume. It is an important component to building trust and strengthening the relationships you have with your team.

Coaches and managers, unlike superheroes, are humans, too, and making sure your humanity and authenticity is clear to your team is an important part of building a deeper level of trust. After all, you can’t fake authenticity.

The good news is, you have the power to rebuild and regain trust in practically every relationship and it all starts with having an open, honest conversation, while setting up the expectations of coaching and the rules of engagement right from the start. You can’t change the rules in the middle or at the end of the game, as that is a sure fire way to instantly erode trust.

Remember, trust and loyalty are earned, not inherited, so become mindful of those things that you need to stay away from that will erode the trust you need for your coaching to succeed and to foster a healthy, open coaching relationship from the start.

Stay tuned for my next post, when I list about twenty different activities and behaviors that managers engage in which compromise trust and your ability to deliver effective coaching that results in improved performance.

Are You Selling By the Numbers or Selling With a Blindfold On? Statistical Benchmarks for Success and Self Accountability That Most Organizations Are Still Missing

Yes, these questions I list below the video are that important. So important, in fact, that they could change your entire perspective around what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and how much you really need to be doing in order to generate the worthwhile results you’re looking for. Because the truth is, you just may be running so fast in an attempt to catch up on your sales numbers, that you didn’t recognize the blinders you’ve developed which are obstructing your view of the fuller picture; the landscape you’re trying to farm and manage when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity.

Here are those questions you need to ask yourself (and your sales team). “With all the effort I’m putting forth in an attempt to generate more prospects and selling opportunities, following up and retaining existing clients to ensure that I’m bringing in as much business as possible:”

• Am I acutely aware of the activities and benchmarked proven practices (both the activities and the dialogue/message I need to communicate) that I need to engage in daily that would secure my success?
• Am I measuring the numbers and the results of my efforts and allowing these statistical data points to be the driving force behind my sales activities?
• Do I know how much cold calling and prospecting activity is actually enough (emails, voice mails, live calls/connections, letters, and so on) and when to call it quits and move on when attempting to convert a contact into a qualified prospect?
• Do I know how many calls/contacts I need to make each day, each week and how often I need to follow up with a qualified prospect in order to earn their business or move them to the next stage of my sales process? (And have I even defined those specific steps in my sales process to begin with?)
• Am I holding myself accountable when it comes to engaging in the right activities in the most efficient way possible through the effective use of a daily routine?
• When calling on or meeting with prospects, do I have a clear set of outlined objectives that I need to accomplish on every call and during each meeting, especially when delivering a presentation?
• Have I identified the lifetime value of each client or account in order to classify customers according to their sales potential? (What’s the economic impact of the time you invest?)
• Do I have a detailed strategy for each of my clients to ensure that I’m maximizing every conceivable up selling and cross selling opportunity?
• Am I fully leveraging the power and potential of my CRM solution for prospect, client as well as territory management? Do you have a call report system?
• Do I have the right questions that provide me with the critical intel I need in order to qualify each person as a viable prospect so that I can most effectively determine where my limited and precious time is best invested?

And to clarify further when it comes to the type of questions you need to be asking each prospect, this isn’t limited to Selling 101 – Uncovering a Need. I’m also referring to understanding how they buy, how they make decisions, the internal workings of the company, the people and egos involved, the process they are going to go through when they hang up the phone with you or end the meeting and then attempt to solve the problem or find a new solution on their own using the resources or venders they currently have, the concerns or roadblocks that you could encounter down the road that would stall or destroy the potential for a sale, the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally, the overall mood of the company and its leaders, and so on. (Hint: Low closing percentages = misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.)

If you don’t have the answers to these crucial questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it. So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

In this video, discover why it’s no longer about simply ‘doing more’ but about doing more of what’s right. Your product has changed over the years and while your selling and management strategy needs to evolve as well, this evolution must be guided by the numeric benchmarks in order to see the full, panoramic picture of the truth that surrounds your current situation.

Note: If you’re looking for a great tool to help develop your prospecting formula and the measurable efforts needed to achieve your sales goals, check out my Prospecting Calculator here and enjoy the confidence and certainty you’ll experience when you prospect by the numbers.

Here’s the link to the Prospecting Calculator.

“I’ve tried coaching my team. It didn’t work.” Really? Was it the coaching that didn’t work, the manager’s coaching that didn’t work or was it more about how the coaching was delivered that didn’t work? As a manager, there are many things to consider when rolling out a coaching program for your team that will lead to a successful initiative, a mediocre one or a coaching program that will go down in flames.

Since my last book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions, I’ve been spending the majority of my time (every week!) delivering my management coach training programs for both domestic and global organizations. And the more I deliver my program, whether it’s to a team of sales managers who want to learn how to facilitate more effective sales coaching interactions with their salespeople that drives more sales or to a team of executives, VP’s and senior leaders who are in the position where they can provide a deeper layer of support by authentically coaching their management team, the more I find consistencies as to why coaching doesn’t work.

For any company wide coaching initiative to be effective and long-lasting within your organization, there are important obstacles that a manager or internal sales coach needs to address. Rather than do a deep dive into each of these 10 points, leverage this as more of a checklist for you to use before rolling out your coaching program.

If you’ve already attempted to coach your people and have experienced varying degrees of success, do not give up! This checklist can be used for you to diagnose where the breakdown is so that you can recalibrate your coaching efforts and overcome some of the obstacles that may have been outside of your line of vision.

The Top Ten Reasons Why Coaching Fails When Managers Attempt to Coach Their Team

1. Coaching In Your Own Image. “I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I already know the ‘right’ way to sell which has always worked for me. So if I were you, I would do it this way.” Note: Your building robots using this approach, not tapping into people’s individuality.

2. Poor Positioning. How did you set the expectations of coaching? “All the underperformers, please stand up! Here’s your chance to redeem yourself!” Ouch. This “Broken Wing Mentality” (Remedial Coaching) doesn’t create an atmosphere where everyone would want to be coached.

3. Past Experiences. “I’ve already tried to coach my people. It didn’t work.” Well, maybe it’s more about how you tried to enroll them in coaching that didn’t work. Every day, more and more statistics and surveys are showing the R.O.I. that good coaching generates. It’s time to do some self analysis and ask yourself what role you’re playing in this.

4. Inconsistent Coaching and Support. Sure, you may have been excited to coach your team but what message are you sending them when you cancel that coaching session you scheduled with them, regardless of how good a reason you had, your employee is thinking is “I guess I’m/the coaching isn’t a priority/important enough.”

5. No Training. The manager is not trained in coaching. It’s tougher than you think, especially around observation techniques and delivering actionable feedback that drives positive change and measurable results. This leads to two other challenges.

• Hollow Coaching. Focusing on the ‘what’ rather than going deeper to uncover the ‘why.’ Managers are good at uncovering what’s going on; you can see that by looking at a monthly activity report. Where managers drop the ball is uncovering why the behavior is going on or the actual reason behind the lack of activity. This often leads to something that many managers experience, which is:
• Repetitive Coaching. “Now we’ve already had this conversation five times over the last month. Looking at your activity the problem is you need to make more calls. So, make more calls! Call reluctance you say? Well, you just have to be more resilient.” Can you envision the salesperson walking out of that conversation with a powerful epiphany?

6. Event Based. The coaching is event based rather than culturally based to ensure long-term consistency. No coaching plan – no long term success.

7. The Manager Assumes They Have the Trust of Their Staff. This is a common challenge amongst many teams which breeds the resistance to coaching at the very core. Your experience as a manager is one thing that can inhibit your coaching effectiveness but what about your employee’s experience either with you or their prior manager? What if they had a prior experience that was less than favorable? Has this been addressed? Do your people really and truly trust you? How do you really know? Conversely, maybe the manager doesn’t really want to coach or doesn’t believe in coaching or maybe the manager doesn’t have the full authentic commitment to want to make their people more valuable and truly put them first. This is also felt by your team and will affect the level of trust you can foster.

8. The Manager is Coaching the Wrong People. “I only coach the underperformers and leave the top performers alone.” What a great strategy if you want to send the message that coaching is ONLY for the underperformers, while isolating your top performers. Then we wonder why we’re losing our good people. Everyone wants the attention of their manager but for different reasons and we need to align our coaching with where we can deliver the most value for them, individually.

9. Investing the Right Time With the Wrong Approach or Conversation. I can keep spending time pushing on a brick wall but that wall is never going to move. Just like I can say I’m investing the time coaching but am I truly coaching my people or am I simply doing what I did yesterday and relabeling it coaching? I can tell you that this is probably the biggest challenge I see amongst management teams today. That is, they think they’re coaching but they are not. The role plays and skill practice scenarios that I do during every training event continually support this to be true.

10. Toxic Management Style.
• Reactionary
• No patience. Here’s a tip – there’s no such thing as speed coaching. One of the most valuable parts of coaching is creating a safe place for your people to process and self reflect. You don’t always get that in a five minute interaction and if you rush the coaching process, you are only robbing you and your people of a powerful coaching experience. Remember, just because they don’t ‘get it’ as fast as you do or as fast as you think they should doesn’t make them wrong or less valuable. Honor and respect where each of your performers are regarding their own learning style and path of development.
• Misconceptions of what coaching is from both the manager and the salesperson. Time to even the playing field by uncovering each person’s perception of coaching, creating a universal definition of coaching and then setting the expectations on both sides.
• Managers not modeling it, walking their talk

An unscientific poll of visitors to the EEA portal over the last two months suggests engagement in early phases. More specifically, this poll found that:

• 47% had received at least one survey from their company in the last year; the rest had not;
• Only 32% said their organizations provide them with a dynamic environment that encourages excellence and advancement;
• 51% believe engagement should be measured by customer and employee retention; 31% by revenue and profits, and 17% by employee absenteeism and productivity;
• In terms of what drives people to perform, these respondents ranked, in order: helping the organization achieve its goals and objectives; open and honest communication with management; belief that the organization is a best place to work; compensation and benefits; feeling that one is making a contribution, and rewards and recognition;
• Employee engagement is ranked by these respondents as the most important organizational success driver, followed by customer engagement, and then supplier engagement;
• Only 25% of organizations seriously consider channel partners when making business decisions that affect them;
• 67% of companies think they have no better than ordinary relationships with vendors;
• Respondents said their companies generally did a good job of developing products with customers in mind, and measuring results, and showing commitment, and not as good a job at internal marketing or getting customers to “identify” with their companies.

Given the direct relationship between employee engagement and coaching – as a manager, executive or business owner, your ability to effectively coach your team is what will make the difference between average or mediocre results and securing as well as retaining your position as a leader in your market. Now more than ever, executive coaching and sales coaching for your sales team and management teams is what will truly provide you with your competitive edge.

If you and your organization are interested in learning more about engagement and the impact it will continue to have on your business, then join us June 3-4 at the Doral Arrowwood, Rye Brook, N.Y. (just 10 minutes from Westchester County Airport (HPN) in White Plains, N.Y.)

As a subscriber and reader of my blog, I can offer you a complimentary registration to the upcoming Enterprise Engagement Expo and Conference, which I am speaking at. Simply go to eeaexpo.org, and use the code PF2010 to register to get complimentary conference and exhibit area access. I’ll be speaking on the role of sales leaders in relation to fostering a deeper level of engagement with their people and meeting with clients and potential clients in a “conversation center” at the event where we’d be happy to meet with you as well! (I’ll be there on June 3 only so shoot me an email if you’ll be there and we can meet!)

Understanding how to engage key customers, channel partners, employees and vendors provides a competitive edge for your business and a maybe even a potential boost to your career.

This conference offers a unique introduction to a proven path to business success critical to professionals seeking to improve the performance of their organizations and themselves. The program is designed to help you learn from experts, peers, and leading suppliers about the emerging new of enterprise engagement and how you can profit from it.

Let me know if you’re coming by shooting me an email to info@profitbuilders.com and I’d be happy to meet you there!

Click here for a complete program agenda and to register. Be sure to use code PF2010 to take advantage of this complimentary offer.

It is a fact that if you’re a boss, manager, or executive responsible for managing people, you are their superior. And, therefore, you have a certain degree of influence over how your staff feels about certain things.

Managers and executives have the power to shut down a conversation or open up a dialogue. Quite often, they don’t realize how much of an influence they have over their staff and how influential they can be without even trying. When a manager takes a strong stand or position and makes a statement like, “Here’s the solution” or “Here’s how it is,” it removes any opportunity for others to contribute a different and potentially better idea.

There’s a difference between sharing an opinion or idea and sharing an expectation. It’s one thing if the manager or boss shares an opinion that allows the dialogue and flow of the conversation to continue moving in a positive, collaborative direction. It’s entirely different when the manager shares an expectation with a strong agenda or ultimatum behind it.

An opinion or idea from the boss opens up further conversation. An expectation shuts it down.

In this video, I discuss this approach managers can take so that you will be more likely to get a response that encourages unfiltered collaboration and multiple contributions.

A few posts ago, someone posted a fair and relevant question which I thought was important enough to re-post front and center.

It was in reference this post: Coaching Questions Part 3 – Questions To Get People into Action That Drive Desired Results, which you can read here.

Here is her question and my response follows.

“Keith- I’m a huge fan of yours, let me say that first so you don’t get mad at me, but every single one of those questions above 1-12 would infuriate me if I ever had my vp of sales ask any of them. And I would feel dumb asking my reps too! I don’t get it.”

The truth be known, many managers don’t get it – at least not initially; until the blind spot is exposed and placed in their line of vision for them to see. And please keep in mind, their inability to see this blind spot has nothing to do with their acumen, experience, abilities, commitment to their team or intelligence and everything to do with one of the common traps that management has tendency to fall into which is due to the fact that coaching is often counterintuitive.

Here was my response:

Thanks for the comment! Much appreciated. Why would I get mad? Keep your comments coming! I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything I write. Besides, if I post stuff that everyone agrees with, then I’m not doing my job! Just like I told a client today; “If you plan on doing what you did yesterday, aren’t open to challenging your current way of thinking and are able to see every blind spot on your own which is getting in the way of better performance (you can’t self diagnose when you’re in the middle of the game), then what do you need me for?”

Back to your question. I was very mindful when posting these questions that they may not work for everyone and are distinctly positioned for specific situations. As I wrote in this post, “Remember, treat these questions like a buffet. So, take what you like and leave what you don’t. Depending upon your situation and the individual you’re coaching, every question may not work for everyone. Conversely, since we all looking for new and better results, take some of these questions out for a test drive, as you may not know how effective they are until you try them out.”

So, who are these questions for? Well, probably not for your top performer or the person who’s self driven and accountable. These questions are for the salesperson who may be stuck, either in follow through, in their own story and excuses or in taking the necessary actions to better their performance. For the manager, getting on your soapbox and preaching what needs to be done gets old fast and doesn’t work for the long haul.

Which is the point of these questions. So often, managers see the problem, see what needs to change in order to fix the problem and as such, get into the tell mode of dumping the solution on their people. Conversely, these questions find the gap, or what is missing either in the person’s thinking, skills or resources and deepens the level of accountability that every manger is looking to instill, preventing the salesperson from using more creative excuses to justify their performance!

I’m guessing that you personally, (I don’t like to make assumptions) don’t fall into the category of the underperformer? So yes, in that case, these questions certainly would not fit for you.

Conversely, be mindful that, just because they don’t fit for you, doesn’t mean they won’t fit for anyone or for another person on your team. After all, just like in selling, you don’t want to sell the way you buy, that is, instilling your values and decision making process on the customer, assuming they think and process information the same way you do. You also don’t want to coach the way you like to be coached, because then you’re essentially coaching in your own image (building robots vs. respecting each person’s individuality and where they’re at).

Look at the spirit behind each question. I have hundreds of coaching questions that I use, and it’s not only about having the right questions, but when to use them and with whom that makes the difference.

Does this make more sense now? Let me know!

Do you allow fear to paralyze you or have you made fear your greatest ally? Does fear hold you hostage, preventing you from being more of who you are and what you want to achieve? Have you ever been in a position of action, yet felt powerless to take those steps you need to take to live your greatness, achieve better results or make the best choice because fear had it’s grip over you?

Are you driven by what you want most; your dreams, goals and passions – or are you fueled by fear, consequence and what you worry may happen or occur in the worst case scenario?

How do you manage fear? Do you embrace it or resist it?

In this video, discover how you can leverage fear and make it your greatest teacher so that you can become unstoppable.

These questions are perfect for coaching someone to come up with the solutions to their own challenges and problems. No more do you have to foster a team that’s reliant on you for all the answers. These questions challenge people to come up with the answers, while you guide and support them through the process.

Remember, treat these questions like a buffet – take what you like and leave what you don’t. Depending upon your situation and the individual you’re coaching, all questions don’t work for everyone, which is why you have a list to choose from. Keep in mind, you can always use these questions for some self-coaching to challenge yourself and increase your level of awareness.

1-If you were me, how would you coach yourself around this?
2-What do you suggest?
3-Listen to what you just said. What are you hearing?
4-What’s the outcome that you’re looking to achieve?
5-How have you typically handled something like this in the past?
6-What are some of the ideas you thought of that might work?
7-What’s the first thing that you need to do to resolve this?
8-What resources do you have available that might help?
9-What process can you put into place to make sure you consistently achieve the results you want?
10-What question, if you had the answer, would give you the solution you’re looking for? (What question, if you knew the answer, would solve that problem? What do you need to ask yourself?)
11-How should I coach you on this one?
12-Why is that important to you?
13-What did you just hear?
14-If you had to (generate more qualified prospects, boost the effectiveness of your presentations, qualify your prospects better, get more organized, etc.), what would that process look like?
15-Imagine for a moment that you are the client. How might you respond to your approach?
16-If you want to generate a specific response from your customers after presenting a solution to them, what approach do you think may be more effective?
17-If you were the coach in this situation, what changes would you like to see?

These questions are formulated to stretch a person to reach their fullest potential. They challenge someone directly, yet supportively and positively, to achieve more and do better than they have before.

Remember, treat these questions like a buffet – take what you like and leave what you don’t. Depending upon your situation and the individual you’re coaching, all questions don’t work for everyone, which is why you have a list to choose from. Keep in mind, you can always use these questions for some self-coaching to challenge yourself and increase your level of awareness.

1-If you could no longer use that as an excuse, what would another solution look like? (What would you need to change or do differently to achieve better results?)
2-(When the person says, ‘‘I can’t.’’) Okay, but if you could, how would you do it?
3-(When the person says, ‘‘I don’t know.’’) Okay, but if you did know, what would it look like?
4-What would doubling your effectiveness look like?
5-What could you do that would be uncomfortable for you but would cause a breakthrough and move you forward?
6-What would be easy for you to do this week? What would be a stretch for you? (You can’t stretch or challenge people until you know what would be fairly easy for them to accomplish during the course of a normal week.)
7-What is one thing you could do this week that would clearly demonstrate your commitment to your goal? (Look for evidence.)
8-What would be something you would consider challenging that you could do which would double your productivity?
9-When did you decide that was true? What else is possible/true?

These questions uncover the salespeople’s level of ownership and accountability around their goals, their job, and their problems – even down to the way they want to be managed and held accountable. These questions shift the responsibility back to the salespeople who are avoiding it and build in further accountability around their position.

Take a look at the bonus questions below, which are great for those people who may have struggled in the past meeting deadlines or commitments. While the source or the problem is typically a time management issue and their lack of having a structured routine, it could also be a limiting perception regarding how long certain tasks actually take, their a ‘yesaholic’ or they could simply be an adrenaline junkie who enjoys the rush when working on overdrive. So, keep an eye out for some of the symptoms that would support these observations.)

Remember, treat these questions like a buffet. So take what you like and leave what you don’t. Depending upon your situation and the individual you’re coaching, all questions don’t work for everyone so a few here may not work for you.

1-What gift or talent do you feel you are you not leveraging to the fullest potential?
2-I hear your good intentions behind reaching your goal. Can you share with me the evidence or activity that demonstrates your commitment to it?
3-What role are you playing in all of this? What part did you play in creating that (in your life)?
4-How have you demonstrated ownership of this?
5-What do you feel you are responsible for? What do you feel is outside of your control?
6-How would you like me to hold you accountable around your goals in a way that will sound supportive rather than negative?
7-How do you want me to approach you if you don’t follow through with the commitments you make? What would be a good way to bring this up?
8-How do you like to be managed? What type of management style do you respond best to?

BONUS QUESTIONS: Building Deeper Accountability around Meeting Deadlines

1-How long do you think it’s going to realistically take you to complete this task, considering the worst case scenario?
2-What resources do you need to complete this successfully?
3-What have you already committed to that you need to be mindful of which could get in the way of meeting this deadline?
4-Looking at your schedule and your current commitments, when can you realistically devote the time you need to complete this?

We’re all looking for results today – fast. But standing at the podium preaching to your team gets real old and tiring for both you and your salespeople. Moreover, it simply doesn’t work to effectively drive the change and the activity you need.

These result-driven questions get people out of their head, challenging their well crafted stories (excuses) and redirects their focus into action and the right activity. Shift the conversation to the actionable, measurable tasks they can engage in to achieve the specific and measurable results you seek, rather than you telling them what they should do. After all, if they come up with the solution, then they own it. And if they own it, they’re going to be more willing to act on it.

Remember, treat these questions like a buffet. So, take what you like and leave what you don’t. Depending upon your situation and the individual you’re coaching, every question may not work for everyone. Conversely, since we all looking for new and better results, take some of these questions out for a test drive, as you may not know how effective they are until you try them out.

1 – What do you want to be able to do quickly that you are unable to do now?
2 – What’s the right action for you to take in this situation?
3 – What are the steps you are going to take in order to resolve this issue?
4 – What are the three activities you can commit to doing this week that will move you closer to your goal?
5 – What shift do you feel you need to make in your thinking to achieve this result? (What limiting thinking do you need to abandon that is getting in your way?)
6 – What drastic changes can you make today that would support your goals?
7 – What would you like to have completed by our next coaching session? (What are you willing to commit to?)
8 – What’s the biggest change you are willing to make this week, starting today?
9 – What are you going to begin doing immediately after our meeting today?
10 – What are you willing to commit to doing this week that would give you a sense of accomplishment you can experience by our next coaching session?
11 – What are you willing to do or change in order to achieve this?
12 – What do you need to give up or abandon in order to achieve this? (In thinking and in action, old habits, etc.)

The underperformer you want to turn around. The problem you need to resolve. The tension among coworkers or teammates that desperately needs to be defused. The sale that must be closed. The passion and drive within each person, especially your rookies, which are essential to uncover and leverage. The underperforming veterans who are in a slump and require additional support, gentle encouragement, and a deeper sense of accountability in order to bring out their very best. The candidate who you would love to hire but is considering a position elsewhere.

Whatever the situation, challenge, or solution, the one common denominator and the tool used consistently by the world’s best coaches when approaching any scenario are questions. Not just any questions but powerful, creative, and well-crafted questions delivered at the right time, in the right way, to the right person.

Questions are at the very core of all coaching tools and strategies. Questions are the essence of coaching. Coaches draw their power from questions and questions are where the magic of coaching originates. Questions are where great opportunities are born, new ideas are ignited, self-imposed limitations are exposed, and vast possibilities are discovered.

Paradoxically, questions can very quickly become the prime source of devastation, damage, and disappointment for the manager who misuses or abuses them. Oddly enough, questions can put people on the defensive, make them wrong, come across as accusatory, and keep people drowning in the problem rather than maintaining their focus on the solution. Any of the many barriers to effective coaching or the coaching mistakes I discuss in my book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions will prevent you from using these questions in a way that will achieve the positive impact you’re hoping for. The flagrant abuse and misuse of questions can easily create the negative outcome you were trying to avoid.

The use of questions plays a critical role throughout the entire coaching process, during every coaching session, and also throughout daily conversations between you and your staff, as well as with your customers.

In my last blog, “Coaching Questions Managers Use To Get People To Recognize The Cost of Self Sabotaging Behavior,” I received many positive comments from people, thanking them for sharing some very strategic questions that can be used in the specific situation that calls for them. Given how critical it is to use the right coaching question at the right time, I’m devoting an entire week to the Art of Coaching Questions.

Rather than put the questions into a compelling and entertaining story, the following posts will be formatted in a more tactical way so that you can use them immediately, as more of a practical hand book for you to choose the most effective questions at the appropriate times. This Playbook of Coaching Questions is meant to become your tactical reference guide to use daily, as I will be sharing some of the most powerful coaching questions, all of which are broken down by category. This way, you can easily search through and locate the right questions to use depending on the unique circumstances or situations you find yourself in throughout the course of your week.

Whether it’s during a coaching session, an enrollment conversation, or to defuse a potentially volatile issue, you will find questions that will enable you to create the breakthroughs you’re looking for in any conversation and allow you to get to the real truth behind every issue.

If you find that there are a couple of questions that you use when coaching which I haven’t included, please do let me know so that we can share those as well!

Recently, I shared with you fourteen questions, observations and potential pitfalls that every company needs to address in order to ensure the long term success of any coaching initiative.

In this final part of a three part series, I answer the question, “Where should coaching fall as a priority for a sales manager and why?”

I will tell you with great certainty; there is no single activity that will drive more sales and produce better results that would be considered more important than effective coaching. As such, it is the most important priority for every manager and the greatest gift they can give to their team and quite frankly, to themselves.

So, why should coaching be a priority? In the spirit of efficiency, here are just a few reasons why. If you are coaching your people correctly, the majority of the problems that most managers experience go away or dramatically decrease. When managers coach effectively:

*Your sales increase and your people are selling more

*Performance and productivity improve

*Underperformers get turned around or handled quickly and appropriately

*A deeper sense of loyalty, trust and commitment is established between management and salespeople

*Performance issues decrease

*Communication breakdowns are practically eliminated

*The overall culture of the company is dramatically improved

*There’s greater alignment around goals with less pushback

*You attract better talent to your organization

*Top performers are happier

*You retain your best people

*Your team becomes more accountable and self reliant

*You find your job more fulfilling and satisfying

These are just a few of the top benefits you can realize when a manager is authentically coaching their sales team.

Moreover, I haven’t even mentioned how managers can then coach up to their manager and how it affects interactions amongst the leadership team which ultimately affects the sales team. Avalanches, of course, roll down hill.

Alternatively, there are still those managers who think they are coaching but are still experiencing problems and are not realizing these measurable benefits. If that’s the case, then simply put, these managers are not coaching, not coaching consistently or there are some gaps in their thinking, approach or skill set as a coach which they are not aware of or simply don’t want to change which is diluting the effectiveness of their coaching. For some managers, while contrary to their belief, coaching is more about changing your title and then continuing to manage your people the way you did yesterday.

For those coaches or managers out there who are coaching effectively, even those managers who are running into some challenges, I’d love to hear from you, feel free to send in your comments as well as your challenges so that I can address them here for you.

Yesterday, I started answering the question, “I’ve heard various opinions about the importance of coaching. I’ve even heard some philosophies that argue sales managers shouldn’t be coaches at all? Where should “coaching” fall as a priority for a sales manager and why?”

As I’ve mentioned, failed coaching initiatives certainly do happen frequently in many organizations for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that, quite frankly, coaching is more difficult than most managers realize. Granted, there are a many moving parts and variables which come into play that would determine how effective the coach is, how valuable the coaching is, and whether or not all sales managers or even a specific sales manager needs to, or for that matter, has the opportunity to transform into more of a coach.

In this post, I’ve listed fourteen questions that every company needs to address in order to ensure the long term success of any coaching initiative.

1.How is coaching introduced and rolled out within the organization? Is coaching being positioned correctly? (Is coaching positioned as a perk to better support each person at every level or is it viewed as more remedial for the underperformer and “broken wing?” (I.e. “You’re broken and you need some fixing!”)

2.What type of coach training will the managers receive? This is another topic altogether, that is, how to choose the right management coach training program that will produce a measurable return on your time and monetary investment.

3.What is the company’s definition of coaching? What is the universal definition of coaching that each manager will be embracing? Ultimately, coaching is a language, a new way of communicating and engaging at a deeper, more meaningful level. This is why managers always have an opportunity to coach in every interaction.

4.What is the level of buy in and commitment from the top? Are senior leaders fully onboard and supportive of this initiative? Will they be coaching as well? In some companies, I’ve seen senior leaders actually pull their people out of a management coach training program! (Hmm, now what message is being sent here?)

5.Building off the commitment of senior leadership, has coaching been made a priority as reflected in the manager’s new daily responsibilities? Has more room been made in the manager’s schedule, have certain activities or tasks been removed or their workload decreased to make room for coaching, has more support been given to management so they can offload some of these activities that have now been marked as less of a priority in relation to coaching?

6.What is the commitment each manager has to their team around how each person wants and needs to be supported based on their individuality?

7.Does the manager have the right team to be coaching?

8.How willing is the manager to develop this new skill of coaching in order to make their people more valuable? (This is management’s primary objective.)

9.How effective is the manager in enrolling their salespeople around being coached? Did they uncover and shatter negative assumptions, faulty thinking and costly perceptions around coaching?

10.What is the level of trust between the salesperson and manager? Was it established, confirmed, assumed or re-created?

11.Is the manager also a producer? Coaching is challenging enough for managers. Does this create an even more challenging dynamic if there’s a sense of competition between manager and salesperson? (Is the manager’s personal agenda aligned or conflicting with coaching?)

12.What is the level of consistency and follow through in the coaching? Does the manager only coach in ‘good’ or in ‘bad’ times?

13.Is there a dedicated coaching team? If the manager doesn’t deliver formal coaching (as in scheduled weekly or biweekly coaching sessions, for example), then someone needs to do so. In some organizations, it’s worked to have a separate sales skills coaching team that fills some of this void, whether it’s outsourced or done internally. Keep in mind, this doesn’t dismiss the need for managers to learn how to coach. What it does is help leverage the manager’s time and complements the coaching they are doing with their team. After all, the manager will still need to support the work that the external coach is doing with their team.

14.Who will be coaching the coach? Is this coaching initiative reactionary and event based or built to sustain itself over the long term? Training your managers in effective coaching skills and providing them with a framework they can use to coach is only one part of the equation. After the training is over, what is being done to reinforce the coaching and what was learned during the coach training program? What level of continued support is being provided for management to ensure that the managers themselves have a coach to lean on for support and accountability throughout the process? Who can the manager go to for situational coaching where they can share what they’ve experienced while coaching their salespeople as well as discuss their challenges and goals in a safe and confidential setting? Offering ongoing coaching for your managers will further embed their newly learned skills and the approach they need in order to lead and develop their people. Having a coach for the managers also sends the right message to your salespeople regarding the stand that management is taking around coaching by demonstrating the importance of coaching – at every level.

These are just a handful of questions, observations and potential pitfalls that every company needs to be mindful of and address to ensure the success of any long term coaching initiative, as well as the level of success that the manager will be able to realize when coaching.

On LinkedIn the other day, I was directed to a question about coaching. That questions was, “I’ve heard various opinions about the importance of coaching. I’ve even heard some philosophies that argue sales managers shouldn’t be coaches at all? Where should “coaching” fall as a priority for a sales manager and why?”

Over my next three blog posts, I will be providing some deeper insight and more clarity around these pressing questions.

Whether or not all sales managers should be coaches is a big topic of discussion. Conversely, it’s difficult to determine the priority level of coaching for the sales manager if this question isn’t addressed as well, if not first, as it speaks to the foundation that each organization needs to build upon if they truly want to transform their company and their culture into a true, sustainable coaching culture. Ultimately, it’s the environment in which coaching is being cultivated that will determine success or failure. Coaching needs to become the priority of the organization to ensure the deepest impact.

So, let me qualify my response to the initial part of this question by saying, in the right environment and based on my definition of coaching, every manager needs to expand their role as a manager and develop the essential skills needed to become an effective coach. Coaching is now part of every manager’s job description and is a non negotiable core competency they need to develop. Coaching is not just an event, nor is it something that happens only during regularly scheduled coaching sessions. Coaching is a language and a more powerful way of communicating. It is something that can be leveraged during every conversation. In short, my definition of coaching is the art of creating a new possibility. Now, whether or not the manager “should” coach, wants to coach or can coach, both in ability and in execution, and do so effectively and consistently is dependent upon a variety of factors, which I’ll address shortly.

Coaching is the missing discipline of leadership; a learned and developed skill for every manager – and given the measurable results that effective coaching drives (measured through objective company /industry surveys as well as what I’ve experienced coaching thousands of managers and salespeople), coaching isn’t going to become the next great fad that fizzles out or the flavor of the month. Masterfully delivered coaching is here to stay. Whether or not a company weaves coaching into their culture isn’t a question of “if” but a question of “when,” as those companies that have done so successfully will report that coaching has provided them with a competitive edge, which has allowed them to respond better and faster in the new marketplace.

Conversely, failed coaching initiatives certainly do happen frequently in many organizations for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that, quite frankly, coaching is more difficult than most managers realize. Granted, there are a many moving parts and variables which come into play that would determine how effective the coach is, how valuable the coaching is, and whether or not all sales managers or even a specific sales manager needs to, or for that matter, has the opportunity to transform into more of a coach.

I will be listing a handful of these determining factors in tomorrow’s blog.

It’s the third week in January. Do you know where your goals are? At this point, a good number of managers have already set their 2010 sales goals for themselves and for their sales team. Whether these goals were sanctioned from the top, developed through a mutual collaboration between the salesperson and the sales manager, have been calculated by a formulaic process based on the salesperson, the marketplace and their territory or were developed and disseminated to their salespeople with a more reactive ambiguity, (“Just get out there and sell more this year!”) the majority of managers are thinking about making 2010 a better year than its predecessor.

While some level of goal setting activity has taken place or a declaration has been made by the manager how important it is to “do better this year,” it’s the deeper conversation that follows the goal decree which I often find missing within sales organizations that needs to be facilitated by management.

Sure, you may have set the sales goals with your sales team, and you may have even discussed strategy with them; that is, how they are going achieve their goals. You may have gone as far as having your salespeople submit a business plan to support this. While these are healthy practices for management and for their salespeople, these sparkles of management brilliance do not encapsulate the full composition needed to ensure success throughout the year.

For example, when discussing your sales goals with your salespeople, did you address the following topics?

Exactly how they are going to attain their goals; that is, the strategy that needs to be executed.

*Their level of buy in around their goal.

*Their level of confidence around attaining their goal.

*The potential roadblocks that can sabotage their efforts and prevent them from reaching their goals.

*The role they want you, as their manager, to play in supporting them.

*How they want to be managed around their goals.

*How they want to be held accountable around reaching their goals and how they want you to approach them if they drop the ball.

*The structure they need to put in place regarding how they will manage their daily activity that will move them towards attaining their goals.

What follows is a brief outline for any manger to use when conducting that coaching conversation with their salespeople around their yearly sales goals, while ensuring your salespeople are bought into being coached and supported by you. You will notice that these questions will address the gaps I mentioned that often go overlooked until it’s too late. At this point, managers now find themselves in the reactionary position of spending their time managing problems and fires rather than managing goals and coaching their salespeople on achieving them.

Please note that the following outline and questions have been developed with a few assumptions in mind. First, you are already coaching your salespeople. Second, your sales team is bought into being coached by you. Third, you are truly coaching them using a proven coaching framework (rather than relabeling how you managed them yesterday as coaching). Finally, their sales goals have already been established. (We’re not talking about their personal goals at this time.)

Keep in mind, this is just an outline. While it’s critical to appreciate the importance of having this conversation with each of your salespeople, you may want to fine tune it to best fit your situation.

Step One: Schedule at least a one hour meeting. (This is a conversation too important for anyone to rush through. After all, planning for the race always takes longer than the race itself.)

Step Two: Set the expectations of your meeting and what the objective of the meeting is with them. For example, “I want to use our time today to discuss your goals, how I can support you around achieving them and how together, we can develop the best strategy for you that’s going to drive the results you want.”

Step Three: Discuss the goals that have been set. Ask questions such as:

1.“So, how do you feel about your goals?”
2. “How did you come up with that goal?”
3. “How confident are you about achieving this goal?”
4. “Why?” “What’s making you feel that way?”
5. “What would it mean to you if you achieved these goals? (Personally/professionally)”
6. “What’s the cost you would incur if you don’t achieve them? What would it mean to you if you don’t achieve these goals? What would happen then?” (This isn’t old school motivation by fear or consequence. Rather, for those underperformers who need to understand that there may be a consequence incurred if they fail to reach their goals, this helps them articulate it in their words, instead of the manager standing on their pedestal preaching the consequences to them and sounding like the bad guy. Remember, people listen better and believe what they say more than what they’re told.)

Step Four: Enroll them in coaching (if need be). The timing to do so is perfect, as coaching is the means for them to achieve their goal and how management needs to support their people in doing so.

Step Five: Facilitate this conversation using the following questions:

1.What are the parts of your job that you’re exited about and motivate you?
2. What do you want to/need to achieve in the short term/long-term that will support your goals? (If you’ve already established this, i.e. in their business plan, you can skip this.)
3. What’s your action plan and strategy to achieve your goals? (If they don’t have one, make sure they have a top level view of what this could look like and make this one of their action steps that they need to complete for your next coaching session with them. You can start this process by asking them, “So if you were going to put together an action plan and a strategy to achieve your goals, what would that look like? What would some of the necessary components of your strategy be? Think about the last goals that you’ve achieved. What has made you successful before?”
4. How can I best manage and support you to achieve these goals?
5. How do you like to be rewarded/acknowledged for a job well done?
6. How will we measure your success and progress along the way? (30, 60 and 90 day milestones and mini-goals are critical to maintain your sales team’s focus and motivation throughout the entire year. A year end goal is a long way off. So, celebrate wins along the way and use these milestones as an opportunity to adjust or modify their strategy if necessary.)
7. What might sabotage your efforts to achieve these goals? What do we need to look out for that would get in the way of achieving your goals? What safeguards can we put into place to ensure that doesn’t happen?
8. What structure do you need to put into place in order to make sure you’re engaging in the right activities each day that support your goals while keeping the distractions at bay? (Hint: A structured routine!)
9. How can I hold you accountable around your goals in a way that will sound supportive rather than negative?
10. How do you want me to approach you if you don’t follow through with the commitments you make? What would be a good way to bring this up? How do you want me to handle it?

Step Six – Debrief:
1.So, how are you feeling about our conversation (and first coaching session)?
2. Do you have any concerns moving forward?
3. Great, and to reconfirm next steps, what are you going to be working on next? (What are the action steps you’ll be taking based on our conversation today?)
4. Lets go ahead and schedule our next meeting. What are you willing to commit to having completed by then?
5. I’m looking forward to working with you so that you can achieve your goals this year!

TIP:
Give your salespeople the space to answer these questions. Remember, some of these questions are not only questions you may have never asked your salespeople, but questions they, themselves have never been asked before. So, don’t rush them through this important process of self discovery and do make sure they answer your questions completely.

Additional Questions to Use:
• What do you want in your career that you don’t currently have?
• What do you want to be doing that you aren’t currently doing?
• What are you doing now that you don’t want to be doing?

Selling Power magazine just released their list of The 10 Best Books to Read in 2010. You can find the full list of these top ten books on Selling Power’s blog here.

My book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions is listed #1. I’m deeply appreciative of this recognition. You can find the full review below. Most important, I hope this book continues to make the impact it has on managers world wide, regardless of industry or profession, providing the guidance and strategies that are desperately needed to succeed as a leader and as a coach in this new marketplace in order to end the timeless struggles that managers are faced with, get your people hyper-productive and ultimately have them perform like true champions today. (You can find more information about this book here.

Review below by Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power Magazine:

The 10 Best Books to Read in 2010

Charles W. Eliot once said, “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” The profession of selling is fortunate to have a multitude of counselors who are willing to share their insights with their peers. Below is Selling Power’s selection of the best books to read for sales managers and salespeople to boost sales productivity, to improve sales and to increase customer value. These ten books contain hundreds of valuable ideas that – if applied correctly – could easily increase your sales by 10% – 30% in 2010.

1. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions: A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives by Keith Rosen

How many salespeople on your team are not employing their full potential? 50%, or more? What stands in the way to greater performance isn’t something they don’t have, but something they don’t get: professional coaching. The sad truth is that most sales managers don’t have the skill set that it takes to make a positive difference in their salespeople’s performance.

Most managers act as “super closers” and at the same time they complain about their salespeople’s inability to improve. Their approach to coaching is “telling and yelling.” The good news is that Executive Sales Coaching shares a proven process where sales managers and salespeople can co-create new skills in a fail-safe environment. The outcome: salespeople will create their own solutions.

This book will show you how you can:

*Help salespeople use their hidden capacities to solve their own problems

*Create a culture of accountability where salespeople strive to live up to their commitments

*Establish a climate of constructive collaboration that allows people to grow

What do I think? There are only a handful of great sales coaches. Keith Rosen is one of the top three in my mind. His book shares all the essentials you need to achieve a positive transformation of your sales team in 2010.

The downside: Once you’ve opened your eyes to the amazing possibilities of coaching salespeople, you’ll become hyper-critical of other sales managers who are stuck in the old ways of managing by “telling and yelling.”

You can read the full review and find the other top ten books on Gerhard’s blog here.

If you go to the gym on a frequent basis, you’ll get in better shape. A sound and fairly obvious principle. The same principle holds true with coaching the people in your company.

The measurable return you receive from investing your time coaching your people is similar to the payback you get when working out or engaging in some type of physical exercise on a consistent basis. That is, if you coach your people more frequently and consistently, your career and the career of those people on your team becomes much healthier.

Moreover, you have your finger more readily positioned on the pulse of what’s going on around you and within your organization so that you have the ability to handle what would initially be perceived as a small challenge or inconvenience before it blows up into a grand scale problem or costly catastrophe.

After all, problems are what happen when you fail to recognize the clues around you.

Below is a 45 second video I did that discusses this.

Everyone can benefit from extra support and motivation. Compound this with tougher times, igniting the fire that burns within each of us is more critical than ever before, especially when there are those of us that might be struggling to keep that fire alive. For managers, it’s essential that you are able to communicate in a way that enables you to spark that fire within each person on your team.

In my last blog, I shared a video where I talked about a powerful coaching tool I refer to as the ‘Wanting for’ statement. This is a great tool for anyone, especially for the manager who’s looking to empower their people and tap into some well needed motivation. The “Wanting for” statement is an independent, self containing strategy you can use at any time during normal conversation and can be used in a variety of situations.

Once you start using the wanting for statement more consistently in your communication, you will notice how much more open people will be to hearing and digesting your message, especially the ones they may have a natural inclination to resist. They are the perfect precursor to softening a difficult message by first opening up the person’s listening; which starts with the authentic commitment you have to supporting them by articulating specifically what it is you want most for them. Wanting for statements are a powerful tool to reinforce the stand you have chosen to take for someone, while doing so in an efficient way and simultaneously challenging them to bring out their best, as well as yours.

Based on several requests since my last post, I’ve listed several different examples below where it would be appropriate to use this coaching tool, as well as some sample dialogue you can use.

1.You need to deliver a strong message to an underperforming salesperson about their need for a turnaround.
“Kelly, what I want for you is to be able to turn your performance around to where it used to be so that you can start enjoying your job the same way you did when you first started here, along with the financial rewards that follow.”

2.You need to prepare someone or your entire sales team for some imminent changes; whether they are changes in your sales procedures, product or service, HR or in their responsibilities.
“What I want for each of you is to be able to walk into the office each day feeling confident you have all the tools and resources needed to reach your goals here, both personally and professionally. And sometimes, reaching your goals requires making some changes in our approach and how we do things.”

3.You want to reinforce your stand and commitment to the success of each person on your team.
“At this point, we have all been working together for some time now. And I hope that each of you are fully aware of my commitment to your continued success here. What I want for all of you is to be able to come to work and experience a deeper sense of satisfaction in your career, feel supported by your management team and be motivated by the value you can deliver to your customers. To achieve this, I want to reinforce what I am willing to do for you…..”

4.You want to provide some well needed motivation by acknowledging and reigniting the personal power someone may have forgotten they have.
“Nicole, I know you’ve been in sales for a while now. I know this isn’t the first time you’ve felt a bit deflated when you saw your month end numbers, especially with your work ethic and all of the effort you’ve put forth. Sometimes, with all of the things we have control over, there still exists those other market conditions which we can’t control. What I want for you is to be able to manage and honor the process you’ve put in place, which has always been proven to work well for you but do so without the additional stress and pressure you seem to be piling on yourself lately. It looks like there’s an opportunity for you to shift back to being more process driven without pushing so hard for the result which, as you’ve seen, will come naturally by honoring your process. Are you open to discussing how together, we can get you back on track to achieving your goals?”

5.You would like to open up the possibility to have a conversation about coaching someone around an area they have been struggling with.
“I know you’ve mentioned that it’s talking a little longer to create new relationships and get prospects to open up to you, especially when these prospects have been working with the same vender for as long as they have been. What I want for you is to feel confident that you have the tools and the strategy you need the next time you are confronted with a prospect like this, so that you can turn these conversations into new selling opportunities. Are you ready to discuss how to do so?”

As a recap from Part One, “Do I Coach Them or Train Them?” when coaching someone, The Gap is the space that exists between where the client or coachee is today and where they want or need to be.

It’s the void that exists between the person and their goal. As a coach, it’s your responsibility to identify and fill in this gap. The question is, what exactly do you use to fill in this gap – do you coach them, train then, advise them or flat out just give them the answer?

Here’s the third installment of the three part series. These three blogs detail how you can handle some common training and coaching scenarios that many managers find themselves in and the most appropriate approach to take in these situations as it relates to how you can best support your people in a way that achieves the results you want and need.

Scenario Three:

Situation: Bob, a successful, established and well seasoned insurance salesperson had been a long time top producer for his company. Since the company merger, restructuring, policy changes and compensation plan revisions, Bob needed to start generating new clients to fill up his sales funnel again. While Bob used to spend half his days cold calling, he hasn’t done it in a while, relying more on referrals and the income he generated from renewal business. Yes, Bob was great on the phone and generated a significant amount of new prospects as a result of his recent cold calling efforts. However, it seems that Bob was not able to close these prospects the way he would a referral or an existing client. He was used to people saying, “Yes” without even asking for the sale. Objections? The only one Bob was used to hearing amongst his clientele was whether or not they should write him a check or hand him their credit card.

Now, it seems that every time Bob met with one of these new prospects, he was walking out with a time to follow up with them rather than a sale. Bob wasn’t used to hearing, “Thanks, let us think about it,” or “You’re the first person we’ve spoken with regarding a policy,” and he was especially not used to hearing, “Wow, that sounds awfully expensive.” While Bob did his best to try and convince these people to buy from him, he felt his rebuttals were falling upon deaf ears. To make matters worse, Bob forgot how to actually ask for the sale.

The Gap: Have you noticed The Gap here? The Gap in this situation is in Bob’s closing technique and in his attitude or philosophy towards closing. Bob is holding on to some limiting beliefs. More so, his tactical selling approach and natural selling acumen needs to be polished to address the new selling situations that he has not had to face in a while.

Training and Coaching Solution: This is a coaching and training issue. We’ve identified that there are some limiting beliefs getting in his way of taking action. Specifically, salespeople don’t overcome objections, prospects do. Rather than convince someone, which it sounds like Bob was attempting to do, he needs to respond with questions rather than statements so that the prospect can overcome their concern. As such, the coach needs to use well crafted questions and a process of inquiry to explore deeper into his perception of closing and asking for the sale. Does closing mean dumping more information? Is he not asking for the sale for fear of rejection? Finally, Bob needs some hands on tactical responses ready the next time he hears these objections. The training will take care of this, providing Bob with the dialogue and the steps to defusing objections that will turn more of his prospects into customers.

As you’ve probably encountered yourself, handling employee issues typically requires more of a hybrid approach to management. That is, the utilization of all the disciplines we’ve discussed over the last three blogs, including coaching, training and consulting.

This eclectic blend of philosophy and strategy is what today’s leaders need to embrace when developing tomorrow’s champions.

As a recap from Part One, “Do I Coach Them or Train Them?” when coaching someone, The Gap is the space that exists between where the client or coachee is today and where they want or need to be. It’s the void that exists between the person and their goal. As a coach, it’s your responsibility to identify and fill in this gap. The question is, what exactly do you use to fill in this gap – do you coach them, train then, advise them or flat out just give them the answer?

Here’s the second installment of the three part series. These three blogs detail how you can handle some common training and coaching scenarios that many managers find themselves in and the most appropriate approach to take in these situations as it relates to how you can best support your people in a way that achieves the results you want and need.

Scenario Two:

Situation: Nine months into the training, Samantha’s boss was questioning whether or not she would make the cut for the long haul. Out of the initial ten new recruits that completed the week long training, practically nine months to the date, Samantha was one of the only two that has made it this far. When it comes to being an executive recruiter, one message that was continually being reinforced into Sam’s head was that if you can make it a year, and build up your book of business, you can survive the initial hurdle and start developing a successful career.

But nine months into her new career, what started as a strong and promising leap right out of the gate, securing three top accounts that she has been relying too heavily on to make her numbers each month, is now appearing to come to a slow and painful halt. One of the three large clients left her and the other two are slowing down their recruiting efforts. Here’s the thing, though. Samantha was on the phone practically every day making the calls she knew she needed to make in order to survive this first year.

The Gap: Samantha proved early on she could be successful at cold calling for new clients. She also had the evidence behind her to support this claim. Her initial four month’s book of business provided her with the volume to make her monthly sales quota. While Samantha was still making her daily number of cold calls, she was no longer getting the strong results she was when she first started out. Moreover, her boss noticed how stressed out Sam was as a result of all this. For these reasons, The Gap is actually a combination of training and coaching.

Training and Coaching Solution: In a case like this with Samantha, the solution may be more of a multi-faceted one that approaches her situation from a few different angles. Here are just four approaches to explore, diagnose and uncover different ways that you can coach and support Sam.

First, if Sam’s approach was working when she started nine months ago and it’s no longer working today, then something had to change. Her boss noticed Sam didn’t have a templated process that she following and more or less ‘winged’ her calls, shooting proverbially from the hip. Consequently, she was moving farther away from what had initially worked for her. Thus, having Sam work off a proven template that’s documented and in front of her so that she can create a level of consistency in her selling efforts is one part of this solution.

Second, this fine tuning of her approach and putting it in an actionable, step by step process will eliminate any inconsistency and allow her to best manage what approach works best.

Third, Samantha appears to be fueled and driven by fear and consequence. That is, the loss of her job! Being driven by consequence and scarcity – what you don’t want to happen, is a negative source of energy that dilutes not only the impact of your selling efforts but the quality of your life.

Here, Sam needs to be coached on developing a new way of thinking, one that empowers her, lifts her spirits and focuses on her goals and dreams more than her fears and consequences.

Finally, is Samantha in need of some new resources? That is, where is Sam mining for new business? Does she need to look at alternative ways to prospect? Does she need a revised call list? Is she maximizing the lifetime value of every client she’s working with through upselling opportunities and referrals? These are just a few of the components of her sales engine that you can put a magnifying glass over to take a look at a deeper level in order to diagnose exactly what is going on.

Stay tuned for part three later this week.

When coaching someone, The Gap is the space that exists between where the client or coachee is today and where they want or need to be. It’s the void that exists between the person and their goal. As a coach, it’s your responsibility to identify and fill in this gap. The question is, what exactly do you use to fill in this gap?

Part of the reason why identifying the gap is such a critical starting point in coaching is this; you must first determine whether the issue at hand is, in fact, a training issue, a coaching issue or an advising or consulting issue. If you have a salesperson that’s never been trained in the art and discipline of selling, then how can you coach them? In essence, The Gap in this scenario is the lack or absence of a personal selling foundation and core ideology which training would have provided this person.

As such, a solution to this situation and what you would fill into this Gap initially would call for a training component first before coaching can come into play. After all, there’s a clear difference between training, coaching and consulting. For example, training and consulting often provide solutions, offer answers or show you how to play the game. Coaching is then used to refine your game, challenge your thinking and remove any obstacles. That’s why it’s so critical to be able to identify when it’s suitable to use each of these distinct approaches to professional development, continuous learning and ultimately, when building an exceptional team.

In the following three scenarios outlined over the next three blogs, I’ve identified when each competency and approach would be appropriate by first recognizing The Gap that you need to uncover and assess in every coaching situation.

Scenario One:

Situation: Tim, a new rookie salesperson has been hired to generate appointments on the phone for the outside sales team.

The Gap: Since this is Tim’s first sales job, he’s never cold called before nor has Tim ever been trained in how to cold call effectively. Therefore, The Gap is the training, skills, knowledge as well as a step by step tactical approach and dialogue needed to perform his job effectively.

Training Solution: This is a training issue, as this person first needs to develop some strong habits to solidify a healthy foundation to build upon. Learning how to do something such as how to sell or cold call, a new discipline, skill or task, is not coaching but more training, consulting or advising. They need to be shown best practices, the “how-to’s” and the mechanics as well as the philosophy behind effective appointment setting.

Stay tuned for parts two and three over the next week.

The most common question I hear from managers just starting to shift from manager to coach is, “How do I recognize where it is they need and could benefit from the coaching most?”

Actually, covering the specifics of what you can coach someone on, from a tactical perspective is actually the easy part. It’s uncovering the who or the often very elusive and limiting thinking or outlook they have which is ultimately showing up in their actions and behavior that is the tricky part. Demonstrating this ability is a true testament of an effective coach and I’m going to share with you how to develop it on your own.

Regardless of the topic, skill, problem or mindset you’ve identified as a possible focal point in your coaching, there is one model that’s always applicable in every coaching scenario. It also happens to be the very thing each coaching opportunity has in common: The Gap. The Gap is the space that exists between where the client or coachee is today and where they want or need to be.

The Gap is the space that exists between:

• What people know (current knowledge, philosophies, assumptions, stories, outlooks, beliefs, and so on) and what they don’t know or don’t realize is possible.
• What people need to do; the activity that supports their goals yet are still not doing.
• The resources and skills they have and the ones they don’t.

Imagine a bridge for a moment. Picture yourself standing on one side of the bridge. You focus your vision on the other side of the bridge which is the location you want to get to. Think about what you need to do to get to the other side. Consider the resources needed to arrive at your desired destination in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of risk or error. Reaching the other side is your goal or your destination. What might you need to fill in this gap; this void that exists between you and your goal?

What is needed? You need a car if you want to get to your destination as fast as possible. You need fuel as the resource needed to get your car moving. You need a clear path that would help you arrive at your destination with the least amount of delays, obstructions, diversions and wrong turns. Identifying these resources (which we did through the use of inquiry, just like when you’re coaching) provides definition, structure and an executable strategy which collectively evolved into an actionable and comprehensive solution to this situation.

Rather than assume what you think your staff already knows, start determining what they need to know in order to fill in this gap and ensure clear communication. You’ll increase your awareness and become more sensitized to what the other person needs to learn and what opportunities there are for coaching.

Instead of sharing what you perceive to be the solution to a problem before understanding the person’s specific needs, recognize The Gap in every coaching conversation or situation with your staff. It will help you become more aware how important it is to invest the time to uncover their specific concern, request or need that exists in the space we now refer to as The Gap.

For example, if you want to learn how to play golf and you’re going to take the game seriously, one of the first things you’re going to do is find a great teacher or enroll in a golf training class. You find someone who can show you the mechanics of the game, teach you the game and help you develop your own swing. Since you’ve never done this before, you need to be shown how to do it. More than just being shown the basics and fundamentals you want to be shown the very best way to do it and you want to be taught by a champion. This is the training aspect to learning the game and the time to identify and develop the best practices for playing.

Now, some time has passed and you’ve learned the basics. You are out on the golf course playing consistently. You’ve taken what you learned from the golf teacher and are doing your best to apply it. However, you notice you’re only getting so far. While your score has improved since you’ve started playing, you’ve capped out and can’t seem to shoot better than a 90, the score you’re been shooting constantly.

Since you are ready to take your game to the next level, you now go back to the instructor or look for a great golf coach. Distinct from what a teacher does, your coach is going to find out what and where you want to improve. Your coach is going to uncover where you want to be in terms of how well you want to play the game. What do you ultimately want to shoot? That’s the measurable end result or destination we’re going to use as our gauge for winning. To get a good sense of where you are now, your golf coach is going to watch you swing a club and even play a few holes. The coach will even ask you some questions regarding how you think about the game and why you may be doing certain things when you’re playing the game. That’s the barometer to measure and identify where you are today.

Training teaches you the game. Coaching refines your game.

What this coach has just done is identify your Gap. That is, where you are now in comparison to where you want to be (a golfer that shots in the high seventies.)

A teacher is going to show you how to do something; something you’ve never done before or tried before in a consistent manner. A teacher or trainer is going to provide you with a foundation, a process, a benchmark of best practices to give you a starting point in relation to where you would begin on your path of development.

A coach, however, is going to show you how to do what you are doing even better. First, the coach would need to see how you swing a club. Then the benefits of coaching are recognized and apparent when the coach watches from the sidelines seeing the things that you, as the player cannot and gently tweaks and refines your game and approach to the point where you’ve made it your own. And this may occur after several meetings with your golf coach over time – or something you do indefinitely to continue bettering your best.

Coaching is the discipline managers use to leverage all of your salespeople’s individual strengths and talents, to keep them on top of their game and to recognize their fullest potential today, rather than being seduced by what could be tomorrow.

Sales training is what you need to become a salesperson.
Sales coaching is what you need to become a sales champion.

Leadership is, in fact a language. It is a dialogue and a way of relating to people that makes the difference between a mediocre leader and a powerful one. The greatest leaders possess an ability to connect with each person they manage and it all starts with how they communicate. The Art of Enrollment is a powerful and compelling communication strategy that is utilized by the greatest leaders of our time. Let’s begin with a comprehensive definition of the word enrollment.

Enrollment: An authentic, powerful way of communicating that grabs people’s attention, stimulates interest, and empowers others to embrace, support, and believe in your position, idea, or philosophy. This motivates people to want to become part of your cause (a cause that may be bigger than you and them), take ownership of it, and then act in their best interest to create the possibility that you have introduced to them and/or have taken a stand for. (For example: Creating a certain corporate culture, selling or making a purchasing decision, trying something new that hasn’t been done before, or advocating for a positive, yet difficult change, etc.)

What do you do to be different, to be unique, to be eternal in the mind of a salesperson? True sales coaches leave not only a lasting impression but they also create one.

Like traditional management, traditional selling is dead. Unfortunately, many salespeople today are still using antiquated selling strategies. They no longer offer a competitive edge that separates them from every other company and promotes a healthy, winning relationship with their customers. Rather than change their approach, salespeople work harder and longer as they continually react to the changes in the marketplace, only to produce the same results as before.

Motivating employees is often exhausting and time-consuming work. Trying to get people to change or do things differently is even more of a challenge. Managers struggle to get their staff to become internally driven, self-motivated, and perform at their potential. Businesses are closing their doors not due to a lack of effort but because they are still attempting to sell, manage, or run their businesses the old way, not the way it needs to be done today.

The next evolution in communication and in the way we coach our salespeople is using the art and discipline of enrollment. Think about some of the great leaders of our time. Think of the leaders who you respect, admire and who have made a difference or an impact in our lives today and yesterday. What do these leaders have in common? Each had a cause that ignited them to act from a global perspective. It was their innate ability that enabled them to enroll millions of people to follow, not them, but what was bigger than them—their cause. They used the art of enrollment to achieve historical, unprecedented results. They inspired people to want to be a part of their cause because they made it very clear what was in it for them.

What has been initially perceived as an inherent, genetic ability is now a documented process that allows each of us to tap into this hidden power we all possess. The dormant desire to want to express more of who we are, what we want, how we feel, and what could be possible can now be achieved through enrollment. Each of us can do so in a natural, conversational way that honors our personal strengths, talents, goals, values, passion, and style of communicating while remaining open to co-creating greater possibilities.

Enrollment is a way to unleash each person’s purest form of open, honest, and authentic communication, using thought-provoking, curiosity-based questions that generate worthwhile results in any setting. When you uncover what you are passionate about, what you believe in, and then take a strong, unwavering stand for whatever it may be, while respecting the mutual differences of one another, only then can you start to communicate and achieve more through the enrollment process: the highest form of communicating and self-expression.

Enrollment Is a Universal Phenomenon

When top salespeople want to be better at their jobs while maintaining their focus and desire to deliver rich value and serve their clients’ best interests, they stop selling and start enrolling. When an accountant, a coach, a doctor, contractor, financial planner, attorney, mortgage broker, or salesperson wants to build their practice or their sales, they enroll. When universities want to attract more students, they enroll. When parents want their kids to change or do something, they enroll them. When managers hire someone, they enroll that person in the position.

To make this more relevant, think about it in terms of your position. When handling internal conflicts or sharing a policy change that affects every salesperson’s commission, managers must enroll people toward a positive, mutual mindshare. If you need your team to make radical changes in their behavior or in their thinking, you enroll them in that change. Here are some situations that would warrant an opportunity to use the art of enrollment.

1.Needing to get salespeople to relocate.
2. Developing an incentive program.
3. Defusing hostility and finding a common ground.
4. Making changes in company policy or procedure, such as a price increase, a change in commission or compensation, or a change in a person’s job function.
5. Changing how salespeople will be developed and trained, such as taking part in a coaching program.
6. Recruiting and hiring a new salesperson.
7. Firing a team member and reducing collateral damage as well as toxic gossip.
8. Requesting a change in people’s behavior or activity.
9. Getting people to own a certain problem which they have been avoiding.
10. Holding people more accountable around their performance goals as well as any administrative responsibilities.
11. Requesting someone to take on a task or do something they may normally be reluctant to do.

In practically any scenario where it requires opening up someone’s thinking, modifying behavior, or taking action around something, the art of enrollment will become your primary communication strategy to bring about the changes you want without pushback, prodding, or resistance.

Creating the Possibility for Change

Coaching is the art of creating new possibilities. Enrollment allows you to communicate those possibilities in a way that people will be receptive to and motivates them to change. At its core, enrollment is all about facilitating positive, long-term change.

Whether you’re selling a product, service, idea, or philosophy, no one likes to be sold. Everyone loves to feel as if they are making the decision themselves. If your salespeople perceive you as someone who is focused solely on helping them make their own decisions, they are going to want to be enrolled by you and will enjoy the process.

Take any situation or conversation in which there is a group of people who have conflicting interests, a conflict that needs resolution, an idea that needs to be communicated and embraced, a change initiative that needs to be launched, or a mutual goal that needs to be attained. Whether each person possesses a separate agenda or information that needs to be communicated, has a misunderstanding of each other’s goals or has no business talking to each other in the first place, mastering the Art of Enrollment will unlock the door to full self-expression for all. It will enable you to communicate more powerfully, more authentically, and more confidently with everyone.

People don’t want to be sold. They want to be enrolled.

I was sitting in a hotel restaurant having breakfast and preparing myself for a day of back to back meetings. While I was working on my iPhone, a waitress came over and introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Maya and I will be your server this morning. May I get you something to drink?” she inquired. We’ve all heard this question a thousand times when dining at a restaurant. But for some reason, the way she asked me was different. “Let’s start out with some coffee and orange juice,” I said. “Great!” she replied enthusiastically. “I’ll get that for you right away and will be back to take your order.”

“That’s what it was!” I thought to myself. She was smiling. “Big deal, a smiling waitress,” you may be thinking. “Waitresses are supposed to smile. This doesn’t sound like something that’s so incredibly noteworthy.”

Normally it wouldn’t be, but this smile was different. You see, it wasn’t like one of those smiles you’re forced to put on when talking with customers, but a truly authentic smile. I could tell because it was coming from the inside. This woman was genuinely happy. “Okay, duly noted and dismissed.” I acknowledged the observation, yet felt compelled to get back to my e-mails as quickly as possible, before the coffee and food came.

Maya returned a few minutes later with my beverages and took my order. “Another one out and 20 more to go,” I thought. I had just hit the Send button on the fourth e-mail I managed to respond to before someone else came over to my table and began talking to me. “Good morning!” a friendly voice said. This time, it wasn’t the waitress, but someone else who worked at the restaurant. A middle-aged woman had intentionally stopped at my table rather than continuing to walk by. I returned her smile and wished her a hearty good morning as well. I wanted to get back to my e-mails. Apparently, this was not part of her agenda. She didn’t let me.

“I love your glasses,” she said.

“Thank you,” I answered quickly, doing my best to be polite while trying to let her know I was a bit busy, knee-deep in my daily dose of morning e-mails. “Couldn’t she see I was working?” I thought to myself. I sensed myself getting a little annoyed that my daily regimen was being disrupted, then challenged that feeling for a moment. In a world where we need to question people’s motives, was this person being truly sincere? I gave her the benefit of the doubt and began to further engage her in conversation. She had made herself more comfortable, leaning next to the booth beside me, obviously eager for a conversation with me.

“So, are you here on business?”

“Yes,” still convinced I could cut this conversation short, until she formally introduced herself and proceeded to talk about her children. When that happens, I can’t help but be interested.

“By the way, I’m Tracy. I manage this restaurant. Where are you from?”

I put my iPhone down, surrendering to Tracy’s persistence in wanting to have a dialogue. “New York.”

“Oh, what a fun place to visit. I have two girls. It’s my youngest one who goes to college out east. She’s in her second year at Cornell. We had a chance to go into Manhattan when we were visiting her at school.”

“My oldest daughter is about to graduate from UCLA and has already started the job interview process.” Tracy continued, but with a different tone in her voice. “It is so tough out there to find a job that you not only love to do but can make a good living doing it.” I could not only hear concern in her voice but I could see it in her eyes: the concern and protective instincts only a mother could project when worrying about her children.

At this point, my iPhone was back in my coat pocket, and I was practically ready for my second cup of coffee as Tracy continued telling me about her kids. Tracy had enrolled me in a conversation with her, but it was more than just a friendly exchange of words and pleasantries. Tracy and I were connecting.

“I just don’t get it,” Tracy shared, allowing her frustrations to surface. “These companies want to hire someone with a great education and experience. But other than holding some entry-level positions or finding a great internship, where are you going to get the experience if you can’t get an opportunity to learn on the job and prove what you’re capable of doing? They all say she has what it takes, except the experience.”

I looked Tracy in the eye and said, “Tracy, I completely understand how you feel. However, I want you to know, your daughters will do just fine. They’re not only going to make it, they are going to thrive. I know it.”

My comment must have reinforced or reminded Tracy about the peace of mind and confidence she always had about her kids. “Thank you, Keith, but how do you know they’ll be just fine? How can you say that with such certainty?”

I smiled at Tracy and asked her a question I already knew the answer to. “Tracy, are your children anything like you?”

She thought for a moment and smiled, “Why, yes, they are very much like me. My husband says they get their drive and bubbly enthusiasm from my side of the family.”

“Tracy, your daughters are very lucky to have a mom like you. And if they sell themselves, that is, come across the way you do and share who they are naturally, people will notice the gifts, value, and talents they can bring to any position they apply for.”

“Oh, you are so sweet for saying that. Thank you.” Tracy’s response was heartfelt. I could tell that she really listened to what I said and took it in rather than hearing my observation on a superficial level and dismissing it.

Tracy and I continued our discussion for another few minutes until she got called away by the hostess to handle an issue with another customer. I turned back to finish my breakfast. It had cooled off since the waitress came by and served it during the time I was talking with Tracy. But it was worth it. Yes, I made a difference that morning in someone’s life.

As Tracy walked away, I glanced around the restaurant. Now that I was out of my head, or should I say, out of my iPhone, I started noticing more of what was happening around me than I had when I first walked into the restaurant that morning. I took a visual inventory of each person working in that restaurant. It was not just Tracy and Maya who were smiling. Everyone who worked there was smiling. The two hostesses at the front entrance were smiling, even if there were no guests for them to greet at the moment. Every busboy, waiter, and waitress was smiling, whether they were taking an order, serving a meal, or walking back to the kitchen where nobody could see them (unless you were like me and were purposely looking).

Everything is relevant and every conversation you have is of vital importance. Even though some may seem trivial to you, each is deeply influential when compounded over time.

Making an Impact
How does this apply to your ability to become a great sales coach and master the art of enrollment which is what this story is about? Think about the restaurant experience with Tracy at the helm. She was the manager. She set the tone. Tracy was the one responsible for developing the atmosphere within the restaurant, which was a by-product of the culture she promoted within her team. This, in turn, created the positive experience every customer would leave with after dining at Tracy’s restaurant.

The atmosphere, tone, and culture created within a company lead back to the efforts, actions, and behavior of one person—the manager.

Before you determine that you can’t make a difference, before you conclude that you don’t have enough power, think about Tracy. She is a manager who makes a difference every day with the people she meets. Not because of her experience or her training. Tracy makes an impact on people because she does something that other people, more specifically, other managers, are not willing to do or care to do: establish an honest, authentic connection with people. This is why I knew Tracy’s kids would be fine.

Leaving Your Legacy as a Manager

The experience I had with Tracy, a restaurant manager, made me think about the other managers I know. Interestingly, the one thing I rarely, if ever, hear from salespeople is how much they’ve loved their prior managers. Think about your career and the path you’ve traveled, which brought you to where you are today. Reflect on managers you have had in the different positions you’ve held. Now, ask yourself the following questions.

• How many managers have you had that inspired you to live your greatness?
• How many managers throughout your career have you connected with on a deeper level outside of what needs to be done to maintain your sales numbers? A level where loyalty, trust, friendship, and a mutual respect are developed and cherished?
• How many of your prior managers have truly changed your life and career for the better?
• Do you still maintain a relationship with any managers you had in your prior positions?

If you want to make a difference, a positive impact that can be felt and measured by your team, first start by making a strong connection with your people. Establishing a common ground and sharing personal experiences foster a deeper connection, leaving your salespeople with the feeling, “We are the same. He really understands me.”

This connection you develop with your people then leads to trust, loyalty, respect, and the authentic desire to want to succeed for themselves, for their team, and for you as their manager.

Before you can make a difference, you have to make a connection. The most effective way to make a connection is by sharing yourself, your humanity, even your vulnerability with others.

When it comes to exemplifying poor leadership tactics, here’s one situation that took place at a recent company retreat. The purpose of this retreat was for the partners to discuss the corporate vision, new ideas, and growth strategies as well as year-end goals. It was an opportunity for all of them to get together, removed from the daily stresses of the office. This year’s two-day retreat was at a resort built around a majestic 30-square-mile lake.

The first day and a half consisted of meetings, outings, and exercises, all of which were going well. Ken, the managing partner who helped coordinate the event, was pleased to see that people were enjoying themselves and benefiting from the experience. That afternoon, he was on his way to a small, invitation-only breakout group with several of the senior partners in the firm.

The meeting was going smoothly, given the diversity and dynamics of the group. Ken was doing a great job facilitating the conversation and moving from one topic to the next, all of which had been approved by the senior partners and placed on the agenda prior to this afternoon event—all except one person. It seemed that Buck, the founder of the firm, a gray-haired, well-respected, sharp elderly gentleman, never saw the e-mail that contained the agenda.

Although Buck is no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of the firm, something on the agenda not only caught his eye but stirred up quite a strong reaction in him. Even though Buck had been carefully directed by Ken to be more of an observer or facilitator, Buck delivered an edgy opinion on this particular topic. It was a line item listed in the meeting’s agenda that dealt with new business development initiatives. Specifically, the firm was considering hiring an outside marketing firm to assist with their public relations and advertising campaign. “After all these years of sustained double-digit growth, you think we now need to go out and hire someone to do what we’ve always done naturally and quite successfully on our own?” asked Buck. “I remember about 10 years ago, we retained the services of a PR firm with very poor results. Since when are we no longer competent enough to handle this internally?”

After Buck shared his thoughts on the matter, the conversation just stopped. No more open forum. No more safe, open sharing, no more flowing dialogue. An issue that, less than 10 minutes ago, had full buy in and consensus from the team regarding the direction to go had now gone full circle, right back to the beginning. It was as if a new topic had just been introduced, which had no current buy in or solution. No one said a word until Ken redirected the conversation to the next item on the agenda.

A possibility or an idea from the boss opens up further conversation.
An expectation shuts it down.

It is a fact that if you’re a boss, manager, or executive responsible for managing people, you are their superior. And, therefore, you have a certain degree of influence over how your staff feels about certain subjects. Buck didn’t make any decisions. He basically said, “This isn’t the way it used to be. Why is it different now? Agree with me or experience my wrath.”

Managers and executives have the power to shut down a conversation or open up a dialogue. Quite often, they don’t realize how much of an influence they have over their staff and how influential they can be without even trying. When a manager takes a strong stand or position and makes a statement like, “Here’s the solution” or “Here’s how it is,” it removes any opportunity for others to contribute a different and potentially better idea.

There’s a difference between sharing an opinion or idea and sharing an expectation. It’s one thing if the manager or boss shares an opinion that allows the dialogue and flow of the conversation to continue moving in a positive, collaborative direction. It’s entirely different when the manager shares an expectation with a strong agenda or ultimatum behind it. An opinion or idea from the boss opens up further conversation. An expectation shuts it down.

Buck could have kept the collective conversation moving forward with an approach like this. “Here’s one thought that I want to put on the table. It still has some wet paint on it and needs some further development. I would love to hear your responses and how you feel about it so that we can incorporate everyone’s ideas and create something even better.”

With an approach like this, it is likely that managers will get a response that encourages unfiltered collaboration and multiple contributions.

First, I want to thank all the partners who supported this book event. Your support is deeply appreciated.

The good news, Coaching Salespeople Into Champions sells out on Amazon & breaks a new sales record, becoming the #1 Best Selling Sales Management Book last week. The bad news, they sold out of stock. The good news, the book supply has since been replenished and as such, I wanted to extend this book event for another 72 Hours to those people who wanted to order the book but emailed me about this out of stock issue. You still have an opportunity to take advantage of this event for the next 72 hours and get all the bonus materials from dozens of thought leaders that you get with your purchase. Click here to find out more.

I’ve confirmed that Amazon shipping status has been revised from sold out status and the book will now ships within 1 week. Below are the details of this extended event.

Get Your Playbook For Winning More Sales-Today
BOOK SELLS OUT AND MAKES #1 SPOT ON AMAZON.COM. IN RESPONSE, WE’RE EXTENDING THIS 72 HOUR BOOK EVENT THROUGH THIS WEEK!

FACT: There has never been a more critical time for managers to impact performance in a way that brings in more sales and revenue & motivates teams to achieve greater success.

FACT: The majority of managers are simply not equipped with the right skills, tools and a tactical process they can follow to do so.

To win more sales today, you need to play by the new rules. Micromanagement and doing more of what you did yesterday doesn’t work. Learn what the world’s top sales organizations are doing to create sales champions by developing the new discipline of leadership.

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• Attract and retain top sales talent.
• Avoid the mistakes that lead to coaching failure.
• Coach your team to become accountable and self-motivated. Stop wasting your time continually pushing for results.
• Empower your people to solve their own problems and lessen their dependence on you.
• Eliminate time consuming distractions, fires and costly staffing problems that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
• Plus much more!

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Maria was a new sales manager hired by Media Pros, Inc., a sports management consulting firm. She was recently introduced to the coaching model at a seminar for senior managers in her company.

Maria went back to her team pumped up and ready to begin implementing some of the coaching methods. However, it seems that Maria missed the section of the seminar on how critical it is to prepare your team for coaching by managing their expectations.

Compound this with the fact that Maria has only been in her position for less than five weeks. It’s difficult enough for a sales team to adjust to a new boss, but further changes without proper preparation and communication will cause a rebellion.

Maria’s boss set up a meeting with her and an outside executive coach to discuss the resistance Maria was running up against when attempting to manage and coach her team. Maria told the executive coach that she felt she had assimilated herself into her team and prepared them for any changes she was making. Since Maria’s sales team worked remotely, she introduced herself to the team via a conference call and let them all know she was there to support them and help them become even more successful in their careers. Sounds pretty good so far, right? However, after further exploration, the executive coach uncovered the breakdown in Maria’s new manager orientation process.

The executive coach asked Maria the following questions to help discover why Maria failed to manage her team’s expectations as well as develop a strategy to communicate her objectives in a way her team would understand and embrace.

1.Did you conduct one-to-one meetings with each salesperson on your team?
2. Did you ask each of them how they like to be managed? Are they coachable?
3. Did you inquire about their prior experience with their past manager? Was it positive or negative?
4. Did you set the expectations of your relationship with them? Did you ask them what they needed and expected from their manager? What changes do they want to see?
5. Did you inform them about how you like to manage and your style of management? This would open up the space for a discussion regarding how you may manage differently from your predecessor.
6. Did you let them know you just completed a coaching course that would enable you to support them even further and maximize their talents?
7. Did you explain to them the difference between coaching and traditional management?
8. Did you enroll them in the benefits of coaching? That is, what would be in it for them?
9. Did you let them know about your intentions, goals, expectations, and aspirations for each of them and for the team as a whole?
10. How have you gone about learning the ins and outs of the company? Are you familiar with the internal workings, culture, leadership team, and subtleties that make the company unique? Have you considered that your team may be the best source of knowledge and intelligence for this? Did you communicate your willingness and desire to learn from them as well, so that the learning and development process can be mutually reciprocated?

With each question, it became more evident that Maria did not plan or prepare her staff for change. She did not prepare her team for a new boss or for her new approach to management.

At the end of the conversation, it was clear to Maria what she had to do. She would start with a team meeting to address many of the questions posed to her by the executive coach. Maria would use this meeting to explain the changes she wanted to make and the benefits each person on the sales team would realize. Maria also knew that she needed to address any gossip, rumors, or negativity that could poison the team. She would acknowledge that with any change in management there is an adjustment period. Maria wants her team to know that she is sensitive to what they are going through during this transition, as well as to each of their individual needs. She needs to reinforce her role and the fact that even though her style, personality, and approach may be different from what they are used to, she is there to help them thrive in their careers.

Once Maria finished facilitating this team meeting, she scheduled one-on-one calls with each salesperson on her team to discuss these questions. More specifically, the questions that relate to their specific needs and goals and how they want to be managed and coached. This experience was a huge lesson for Maria and would be for any manager. If you fail to inform your salespeople of your good intentions, they have no idea what they are, thus leaving it up to each salesperson to form his or her own opinion.

A situation where a salesperson had a less than favorable experience with the old manager can be made worse and repeated if the new manager does not take the steps to create a new experience between her and her salespeople.

If management does not break the cycle, they may encounter situations where their salespeople are not engaged at all, especially in the coaching process. New managers would then have to form their own conclusions, thinking that either the coaching doesn’t work or it just may be the salesperson who doesn’t work. In truth, what isn’t working is the exchange of communication and as such, a critical message goes undelivered perpetuating conflicts, communication breakdowns, distrust, and underperformance.

Ironically, you may be doing everything else right when managing your team. That is, your heart is in the right place, your intentions are pure and sound, and you truly want to be the best coach you can be for your team. But without defusing any faulty assumptions, gossip, or beliefs, resistance from your staff will be imminent and your coaching will be unsuccessful.

Whether you’re a new manager or a manager who’s a new coach, informing your team about any new initiatives or changes you plan on making and the enrollment process you will use to initiate buy in needs to happen prior to actually implementing the change.

To recap, first take that step back and assess your team’s needs as well as the unique needs of each individual on your team. Let them know how you plan on supporting them. Then manage these expectations with surgical precision. This will foster a strong, healthy relationship which you can build on right from the start, creating the nurturing and open environment that will enable you to earn your salespeople’s deeper respect, trust and commitment to their objectives, even in the face of change.

72 HOUR EVENT: Learn what the world’s top sales organizations are doing to create sales champions by developing the new discipline of leadership. Receive hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from the world’s top sales and business leaders. Click Here To Learn More About This Book and Special Event.

Watch the video here.

72 HOUR EVENT: Get Your Playbook for Winning More Sales Today

Receive hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from the world’s top sales and business leaders. Click Here To Learn More About This Book and Special Event.

The result is the process. A timely paradox and critical mind shift that every salesperson and manager must make if they want to transcend the mediocre performance they may be experiencing today.

Even before you can engage in the type of sales benchmarking activities or even take the time to refine your selling skills, you will come head to head with resistance to selling by the numbers if this change in attitude around how we approach selling is not fully embraced beforehand.

I was reminded how important this was during a seminar I delivered last week in NYC. At the end of the seminar, one manager raised his hand and posed this question to me. He said, “Our sales cycle has changed dramatically. Our salespeople can no longer make a call and take an order. Our product offering has been modified and as a result, the average cost of our product has increased, which has all contributed to a longer sales cycle. However, my salespeople are still reluctant to change. They’re still stuck in that transactional way of selling. They’re getting more frustrated and discouraged because sales aren’t happening fast enough, all because they’re unsure how to manage this longer selling cycle. I’ve told them many times over, that our sales cycle is no longer the way it used to be, and we need to be more patient with the process and more consultative with our customers. I’ve explained to them over and over again, that we need to modify and re-engineer our selling process in response to these new challenges, the changes we’re up against and how our customers make a purchasing decision and buy from us. What else can I do?”

As this sales manager was explaining his challenge, I was thinking to myself how important it is today, more than ever, to become process driven. Without this change in our thinking, salespeople will be unable to honor the process needed to convert more conversations into sales, let alone build out a more robust process and selling strategy that will enable them to do so. As such, the eternal conflict between our tactical strategy and our thinking will continue to rage on.

The fact is, companies will fail to invest the time in order to eliminate process oriented and measurable oversights and embed these necessary changes into their process if the sales culture is too focused on getting to the result by forging ahead in an attempt to close more sales. Managers can continually push their people to become more mindful of these numbers, however, it’s the process driven questions managers need to be more sensitive to rather than the result driven questions that managers obsess over that continue to perpetuate this toxic way of thinking. Those questions sound like, “Are you hitting your numbers? How many follow-up calls did you make today? How much good volume did you book this month? How many leads did you run this week?” While important, these questions only focus on half of the equation. What is missing is the “How,” that is, the questions that focus on the process the salesperson needs to engage in to achieve the desired end result.

Managers need to stop coaching to the result and start coaching to the process, instead.

Become more mindful of the process that will drive the results you seek. Without the change in your result driven attitude that’s keeping you stuck in the first place, all efforts to better manage your selling strategy by a numeric formula are certain to be short lived.

For salespeople and sales leaders, the fundamental shift in our attitude that needs to occur is this; move away from being so result driven and instead, become more process driven.

We must honor this paradox and break free of the limiting thinking that confines us to the current level of performance we’re experiencing. If we truly want to excel today, realize the result is truly the process.

Watch the video here.

After my trip to Ireland last month, I’m continuing my travels and have the pleasure of delivering another training event in the second of 8 countries that I am visiting over the next two months. This week, I’m enjoying the beautiful city of Prague and while I’m here, I’m fortunate enough to have the support of my team back in the states who are working around the clock managing a special 72 hour book event.

I wanted to make sure that you heard about it, in case you’d like to take advantage of it. I’ve included the details below.

More information about this book event and bonus materials you can get here.

FACT: There has never been a more critical time for managers to impact performance in a way that brings in more sales and revenue & motivates teams to achieve greater success.

FACT: The majority of managers are simply not equipped with the right skills, tools and a tactical process they can follow to do so.

In this difficult economic climate, most sales cycles are doubling, some are even tripling. Yet, sales leaders are being asked to produce more results faster with less support. How can you manage these conflicting priorities and continue to meet expectations? To win more sales today, you need to play by the new rules.

You’ll learn step-by-step how to become a masterful sales coach to boost sales fast, maximize your team’s talents and turn your people into motivated, successful sellers despite economic conditions. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions is your daily playbook to drive more sales by developing a high performance sales team. Using an easy to deploy coaching system used by the world’s leading organizations, this book shows you how to realize the potential of your team— and retain your top performers.

Packed with real life case studies, a proven 30-Day Turnaround Strategy and Performance Improvement Plan for underperformers, coaching templates, a detailed coaching framework to follow and a library of powerful coaching questions, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions is the ultimate, practical sales coaching resource for managers, executives, and business owners.

You’ll discover how to:

• Blow your quota away and get your salespeople selling more today.
• Turn underperformers into super-achievers in less than 30 days!
• Enroll people in any situation and eliminate resistance to change.
• Attract and retain top sales talent.
• Launch a successful coaching initiative and create a coaching culture within your company.
• Avoid the mistakes that lead to coaching failure.
• Coach your team to become accountable and self-motivated. Stop wasting your time continually pushing for results.
• Empower your people to solve their own problems and lessen their dependence on you.
• Eliminate time consuming distractions, fires and costly staffing problems that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Plus much more!

With this essential, award winning book, you’ll be able to develop a world class, self motivated sales team and coach them to bring in more sales today. Develop the new discipline of leadership that creates sales champions.

When you order your copy of Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions today, you’ll receive immediate access to hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from many of the world’s top sales and business thought leaders.

Take one look at the bonus package and I think you’ll agree this is the easiest decision you’ll have to make all week. Click here to check it out now.

72 HOUR BOOK EVENT! Click here for more information and start winning more sales today.

There are three areas in which managers constantly struggle. The first is deciding who to hire and where to find good talent. The second is deciding who to coach, how to coach and who to support when performance has dipped and the third is determining who to let go and when to do it.

When it comes to making these decisions, the questions I hear most often, sound like this:

How do you turn an underperformer into a top producer or at least into an average, acceptable producer?”

“When does it make sense to invest your time, money, and resources into someone who you feel you can turn around or who hasn’t lived up to their full potential?”

“How can I determine (with great certainty), based on a defined set of criteria, benchmarks, and measurable steps, when enough support, training and coaching is enough and let someone go?”

During a coaching workshop, a manager asked me how to handle an underperformer. While the manager shared in great detail the challenges she was having with a salesperson she hired several months ago, I noticed the reaction from the audience. Their heads were nodding up and down in agreement, as if she was sharing not just her story but everyone’s story.

She told an all too familiar tale of a new, promising hire with incredible potential who wasn’t working out. A candidate with a wonderful resume, great background, stellar references, and a seemingly positive attitude, whose experience seemed to be a perfect complement to the new position.

The manager explained how this promising young superstar became one of her biggest disappointments, frustrations and expense. And it wasn’t as if she just called it quits after a few weeks and fired this person. Like most managers, she invested precious time trying to turn the person around. The more time she invested in supporting and training this person, the more her expectations were shattered.

This manager was stuck. She didn’t know what to do. The new hire was costing her money, time, selling opportunities and resources. She ended her story with what sounded like a desperate cry for help, “Keith, what should I do?”

The room was silent. All the managers and business owners were gripping the edges of their seats, waiting, anticipating a magnificent piece of brilliance, a solution to this common and painfully eternal dilemma.

My response was, “Do not be seduced by the ether of potential.”

Yes, we are often seduced by the potential we believe we see in others. We see potential in the people and opportunities, all around us. We see potential in our new hires and untapped potential in our veterans.

We believe that, if we give them just a little more time, resources, training, attention, they’ll finally live up to their potential. We believe our employees when they tell us, “Just give me a few more weeks. I’m about to close in on two big sales. Yes, I know my performance has slipped, but as I told you, those problems that have been distracting me are no longer there.”

We think, “Okay, if they really could turn it around that would make my life so much easier. After all, it sure beats the painful and time-consuming process of having to recruit someone new, let alone having to figure out how to cover a territory with no salesperson!”

Ironically, it costs more in time, money, resources, internal conflict and lost sales to keep someone like this on your team. And, you’ll have less time to focus on growing your business and on the people who are performing.

That’s when it happens. The seduction begins. You begin making decisions based on your emotions, feelings, hopes and unrealistic scenarios, rather than on the facts and what is best for you, the company and the person in question.

The seduction of potential clouds your better judgment. If you’re looking for evidence of this, just glance over at the people on your team today. When dealing with an underperformer, how many times have you thought, “Just one more week. He’ll turn it around. I know he can do it. If he just follows the program. Just let him get through this next project. I hope he brings in some new business soon.”

We often hire people based more on their potential than their achievements and then try to develop the potential we see in them. After all, the goal of management is to make your people more valuable. The key here is investing your time in making the right people more valuable. Otherwise, it’s a time-consuming and exhausting exercise in futility.

Potential is based on something that you have not seen yet nor have evidence to support. Potential resides in the future. You can’t build a business on potential. If you are making hiring decisions based on people’s potential, and the candidates haven’t been living their potential by the time you meet them, what makes you think they are going to start living it once you hire them?

Either people strive to live their potential each day or they don’t. It’s management’s responsibility to ensure each person on their team has the systems, tools, resources, training and coaching that allows them to do so.

Hey, I’m all for continued improvement. The difference between working off potential and lifelong improvement is this. With potential, you’re looking for something that you have not seen yet nor have evidence for. With lifelong improvement, you’re working with a known quantity and have the empirical evidence (possibly from past experiences) that supports your belief that turning this person around is truly possible. You have the verification, commitment and evidence that the situation can be made better.

The real problem is, managers wind up collapsing potential with possibility. So, what truly seduces you is the potential of possibility.

What’s missing for managers is certainty. It’s the uncertainty, the unknown, the fear that paralyzes managers who have to decide whether to terminate someone or invest time into turning them around. Managers rely more on their fear based gut reactions than on the facts.

Having certainty and confidence in their people supported by evidence of their capabilities is a healthier, more productive model when creating new possibilities. This is what I refer to as authentic human potential. The certainty comes from having a defined coaching program. Once you have a structured coaching program that sets expectations and holds people accountable on a daily and weekly basis, you no longer have to decide to retain or terminate them. Underperformers will make that decision for you, based on the defined set of criteria, goals and measurable action steps they need to take to demonstrate their commitment to their position and to dramatically improve their performance.

If you are responsible for hiring, developing, and managing a team, what process do you have in place to leverage their strengths from the time of hire through their first 30, 60, 90, even 120 days? Would having a Thirty-Day New Hire Orientation Program for every hire that details the measurable steps to take and the objectives they need to reach during this timeline help you and your team? Wouldn’t this simplify your life dramatically? Now that you have a proven process documented, either the new hire is sticking by the program and achieving the expected results, or not. There’s no room for you to be seduced by the potential of possibility. There’s no probation or need to wait for the year-end performance appraisals.

You can now run your business or manage your team with greater efficiency. Once these processes are in place, you’ll be able to get back to doing what every manager is destined to do in the first place: make your people even more valuable.

72 HOUR BOOK EVENT!
Get Your Playbook for Winning More Sales Today. Develop the new discipline of leadership that creates sales champions. Order your copy of Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions today and you will receive immediate access to hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from many of the world’s top sales and business thought leaders. Start Winning More Sales Today! Click here for more information.

In my last blog and podcast, I need to rethink a critical caveat to the last bullet in the blog which was:

How a manager can assess whether or not a person is, in fact coachable and when their coaching simply may not work.

Ahh, the ongoing joy of lifelong learning! That is, the more I train and coach, the more I learn. And one powerful insight has surfaced, especially as I continue to deliver more international training. This happened about three weeks ago, when delivering a management coach training program in Dublin.

But first, a recap. In this last podcast and in prior blogs, I’ve suggested the following truth when it comes to determining whether or not someone is, in fact, coachable.

< < It's one thing if a manager wants a person on their team to reach their fullest potential which is BEYOND them simply hitting quota. In this instance, this can be a situation where the manager wants more for the salesperson than the salesperson wants for themselves. The salesperson may be happy and satisfied where they are now and if that's the case, if they don’t have the desire and willingness to change supported by conscious effort, there's little you can do….

...Here’s one final point regarding your ability to coach someone on their desire and willingness. Sure, you can attempt to pull out what motivates them in an attempt to instill a deeper commitment and willingness to do their job. And often times you can successfully turn someone around by enrolling them in the benefits they will experience when they do make positive change. However, after attempting to do so and the evidence is still not there that would demonstrate a measurable change, this becomes a time consuming exercise in futility.>>

I mentioned this in the last training program I completed overseas. And as a result of my experience, have repositioned this message. During this last training event, every sales manager in each training session was onboard and excited to go and start coaching their salespeople – truly coaching their people based on the new coaching framework they now have and the revised definition of coaching that was introduced to them.

A week after the training was completed, I received a report from my internal contact, telling me that out of 50 managers, 48 of them were enthusiastic and successful in enrolling their team in more ongoing coaching and further fostering this important part of their relationship between the manager and salesperson.

But, what about those two managers? Why were their teams resistant to their message? Is it possible that all of the 15 salespeople that each of these managers managed on their teams, where, in fact, uncoachable? Was it ALL about the salesperson?

Wait, what about the skill of the manager? What about the manager’s ability to affect positive change? What about their ability and skill when it comes to coaching and enrolling their salespeople in wanting to be coached?

Now, I certainly stand behind my initial point around coachability above. (I actually list seven factors that determine a person’s coachability index in my book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.) I’m not disputing the fact that if the person you’re attempting to coach (the coachee) does not have the desire and commitment to change, supported by evidence of action and effort, your coaching will be ineffective.

However, I am adding another layer of truth to this observation that needs to be in the forefront of our line of vision, especially for those coaches and managers who are coaching their sales team.

Think back to the story I just shared about the managers whose teams was unreceptive to being coached.

The additional truth we need to be mindful of is, what role is the coach or manager playing in this resistance?

With all of these additional variables to consider, lets even the playing field for a moment and keep things equal when assessing a person’s coachability and assume these five points I mentioned are not current barriers to effective coaching. Then and only then can you assess with greater accuracy whether it’s more about the person’s desire and willingness to change and be coached or whether it’s more about you; the manager.

The important point here is this. Without taking these additional variables and factors into consideration, you are only assessing a person’s desire and ability to be coached through a myopic set of lenses, without providing you the full panoramic, objective view of what needs to be measured and explored.

So, how has this changed the way I deliver my program? Now, when delivering my management coach training program, I’ve omitted the slide in my PowerPoint that can potentially provide a reluctant or ‘non-believing’ manager the out so they don’t have to coach. People often hear the message they want to hear. As such, I never want to provide a manager a conditional, one sided case for not coaching their people and an excuse for them to give up on their coaching efforts. (“I tried to coach my people. I tried to enroll them in coaching. They’re simply not coachable and don’t demonstrate the desire to change. Oh, and it has nothing to do with me.”)

The new message?

Everyone is coachable. It’s up to you to uncover how to create that possibility for coaching to occur. Every manager possesses the power to do so. It’s up to you to refine that power by learning how to better coach and communicate with your team.

Listen to the podcast here

In this podcast I did with eyesonsales.com, I share some more observations around my experiences in coaching salespeople and managers. The topics I cover in this podcast include:

Listen to the podcast here

During a recent interview, I was asked, “What does the future hold for the work force, especially for salespeople? How will the salesperson of tomorrow change or be different to adapt to the times?”

Of course, my visceral reaction was to come up with something so transformational and insightful that it would reshape the landscape of professional selling and salesmanship. But after I paused and thought more about this question at a deeper level, I realized this may not be truly possible. After all, when it comes to selling, outside of the apparent changes in technology that continues to shape the Sales 2.0 evolution, what has changed over the years? Is there really a new definition for professional selling? If we were to look at the role, responsibility, skill set, behavior, attitude and overall disposition that makes a sales champion, is the anatomy of the top salesperson from 50 years ago to today and well into tomorrow really all that different?

While I believe there are some inherent changes we will see within the workforce when it comes to redefining the role of the traditional salesperson, the real difference will be evident in those companies who truly embrace and implement these changes and actually model this definition of sales mastery, as opposed to those who simply know about it but don’t do anything measurable to change. The economy over last two years has certainly done a wonderful job validating and exemplifying this ever widening gap. Consequently, this exposes the real opportunity for us and the timeless distinction between knowing it and doing it.

We are a society that is knowledge rich but execution scarce. While we are wealthy in wisdom and information, we are often lacking in seeing new ideas, strategies and activities through to completion and implementing the new behavior, thinking or technology to the point that it produces the desired change we’re looking for. After all, intention without action is still a diversionary tactic. (The real evolution will take place with the sales manager, who needs to become a sales coach to ensure these changes are, in fact made, but that’s a different blog and a different book

Regardless, I do have my view of tomorrow’s salesperson and this is the transformation I envision that salespeople must not only understand and embrace but put into practice so that it truly becomes part of their DNA.

The salesperson of tomorrow will continue to evolve beyond their traditional role and become more embedded into their customer’s business and the decisions that affect every facet of their operation.

The true sales professional will be relied upon as a valuable resource and a trusted, consultative adviser throughout the entire selling process; and beyond. This doesn’t mean focusing solely on relationship selling because those salespeople who are doing so are the ones who are struggling today. Great relationships don’t always equate to more sales. While additional time must be spent fostering stronger relationships with key clients, this isn’t about calling them just to ‘check in’ but having a more strategic set of timely questions that will help you better understand how the current economic climate has affected the way they do business and make purchasing decisions.

This will help us accurately connect to what the true meaning of value is to our customers, as opposed to what we generically assume it to be and as such, enable us to deliver on this at a much deeper, more significant level.

We need to take a closer and more holistic look at ourselves from the inside out while challenging our customers, the media and status quo. Therein lies the opportunity to elevate yourself and become the champion you know you can be.

Listen to the podcast here.

There are several common themes I’ve noticed as to why coaching initiatives fail within organizations today. When companies attempt to upgrade their culture, generate more positive results and improve the attitude, performance and productivity of their people by launching a coaching initiative without truly recognizing the changes that must occur beforehand to ensure there’s a strong foundation that is ready to support it, their coaching efforts will be marginally successful, ineffective or short lived.

In this podcast, I highlight the top reasons why coaching initiatives fail within organizations and what needs to be present in order to ensure any coaching initiative generates the return on investment that companies are looking for.

Listen to the podcast here.

Listen to the podcast here.

In this podcast interview I did with eyesonsales.com, I share some very tactical insights regarding some of the inherent challenges that managers need to overcome when coaching their salespeople and what they can do to better coach their team to sell more today.

I also address how to best handle underperforming salespeople and the power of effective observation techniques when observing your people in the field or on the phone, whether they are delivering presentations or making cold calls. You’ll also learn what the masterful coaches do when it comes to coaching the gap through the use of powerful, well crafted questions, which is where the magic of coaching happens.

Discover what you can do to make the shift from just being a regular sales manager with an average performing team to becoming an effective sales coach and leader who becomes the driving force behind developing a high performance sales team.

Listen to the podcast here.

Do you know what your people are doing in the field? Really? Are you sure? In my experience, unless managers are in the field observing and listening to what their people are doing, they have no clue. Sure, you can guess and hypothesize as to why, for example, some of the salespeople on your team aren’t making quota or selling more. But when managers finally take the time to observe their people in the trenches, the real truth is (sometimes painfully) apparent.

Granted, managers are often left in a state of shock when they see what their salespeople are and are not doing and saying when meeting with and presenting to their prospects and customers.

However, the upside is, managers now have a clear and valuable epiphany as to the real reason why their people aren’t closing more sales, what their salespeople have to do to change for the best and what the manager has to provide (additional coaching, training, resources, and so on) in order to help facilitate these necessary changes.

So what are some of the inherent challenges managers need to overcome when looking to make the shift and truly coach their sales team, especially when it comes to observing them in the field or on the job?

When dealing with employee challenges, while counterintuitive, managers must learn to respond with better questions to help people develop their own problem solving skills rather than viscerally firing off a solution.

When it comes to observation, especially today, we must get more tactical and prescriptive in our coaching as opposed to offering more generic and hollow advice. Managers need to observe exactly what their people are doing in the field, during a presentation, during a cold call and when managing an account.

Interestingly, observation is clearly one of the most critical responsibilities managers seem to be avoiding most and ironically the one that yields the greatest return regarding the payoff they’ll experience in relation to their time invested. So, why is there such resistance around engaging in this activity? While managers may complain that they ‘don’t have the time’ for this, the real cause of their reluctance has to do with the fact that they feel observation is really hard, even confrontational and uncomfortable at times, and it’s only difficult because most managers have never been shown how to do this correctly. The result; most simply don’t do it and if they do it’s more toxic than helpful.

Because in truth, managers are really not paying attention. When a manager is observing their people, most of the time they’re already viewing what they see in their mind’s eye, what they perceive is the right way and in turn, that’s what they’re listening for. In other words, they’re seeing how that person is not modeling the way they do it or the very directive and rigid way they want it done.

As a result, what the manager winds up doing is coaching to their own image rather than uncovering and co-creating new possibilities and identifying what is best for that person; all due to the rigidity in their thinking.

For example, when observing one of their salespeople make a cold call; after the person hangs up the phone, this is what I hear the manager say to that salesperson:

• Here’s what you did wrong.
• Why didn’t you do it this way?

Now, this certainly does not do anything to stimulate and atmosphere of open and healthy collaboration. First, the salesperson gets beaten up by the prospect they called on, then they get their second beating by their manager.

Managers are too focused on what their people are not doing or what is not working, instead of what is working and because of this, they don’t reinforce the positive behavior want their team to continue engaging in. We all know that most managers are real good at telling their team why they’re not good!

Instead of telling an employee what he or she did wrong, ask them the following questions the next time they deliver a presentation, make a call in to a client or make a cold call in an attempt to find new qualified prospects:

1.Okay tell me how you think you handled that call. What did you observe?
2. How did it feel delivering this presentation? What did you sense from your prospects/clients/audience you were delivering to?
3. What did you do well?
4. Where do you feel you got stuck?
5. What could you have done differently?
6. What do you need to improve or change in order to ensure your success the next time? Was there anything you feel was stepped over or needed to be addressed that was not?)
7. (When presenting with a team.) What else did you notice amongst your team? Any other observations that would help the team improve when presenting? (What they did well, what they need to improve and be mindful of the next time.)
8. What is your action plan/are the changes you plan to make for the next call so that you can achieve the results you want?
9. What’s the lesson here? What did you learn from this?

What you will find is that people will be more open to collaborating on a better solution and critiquing themselves because they are responding to solution-driven questions rather than being asked problem-focused questions that put them on the defensive. Further, you’ll be able to better uncover the gap either in their thinking or in their strategy and approach in order to provide them with the prescriptive guidance and a more specific solution they need to fill the chasm.

Listen to this podcast here.

If you want your team to sell more, the driving question every manager needs to ask themselves is, “What am I doing each day to make my salespeople even more valuable and effective so that we can better retain and acquire new customers?”

So, what are you doing to develop the skills and competencies that would enable you to get your salespeople to become sales champions? What are you doing to better your best?

Now, the obvious solution would be to spend more time with your people but the question then is, what are you doing with that time?

Most managers resort to reactionary micro management simply because that’s all they know. As such, all they’re attempting to do is try to control more of the situations that surround them. Not the most effective strategy. This actually creates a more toxic environment, making matters even worse.

There are many things that a manager can do to boost your team’s performance. In this podcast, I’ve highlighted the ones that will result in an immediate positive change, which you can start engaging in today.

You can tune in and listen to this podcast here.

NOTE: Given this page is updated often, this podcast may not be listed as the most current one on the top of the list of podcasts.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Sure, we can’t control many of the things going on in the economy. However, what managers and business owners can control is how they go about realigning their thinking and efforts around how they are continually developing their people, which begins with how these managers develop themselves into the leaders they can be in this new age.

It’s evident that many organizations have lost sight of the primary objective of management and leadership, which is simply this: To make your people more valuable.

There are several issues at work that inhibit the manager’s ability to get their people to be more accountable around their goals.

This falls on deaf ears because for someone to truly internalize this message and make it real for them, they must hear the consequence in their own words, through their own voice and arrive at the consequence on their own. They need to recognize it, say it and declare ownership around it.

And the only way to do this is by asking them better consequential questions. In this podcast, I’ll share with you the steps you can take to coach people to become more accountable around their job and their goals, and the questions you can use to achieve this critical objective. (Oh, and did I mention that by following this process, you no longer have to be positioned as the bad guy!)

Listen to the full podcast here.

The result is the process. A timely paradox and critical mind shift that every salesperson and manager must make if they want to transcend the mediocre performance they may be experiencing today.

Even before you can engage in the type of sales benchmarking activities that I wrote about the other day, (you can find that blog post here) or even take the time to refine your selling skills, you will come head to head with resistance to selling by the numbers if this change in attitude around how we approach selling is not fully embraced beforehand.

I was reminded how important this was during a seminar I delivered last week in NYC. At the end of the seminar, one manager raised his hand and posed this question to me. He said, “Our sales cycle has changed dramatically. Our salespeople can no longer make a call and take an order. Our product offering has been modified and as a result, the average cost of our product has increased, which has all contributed to a longer sales cycle. However, my salespeople are still reluctant to change. They’re still stuck in that transactional way of selling. They’re getting more frustrated and discouraged because sales aren’t happening fast enough, all because they’re unsure how to manage this longer selling cycle. I’ve told them many times over, that our sales cycle is no longer the way it used to be, and we need to be more patient with the process and more consultative with our customers. I’ve explained to them over and over again, that we need to modify and re-engineer our selling process in response to these new challenges, the changes we’re up against and how our customers make a purchasing decision and buy from us. What else can I do?”

As this sales manager was explaining his challenge, I was thinking to myself how important it is today, more than ever, to become process driven. Without this change in our thinking, salespeople will be unable to honor the process needed to convert more conversations into sales, let alone build out a more robust process and selling strategy that will enable them to do so. As such, the eternal conflict between our tactical strategy and our thinking will continue to rage on.
I have a detailed article on this very subject that you can find here. The original title of this article was WARNING! Goals May Be Hazardous To Your Success. Are They Sabotaging Your Selling Efforts?

As my colleague Dr. Tony Alessandra explains in the following statistics, “It’s amazing how many times success can be assured by attending to the basics of the job.” For example, in a study of 257 Fortune 500 companies, the following was found:

17% do not determine an approximate duration for each sales call.
23% do not use a computer to assist in time and territory management.
28% do not set profit objectives for their accounts.
37% do not use prescribed routing patterns in covering territories.
46% do not look at their use of time in any organized way.
49% do not determine the economical number of calls for each account.
49% do not use prepared sales presentations.
70% do not use call schedules.
75% do not have a system for classifying customers according to sales potential.
76% do not set sales objectives for their accounts.
81% do not use a call report system.

So, the question is: How can you assure your future success by eliminating these oversights?”

The fact is, companies will fail to invest the time in order to eliminate these process oriented oversights and embed these necessary changes into their process if the sales culture is too focused on getting to the result by forging ahead in an attempt to close more sales. Managers can continually push their people to become more mindful of these numbers, however, it’s the process driven questions managers need to be more sensitive to rather than the result driven questions that managers obsess over that continue to perpetuate this toxic way of thinking. Those questions sound like, “Are you hitting your numbers? How many follow-up calls did you make today? How much good volume did you book this month? How many leads did you run this week?” While important, these questions only focus on half of the equation. What is missing is the “How,” that is, the questions that focus on the process the salesperson needs to engage in to achieve the desired end result.

Managers need to stop coaching to the result and start coaching to the process, instead.

Become more mindful of the process that will drive the results you seek. Without the change in your result driven attitude that’s keeping you stuck in the first place, all efforts to better manage your selling strategy by a numeric formula are certain to be short lived.

For salespeople and sales leaders, the fundamental shift in our attitude that needs to occur is this; move away from being so result driven and instead, become more process driven.

We must honor this paradox and break free of the limiting thinking that confines us to the current level of performance we’re experiencing. If we truly want to excel today, realize the result is truly the process.

Here’s more on this paradox.

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

If you missed last week’s blockbuster webinar, The Sales Leadership Imperative, you can now access the recording immediately and listen to this 45 minute discussion I had with Jonathan Farrington. We focused on the most pressing questions that sales managers and sales leaders are faced with today.

Here are the questions we responded to:

Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed.

Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.

So, if you’re a sales manager or even if you’re not a sales manager but need to get your team producing and selling more today, you can access this recording here.

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

“I know how to interview. I’ve been doing it for years.” I hear this from practically every manager or HR executive I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching or training. And today, when speaking to one of my favorite clients, a VP of HR, this statement was echoed once again.

And it’s not like these managers or those responsible for making a hiring decision are doing it all wrong. Many are quite good at interviewing people, finding the right candidates and screening out the ones that just don’t fit. I’ve just observed over the years some key areas that many people are missing the mark on when conducting an interview and determining who the best candidate for the position truly is.

Especially when it comes to topgrading and rebuilding your sales team, getting the right candidate in the right position in the most expedient way possible is more critical than ever. The cost of not doing so can be severe. And this cost is compounded when companies onboard the wrong person. Just pick up any newspaper and read about another company closing their doors or missing their sales goals to exemplify how much of a priority this is today for any organization.

Below, I’ve listed some very key questions in order to reduce mis-hires and bring on the right people. If asked and asked correctly, these questions will reduce mis-hires by about 80% or more. Yes, that’s how powerful these questions can be. I would strongly suggest weaving these questions into your interviewing process. And keep in mind, most of these questions will apply to any position. Notice that I’ve also broken down these questions by category, as well as some additional categories that you can use to build out further interviewing questions.

Granted, you may already be using some of these questions during an interview. And keep in mind, this list can be built out even further. However, it’s the collective use of all the questions that are going to have the deeper, more positive impact when choosing the right hire.

Moving beyond simply the questions that you could ask, what other things are you doing to ensure you make the best hiring decision? Keep in mind, the interviewing process is multi-dimensional. To build off this, lets look at how you manage or facilitate a simulation or a role play. Many interviewers ask questions like, “How would you handle this if you were in this situation” or “Tell me what steps you would take before calling on a key account” or even “Walk me through a strategy you would use to build your pipeline.”

While these are all great questions, they are still falling short of one critical element. That is, the language this candidate would be using to facilitate the type of conversation described in these simulations. To go deeper in determining this person’s acumen or ability, it’s critical you’re able to evaluate how they communicate, as well as their overall communication strategy that would be embedded in each of these situations I’ve described in the prior questions.

The most successful salespeople realize that sales, just like leadership and coaching, is truly a language and a way of communicating. Therefore, it’s imperative you uncover not only how they think strategically and the processes they may use but how effective this person could be when you send them out to connect with your new and existing customers. Anyone can talk a good game regarding processes and approach from the hundred foot viewpoint. But how they deliver the message in a variety of different situations is something that can’t be faked during an interview.

When these questions and the simulation exercise are used correctly, you’ll find that the need to topgrade your sales team will diminish because you’ve fixed the breakdown in your overall hiring and retention strategy; the broken component that exists in your system and where it all starts, your interviewing process.

Interviewing Questions:

Work History:
1. What were your responsibilities in your last position?
2. We all make mistakes. What would you say were a couple of the mistakes or failures you experienced in your last job?
3. If you could go back in time and fix that, what would you do differently?
4. What would you prior supervisor say if asked what your strengths and weaknesses were?
5. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and were able to overcome?
6. What were your successes? What are you most proud of? How did you achieve that?
7. What circumstances contributed to your leaving?
8. What was your supervisors name and title? Where is that person now?
9. Would your boss hire you back? Why?
10. What were his or her strengths and weaker points from your perspective?
11. Would you be willing to arrange for us to talk with him or her?

Next Position:
1. What criteria are most important to you in your next job?
2. Describe your ideal position?
3. How close does this opportunity fit your ideal position?

Excellence and Development:
1. How to you better your best?
2. How do you raise the bar on yourself and others around you?
3. How do you develop yourself and your skills?
4. How important is it to you to be the best at what you do?
5. How do you assure that happens?
6. How do/did you keep your edge in such a competitive environment/marketplace?

Accountability:
1. What does personal accountability mean to you?
2. What areas in your life/career are you most accountable? Least?
3. Give me an example of how becoming more accountable has contributed to your success?
4. Where do you feel you need to become more accountable (in an area in your life or career)?

Decision Making and Problem Solving:
1. How do you solve problems?
2. How do you go about making decisions?
3. Give me one problem or challenge you had and walk me through how you solved it using that model.
4. How do you go about making a career decision? What factors do you measure? Your approach?
5. What were a couple of the most difficult or challenging decisions you’ve made recently?
6. What are a couple of the best and worst decisions you’ve made over the last year or so?

Creativity and Solution Development:
1. How creative are you?
2. How important is creativity in relation to your overall selling approach and strategy?
3. Can you provide an example how you were creative in your last position that led to solving a problem or closing a sale?

Integrity:
1. What are some of the values you have that you refuse to compromise?
2. Describe a situation where you were pressured or challenged to compromise your integrity and what you felt was best and right? How did you handle it?

Self Discipline, Time Management and Organization:
1. How do you go about organizing your schedule and your day?
2. Do you live by a set of best practices? How? What are they? (in selling, organization, etc.)
3. When was the last time you missed a significant deadline? What happened?
4. Everyone procrastinates at one point or another. Can you share the kind of things that you have a tendency to procrastinate?
5. How much guidance and supervision do you feel you need?

Self Management/State/Stress:
1. What stresses you out?
2. What do you when that happens?
3. How do you eliminate it? How do you handle it?

Openness and Self Awareness:
1. What were the most difficult criticisms for you to hear and accept?

Resourcefulness:
1. What actions would you feel you would need to take during the first few weeks here in your new position if you were to join our organization?
2. What obstacles did you face during your present/last position and how did you handle those?
3. What would you be mindful of needing to do and the resources and training you would need to secure your success here?

Tactical Sales Oriented Questions to Recruit at a Deeper Level:
You can find these questions and more on my prior blog post here:

1.What was the average size of each sale? (Dollar amount, cost of goods/services sold.)
2. What type of appointments were you scheduling when prospecting or cold calling? What was the goal here?
3. Where the appointments on site/face to face with each prospect or via the phone?
4. When actually closing a sale, did you actually sell over the phone or did you have to meet each prospect in person?
5. Did you sell a product, a service or both? (Describe how you sold each product and why there was a different approach.)
6. Did you handle the entire sales process from start to finish, including the deliverable? (Was there an account executive who you worked with, was it a team oriented approach to selling, were you only responsible for certain aspects of the sale?)
7. Describe to me the products or services you’ve sold? (Complicated or simple?)
8. Did you sell something that had an online component? Was it strictly a service? (Where they selling the tangible or the intangible?)
9. Was your product/service a “nice to have,” a “want to have” (luxury, added benefit) or a
need to have?” (Was it a necessity, i.e. gasoline, telecom, office supplies, utilities, mobile phones, insurance, etc.)
10. What do you consider ‘prospecting’ and ‘cold calling’ to be? How do you feel about having to engage in this activity? (We’re looking to uncover how they think and feel about prospecting; their perception of it.)
11. What type of prospecting and cold calling did you do? How much cold calling did you do each day/week? (Number of calls made.) How many calls did you have to make to (get an appointment, close a sale, uncover a new prospect, etc.)?
12. Please share with me what your typical approach would be when cold calling. (Describe not only your process but exactly what you said when you were making a cold call.)
13. Who was your target audience/prospect? (B2b, b2c, C level executives, business owners, sole practitioners, were you dealing with only one decision maker or did you have to coordinate with several decision makers, influencers, committees, board members, etc.)
14. When were you calling on them? (Time, day, frequency of calls, etc.)
15. What was the average size of the company you called on?
16. What markets did you focus on? (Type of company, industry, vertical, etc.)
17. How did you get your leads/uncover your prospects? Where the cold calls you made totally cold or were you getting them from another source and then following up with them? (These would be warmer leads from trade shows, web inquiries, referrals, call-ins, direct mail and marketing efforts, etc.)
18. What were the concerns or objections that you typically encountered with your prospects? (What stalled your sales efforts?)
19. How long was your average sales cycle? (From the time you connected with a qualified prospect up until the time when you converted that prospect into a client.)
20. Were you selling based on a bidding process, RFP’s, etc.?

Simulations and Role Plays:
1. If you had to make a call to a prospect who you have never spoken to, what would be the steps you would take before making that call?
2. What would that cold call sound like?
3. If you were following up with a customer to explore and uncover additional selling opportunities, what would your approach sound like?
4. Lets say you just delivered the final product/service to your new customer. They called you the next day with a major problem. They were frustrated and irate. Lets say I’m the customer in this situation. How would you facilitate that conversation? What would that dialogue sound like?
5. There’s a prospect you’ve been calling on for months. They’re finally ready to make a decision to buy and you just found out that there are two more venders now involved in this bid for their business. What would be your strategy to position yourself as the vender of choice? (What would you say, questions asked, etc.)
6. How many times do you call on a prospect before putting them on your do not call list? How do you determine that? What would your approach be? Why?
7. You’re about to visit a new potential client for the first time. What preliminary work would you do? How would you craft your presentation and set the expectations of the meeting? (What would your presentation sound like?)
8. You’ve been handed a client list of approximately 100 accounts to call on. You’ve noticed after several months, their monthly spending with you has slowly diminished. How would you handle this? What would you say?

Additional Topics That Require Further Questioning:

• Persuasion
• Communication
• Presentation
• Assertiveness
• Team player
• Conflict management
• Motivation and passion
• Tenacity, commitment, perseverance
• Education

Important webinar below for any business owner, executive and sales manager who’s top priority is to retain customers and bring in more business and more sales today.

I know it’s last minute but I just got the blessing to be able to offer my webinar scheduled tomorrow at 1pm EST to you and I’M ABLE TO WAIVE THE COST OF REGISTRATION! That’s right. No fee for you to attend so come as my guest! All you have to do is sign up and log in and enjoy a very timely webinar that is a must for any sales leader and manager. (And if you’re a salesperson, send this to your manager!)

Finally, make sure you’re also following all my latest announcements and posts on Twitter at twitter.com/keithrosen. This 45 minute webinar is for any business owner, executive and sales manager who’s top priority is to bring in more business and more sales today by getting their sales team to perform now.

The Sales Leadership Imperative! Webinar for Sales Managers Who Need To Get Their Sales Team Selling More Today

DATE: Thursday, April 23, 2009
TIME: 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time
LOCATION: Your Phone or Computer – Live Webinar!

Presented by: Jonathan Farrington & Keith Rosen
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

For more information or to register click here.

NOTE: Following registration please ignore the redirect page AND the fees, as it will ask you to pay $60.00 and I am offering you this AT NO COST. Just register and that’s it!

FACT: There has never been a more critical time for sales managers to impact sales and lead from the front.
FACT: The majority of sales managers are simply not equipped with the right skills and tools to do so.

Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. And as some look ahead, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed – possibly forever.

Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.

Join me and Jonathan Farrington, one of the foremost sales team development experts in the world – for this hard-hitting session. This event has been created specifically for sales leaders who have 100% commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales team to a whole new level so they can start selling more today.

We will highlight how you can:
• Leverage your personal strengths as well as the hidden talents of your team
• Utilize a proven coaching model to impact performance immediately.
• Engage in daily revenue-generating activities and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place
• Master the language of leaders, to get people into action without resistance
• Develop the infallible confidence of a true champion to model what you want your people to achieve
• Recruit, retain and motivate your top producers and turnaround underperformers
• Turnaround or terminate an underperformer in less than 30 days.

For more information or to register click here.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

NOTE: Following registration please ignore the redirect page AND the fees, as it will ask you to pay $60.00 and I am offering you this AT NO COST. Just register and that’s it!

Important webinar below for any business owner, executive and sales manager who’s top priority is to retain customers and bring in more business and more sales today.

The Sales Leadership Imperative! Webinar for Sales Managers Who Need To Get Their Sales Team Selling More Today

DATE: Thursday, April 23, 2009
TIME: 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time
LOCATION: Your Phone or Computer – Live Webinar!

Presented by: Jonathan Farrington & Keith Rosen
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

For more information or to register click here.

FACT: There has never been a more critical time for sales managers to impact sales and lead from the front.
FACT: The majority of sales managers are simply not equipped with the right skills and tools to do so.

Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. And as some look ahead, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed – possibly forever.

Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.

Join me and Jonathan Farrington, one of the foremost sales team development experts in the world – for this hard-hitting session. This event has been created specifically for sales leaders who have 100% commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales team to a whole new level so they can start selling more today.

We will highlight how you can:
• Leverage your personal strengths as well as the hidden talents of your team
• Utilize a proven coaching model to impact performance immediately.
• Engage in daily revenue-generating activities and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place
• Master the language of leaders, to get people into action without resistance
• Develop the infallible confidence of a true champion to model what you want your people to achieve
• Recruit, retain and motivate your top producers and turnaround underperformers
• Turnaround or terminate an underperformer in less than 30 days.

For more information or to register click here.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

What can you learn from observing the top performers within your organization as well as embracing the mindset of your potential successor? While this final section may require some more due diligence on your part, it doesn’t stop here. Even as an eternally grounded optimist, it’s just good business sense to ensure you have developed a contingency plan and have it in place so that you have some additional cushion to land on in the event the bottom falls out from under you.

This could make the difference between a rapid free fall into the abyss of career uncertainly and a lateral move or even an upward career re-engineering on your part where you come out ahead. Develop your career safety net by planning for the unplanned.

Here are the final three installments of this eight part series on what you can do to keep your job and insulate yourself from a layoff.

Part 6: Observe the Top Performers

1. Become the model employee. What are the best of the best doing? Benchmark best practices so that you can then emulate them. Don’t wait for your boss to come and tell you what they are. By then, it’s probably too late.

2. Master the basics. Now is not the time to take anything for granted. This includes the more obvious displays of the behavior of a model employee. And this isn’t limited to simply being on time at work and for meetings as well as meeting all of your deadlines. You also don’t want to be caught making personal calls, texting or corresponding to non-work related emails. Stay away from toxic gossip and keep your positive attitude on high.

3. Produce stellar work: Everyone today can rely on the excuse of being understaffed, unsupported or resource thin and always feeling under the gun when dealing with last minute demands. This certainly helps justify mediocre work. Instead, treat everything you do as the most important task of the day. That’s the champion’s creed. If you did, how would that change your output?

Part 7: Embrace the Mindset of Your Successor

Imagine if you were the person who was laid off twelve months ago and has the opportunity to land a new job. How would that change your work ethic? Keep in mind, this is the person who you are competing against for your position every single day.

Part 8: Develop a Contingency Plan

1. Build out your network. Use social networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and others to connect with the people you know and expand your network from there.

2. Know who’s hiring in your field. It’s important to know your options. What skills, education, and job training are employers looking for within your profession or industry? While it’s not what you want your thoughts to be consumed by on a daily basis nor be top of mind, you still need a balanced plan of attack; maintain a stellar productivity level while knowing what you can fall back on. So ask yourself, “If I was unemployed today, would I be ready to start up my new business, create my dream job or apply for the open positions tomorrow?”

3. Track trends. This is where I suggest caution, as the pendulum of extremities can swing each way when it comes to staying current on industry events, changes and news. Reading newspapers, checking your blackberry or iphone, reading journals and trade magazines; even talking to colleagues is good practice in order to keep your ears wide open for opportunity and your finger on the pulse of activity. However, given the number of people I’ve been coaching recently, I’d think that most of us are probably indulging a little too much what the media is feeding us. The unfortunate fall out of this is, what you continually listen to you start to believe.

Be careful about overindulging in the media and the news, and invest more of your time on what you can control in the immediate moment, the quality of your work, your attitude and your productivity. Because in the end, this is what is going to keep your job.