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Archive for the ‘Sales Coaching’ Category

Remote Coaching or Face to Face Coaching – What’s More Effective? Shattering The Myth of Remote Coaching

Aug 24, 2010 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, career coaching, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople


With more business conducted across online communication platforms and more sales teams operating in a virtual environment, many sales managers question how proficient they can be at coaching their team at a distance—especially if they have never been shown how to do so effectively.

While you may not always be in the same room as the person you are coaching, you can schedule regular coaching sessions over the telephone, or using an online application such as Skype, Live Meeting or GoToMeeting.

Now, I’m certainly not disputing the value of coaching someone face to face and the additional things that can be observed when doing so. However, a large majority of managers do not often have the luxury of calling a face-to-face meeting and instead find themselves supporting, coaching, and managing their people over the telephone. As such, developing and strengthening your telephone coaching skills becomes essential to leveraging every coaching opportunity you have with your team.

More and more, remote coaching is quickly becoming the norm and not the exception. In my twenty-plus years of coaching thousands of managers and salespeople, at least 95% of all the coaching I have done has been over the telephone. Not only has remote coaching been proven to be incredibly effective but it is also highly efficient. If delivered effectively, coaching at a distance can save you a considerable amount of time as it relates to scheduling limitations as well as travel time. Managers also have the opportunity to do more impromptu coaching and have check in calls with their team, whether it’s to build accountability, reinforce a message, handle a timely challenge or even to celebrate a win. This ‘just in time’ coaching can now be delivered when your people need it most.

Some managers may think they are at a disadvantage coaching remotely, and as a result, don’t put forth the effort and attempt to coach at a distance. These managers mistakenly believe they cannot effectively coach their people if they are not in front of them. They feel they are unable to ‘observe’ their team in the field if they are not physically present with them.

However, there are just as many managers who feel remote coaching works better for a variety of reasons. After all, the focus needs to be on the message and many managers feel that when coaching remotely, they don’t have any other visual distractions that can take away from listening purely to the spoken word.

In addition, you actually do have the opportunity to observe your team ‘in the field.’ Granted, your direct report may not be next to you when they’re delivering a presentation or a pitch but you can schedule a conference call with the salesperson and listen in while that person makes follow up calls to prospects or customers or when they’re cold calling, should cold calling be part of that person’s responsibility.

And even though you’re not physically present, you can observe other things as well that go beyond simply what you’re hearing. For example, whether you’ve scheduled a time for a coaching session or a time to observe them over the telephone, are they prepared for their meeting with you? Are they efficient and organized? Do they have their notes, call list, objectives and expectations clearly mapped out? Are they focused or distracted?

In many cases, if the telephone is the main communication tool for your salespeople, whether they are presenting, following up, handling a customer issue or prospecting, it only makes sense to observe and coach them using the same communication platform. This will give you more of a realistic sense of what they are doing, what they are saying and how they come across. After all, if the telephone is predominantly what your salespeople are using when communicating with your prospects and customers, it only makes sense for you to listen to them and what they sound like over the same medium. In this case, conducting skill practice scenarios and role plays face to face rather than on the phone is actually more of a simulated environment than a realistic one!

So, what else can you observe at a distance? If you’re on the phone listening to one of your salespeople make cold calls or follow up calls to your prospects or customers, are you observing not only what they’re saying but what they are not saying? Are you being mindful of their tone, pacing, resonance and the confidence they exude through the phone? By knowing what to listen for during a remote coaching session or observation session, you’ll find that you will be able to uncover many valuable coaching opportunities, without having to be physically present with your team.

Of course, when coaching remotely, that does not mean you now have the license to check your emails, instant messages or text messages on your phone while doing so, just because your direct report can’t see you through a phone line! I guarantee, they can still tell when you are distracted by something else and as such, are not listening or fully engaged in the conversation.

When coaching remotely, you must fine tune your listening and focus purely on the message, what is being said as well as what is not being said. Otherwise, you’re sure to miss out on subtleties in the conversation which can result in a missed coaching opportunity that is sure to dilute the impact of your coaching.

Realize that whether you are coaching face to face or remotely, the same tools, strategy and coaching framework still work, are applicable and are just as effective, regardless of the environment in which you are coaching.

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How Great Managers Recognize The Right Opportunities for Coaching

Aug 11, 2010 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, management tips


Where do you look for and uncover that ‘perfect’ coaching moment? How do you recognize where your direct reports need coaching and could benefit from the coaching most?

Actually, uncovering what you can coach someone on, from a tactical perspective, is actually the easy part. Managers are pretty good at recognizing problems, needed strategies and desired outcomes. However, it’s uncovering the why (the real source of the issue) and the who or the often very elusive and limiting thinking, assumptions or outlook people have which is ultimately preceding and driving their actions and behavior that is the tricky part and why many of the strategies and answers managers share either do not work or work well enough to become the long term solution. (If you’ve ever found yourself delivering ‘repetitive coaching’ or having the same conversation with your direct reports, that’s a sign that you haven’t gotten to the actual source of the issue or you’re spending your time on the wrong issue, digging in the wrong hole with no treasure to be found.)

Demonstrating this ability to get to the core of the right issue that leads to measurable and positive change is a true testament of an exceptional coach. The good news is, you can learn how to more precisely uncover those exceptional opportunities to deliver timely, relevant and powerful coaching. Here are some ideas that will guide you on the path to do so.

Regardless of the topic, skill, problem or mindset you’ve identified as a possible focal point in your coaching, there is one factor that’s always applicable in every coaching scenario. It also happens to be the very thing each coaching opportunity has in common. That is – The Gap.

The Gap is the space that exists between where the person is today and where they want or need to be or what is possible for them to achieve. It’s the void that exists between the person and their goal or solution; and where the coaching opportunity will evolve from that they often cannot see on their own. As a coach, it’s your responsibility to identify and fill in this Gap. The question is, how, exactly, do you accurately uncover this Gap?

There are three primary ways you can identify the Gap.

1. Through Observation. It’s essential that every manager takes the time to observe their direct reports in the field or on the phone, presenting or interacting with their customers and prospects. This is one of the most essential activities any manager can engage in. Otherwise, you run the risk of relying solely on what you hear from your salespeople and while it may be a truth, it’s only a subjective or partial truth or piece of the puzzle based what they see solely through their eyes. Like a great sport coach on the sidelines, observation will help identify the ‘blind spots’ that every salesperson has in order to get a full panoramic view of the most objective truth and what is really going on. After all, it’s very difficult to self diagnose when you’re in the middle of the game.

2. Through Conversation. Whether on the telephone or face to face, regardless if this happens during normal conversation or a scheduled coaching session, the Gap can also be identified in every interaction you have. Creating the safe space that allows people the time to process their thoughts, challenges and feelings on their own encourages a deeper level of self awareness which fosters more accurate self diagnosis and strengthens their problem solving skills. While certain strategic opportunities, skill gaps, assumptions or misconceptions can be identified, keep in mind; any great coaching must be complemented with observation so that you have the first hand evidence of what is really going on without relying solely on one source – the person you are coaching.

3. Through Evaluation and Inspection. While many managers hide behind and rely too heavily on diagnosing problems through inspection and the analysis of reports, spreadsheets and data, it is ironically often the least effective of these three strategies managers count on to uncover the Gap. Even conducting peer to peer or customer interviews to gain further insight about your direct report, while immensely valuable, still only provide you with a portion of the story. However, when used in conjunction with the other two strategies, this becomes another useful complimentary component to identify where certain activities, results and skills may be lacking. Keep in mind, data only shows you what is going on and can also be subjective. It doesn’t tell you why it’s happening. As such, observation and coaching conversations must also be leveraged to get the full story, rather than a small portion of the story to uncover the specific areas you can coach someone on. Remember, you are, first and foremost a people manager, not a data manager.

Instead of sharing what you perceive to be the solution to a problem before understanding the person’s specific needs, challenge or root cause of an issue, rely on deeper questions to assist in recognizing the Gap in every coaching conversation or situation with your staff. Whether the Gap is identified by you or the person you’re coaching, this will elevate your awareness so that you can pinpoint what is really going on with laser-like accuracy.

Any great coach realizes there’s not just one ‘right answer’ when coaching or only one way to uncover a powerful coaching moment. Leveraging these three distinct approaches will ensure that you are precisely coaching to the relevant Gap. Moreover, it will demonstrate the importance of investing the proper time to uncover a meaningful coaching opportunity rather than one that is hollow, inaccurate and ineffective. Improving your accuracy in uncovering the proper Gap to coach on will facilitate the changes in behavior that will lead to improved performance – and masterful coaching.

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Defusing Resistance To Coaching: How to Enroll The Resistant Top Performer In Coaching

Jul 21, 2010 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, career coaching, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople


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.

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Assumptions that Managers Make Which Fuel Mediocrity and Conceal Powerful Coaching Opportunities

Jul 15, 2010 Career Advice, Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers


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.

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VIDEO: Benchmark Best Sales Practices to Ensure Success

Jun 24, 2010 Business Advice, How To Sell and Sales Tips, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Videos, accountability, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, management tips


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.

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Is My Team Uncoachable? The Top Ten Reasons Why Coaching Fails When Managers Attempt to Coach Their Team

Jun 2, 2010 Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers


“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

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VIDEO: Don’t Sell The Way You Buy

Apr 20, 2010 Sales Coaching, Sales Training, Videos, coaching salespeople, sales tips


Here’s a valuable sales tip: “Don’t sell the way you buy.” You may feel that I’m contradicting some universal selling principles. After all, conventional sales wisdom handed down through the ages suggests how important it is to empathize and sympathize with your prospects and clients.

However, there’s a very fine line between understanding and respecting someone’s decision making process; and assuming that everyone makes a purchasing decision in the same manner and using the same criteria that you do. Moreover, there is also the faulty assumption that your prospects respond in a similar fashion to the type of sales approach and the type of salesperson that you respond to and would buy from.

My point is, if you started selling the way in which you make a purchasing decision, you are now putting your values, thought process and beliefs on the customer, assuming they purchase the same or in a similar way that you do. The result? More objections, less sales.

In this video, I defuse a costly myth. That is, the old adage of putting yourself in their shoes is really a costly assumption that destroys many a selling opportunity. Why? Because when you “look through their eyes” or attempt to see things how you assume they see them, it is still really what you see, not what they see.

The result? You develop a sales process based on how you think they buy rather than how they actually make a decision. Why? Because how you think they buy is really how you buy. (Is your brain twisted enough yet?)

If you truly want to wear their shoes, then you need to know how they think and what is important to them. Therefore, the only way to uncover how the prospect likes to process information, make a purchasing decision and the criteria they use to do so is by asking better questions.

Now, lets take this same ineffective model of selling like you buy and turn it around for a moment. If this belief of selling like the way you buy is getting in the way of taking certain actions or asking certain questions when on a sales call, then what about other things that you are doing or saying which you think are safe to you but in fact, are not safe or comfortable for the person you are speaking with because you’re still operating off the same tool, costly assumptions!

The lesson; Don’t believe everything you sell, I mean, tell yourself.

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VIDEO: Is Cold Calling Really Dead?

Apr 19, 2010 Prospecting, Cold Calling and Networking, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, Videos, cold calling, sales tips, tele-sales


You get to your office, sit down at your desk and open up your calendar. A concerned look sweeps over your face. “Only one appointment this week.” You look at your pipeline and get that squirmy feeling inside your gut, as you realize your pipeline is not as full as it used to be. You’re wondering where you’re going to find your next prospect.

The uncertainty begins to sweep over you. The stress starts creeping into your body, for you realize you can’t keep procrastinating making the cold calls you need to in order to book more appointments with key decision makers.

Does this situation sound familiar? As you might imagine, I’ve been getting a high volume of calls from sales managers and their salespeople struggling to meet their sales goals.

After investing several hours cold calling, this experience can leave you feeling depleted, frustrated and annoyed. You don’t understand why you’re unable to set the appointments with the prospects who you know you can help and therefore need to meet with. You ask yourself, “Why won’t they talk to me? I know I can help them. If only they’d give me some time on the phone.”

In desperation, you cry out, “This cold calling thing doesn’t work for me! What else can I do to schedule meetings with more qualified prospects who can buy from me?”

In this video, I address the question, “Is cold calling really dead?”

So, what is the answer? Is cold calling really dead? The answer is a resound, “Not even close.” Therefore, do not abandon cold calling! Cold calling is far from dead and I see evidence of this every day.

Sure, I realize for many people cold calling and prospecting ranks right up there with getting their teeth pulled without the gas.

However, as someone who has coached and trained thousands of salespeople and managers over the years, here’s what I’ve learned very early on. It’s not that cold calling doesn’t work. Cold calling works fabulously well. It’s the way you’re cold calling that doesn’t work. In other words, consider that it’s more about your approach and cold calling strategy; what you say and how you say it – that is ineffective and what your prospects are unresponsive to.

So be careful. Most people who feel cold calling doesn’t work in actuality, have learned the wrong lesson.

Side note: Over the last year, my cold calling book has been gaining a renewed popularity as competition increases and the need to find more qualified prospects to fill your pipeline intensifies. So, if you’re ready to develop a permission based prospecting system then check it out here.

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VIDEO: The Primary Objective of a Cold Call or Your Prospecting Efforts? It’s About Finding The Fit, Not Focusing On The Result

Mar 31, 2010 Cold Calling Tips, Prospecting, Cold Calling and Networking, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, Videos, cold calling, telesales


What’s the initial objective of a cold call or your prospecting and new business development efforts? Rather than focusing all of your energy on making the sale, first determine if there’s a good fit between you, your prospect, and what you are selling.

Instead of feeling that the intention of prospecting is to get a sale, provide a demonstration, submit a proposal, or schedule an appointment, the initial intention of prospecting is to determine if there’s a fit worth pursuing.

While this may sound a bit strange, closing the sale and earning the business of a prospect is not your initial goal. Instead, your primary objective is to determine whether you and your prospect are a good fit.

Take a moment and think about how this change in your attitude and mindset would change your cold calling approach as well as your experience.

While your traditional approach may be to produce a measurable result, now your primary objective is to discover whether you and your prospect are a good match and if this relationship is worth moving to the next stage of your selling process. If you feel that you constantly have to push the sales process forward, you’re not taking into consideration that the prospect may simply not be ready, let alone may not be a good fit for what you are selling. Pushing the sales process forward before a prospect is ready only creates pressure for the both of you, fostering an unhealthy relationship from the start.

By changing your thinking and your approach, you’ll now be able to focus your energy and precious time on the right prospects who are more inclined to buy from you, rather than wasting your time sending out proposals and following up with people who you have no business following up with in the first place. Filling your sales funnel with unqualified prospects does nothing for you other than cost you time when you spend it on people who are simply not a good fit for you or your product and service.

Here’s a clip produced by CanDoGo.com on how you can make this critical shift in your thinking which will result in more selling opportunities and less cold calling reluctance.

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Profit Builders Named One of the Top Ten Best Sales Coaching and Training Companies

Mar 25, 2010 Sales Coaching, Sales Training, Surveys and Polls, coaching salespeople


Top Ten Sales Training and Sales Coaching Companies

Can I make a humble plug here? Okay, we’ve earned some bragging rights and I was just excited to share this news with you. My company just received a nice accolade and recognition for being named one of the Top Ten Best Sales Training and Coaching Companies by Selling Power magazine.

Here’s the announcement below from Selling Power:

“One of the few great generals in history who never lost a battle was the Russian general Alexander Suvorov, who explained the roots of his success with his memorable motto: “Train hard and fight easy.” The sales profession is fortunate to have effective thought leaders who have created powerful sales-training and development solutions that help sales managers and salespeople improve their skills. And better skills translate to more valuable customer relationships and increased value to the company’s bottom line. These 10 top sales training solutions can help you and your company create more sales than you ever thought possible.

Profit Builders
Keith Rosen is fanatical about increasing your sales. That’s why almost half of the Fortune 1000 companies and the top companies in six major industries chose his training and coaching solutions. Profit Builders addresses the specific challenges that are unique to your company and then moves beyond traditional training by coaching your salespeople around best practices and best thinking to develop true champions. While Keith’s programs and books have won numerous awards, his bragging rights are earned through more sales and long-lasting results. www.profitbuilders.com

You can see the entire article here, listed in alphabetical order.

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