Keith Rosen's Executive Sales Coaching Blog on Selling, Leadership, Management

Coaching Questions Managers Use To Get People To Recognize The Cost of Self Sabotaging Behavior- Part 2

Feb 11, 2010 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching salespeople

Like most people, most managers I meet simply do not like confrontation. As such, they have tendency to avoid it at all costs. Now, I’m a huge advocate of motivating people by uncovering what drives them personally by tapping into their individuality, and then motivating them by pleasure, their goals, their dreams and their personal vision. While this is my preferred way of coaching and management, the unfortunate truth is, sometimes this isn’t enough for some people, especially those who simply aren’t getting the message that their behavior is going to bring them to a place where they don’t want to be.

The following questions hit on the cost of negative thinking or behavior. And the fact is, pain is always a greater motivator than pleasure. The benefit of using some of these questions is this. Instead of you having to deliver the cost incurred as a result of the individual perpetuating toxic thinking or behavior, you can get off your soap box and stop preaching by asking these types of questions in order for the person to realize the costs or consequences on their own.

Sometimes, when people uncover the cost on their own, and they finally hear it in their own words and voice, it leads to the momentum needed to create something new that would put them on a more productive path. And in many cases they aren’t even aware of their behavior or the repercussions they would realize as a result. Therefore, make sure you’re patient with them and give them the space to do some self reflection until they can come up with the solution on their own.

Remember, when asking the tougher coaching questions, it doesn’t serve you if you’re answering your own questions. So, if you’re asking the question, and then answering your own questions, then what do you need the other person in the conversation for!

Here are the questions to get people to recognize what they may not be seeing on their own:

1.What is this costing you (to continue doing things the way you’re doing them)?
2.How is that strategy working for you?
3.Do you feel that continuing this way is costing you something?
4.When you keep engaging in that behavior, what are the repercussions you may experience? How does your behavior affect you and those around you?
5.If you continue doing what you are currently doing, where do you think you will end up?
6.How does that affect you? (Your team, your legacy, your career here?)
7.How much longer are you going to put up with that?
8.What, if any benefit, are you realizing from continually doing things this way? (Yes, people still tap into any available energy source they can, even if it sometimes causes suffering or difficulties. This is a deeper conversation which requires the skills of a good coach as it’s often something they are not aware of.)

Tags: coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, management coach training, Sales Coaching

Reaching Year End Sales Goals – The Coaching Conversation Every Manager Needs to Have With Their Salespeople

Jan 18, 2010 Communication, Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, training for managers

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?

Tags: coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, management coach training, management coaching, Sales Coaching, training for managers

VIDEO: More Frequent Coaching Yields a Measurable R.O.I.

Dec 29, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, Videos, coaching for managers, training for managers

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.

Tags: coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, management training, Sales Coaching, training for managers

VIDEO: Managers Must Make Coaching a Choice – Not an Obligation

Dec 28, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, training for managers

The coaching relationship is a choice, not an obligation. The relationship between the coach and the people who are coached is a designed alliance, a collaborative partnership, and more. As such, remedial or sanctioned coaching is often met with resistance rather than with open arms.

How is coaching being offered to your team or to your employees? A perk, an incentive, an option, an obligation, or a remedial response to underperformance? Are you offering it to your entire team, to a select few, or to just one person?

It’s the manager’s responsibility to enroll each person on their team on the benefits of coaching and being coached, rather than forcing coaching upon them. Here’s a video I did that supports this.

Tags: coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, management coach training, management training, Sales Coaching, training for managers

Igniting the Fire Within – A Coaching Tool To Enroll People To Change By Taking a Stand For Them

Dec 23, 2009 Executive Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers

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?”

Tags: career coaching, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, life coaching, management, Sales Coaching

VIDEO: Use The Wanting For Statement To Motivate and Enroll People In Change

Dec 17, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, Videos, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers

Tags: coaching for managers, Executive Coaching, management training, Sales Coaching, training video

Live Event Next Week – How To Succeed In Today’s New Marketplace

Dec 9, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Interviews, Live Events, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Sales Training, training for managers

Join me next week for my live interview on SalesBuzz Radio.

Date: Thursday, December 17th 2009,
Time: 3:30pm EST
Cost: Free!
No registration Required

I’ll be discussing the new rules for winning in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace, focusing on what managers and salespeople need to do to win more sales today.

Some points I’ll be addressing will be:

*Eliminating the resistance to change in order to accelerate your growth

*How to become more accountable and self-motivated to generate immediate results

*Empowering yourself and others to solve problems, permanently

*The future of selling and sales management

To listen without registering, simply sign in to The SalesBuzz Online Community at 3:30PM Eastern and click the ‘Radio Show’ tab on this page.

To register, go to join us and complete the easy registration form here. (Joining is absolutely free).

To participate, call in or email the show—it’s your show, so don’t hesitate to contact us with your questions and comments. During the show, email thesalesbuzz@thebrooksgroup.com with your questions and comments and the opportunity to for me to answer your most pressing questions as it relates to sales and sales leadership. You can also email me today at info@profitbuilders.com to better ensure your question gets addressed.

To receive a free special bonus offer; tune in and watch for a follow-up email.

Tags: career coaching, coaching for managers, Executive Coaching, interview, live event, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, webinar

VIDEO: If Time Is Money, Then Your Routine Is Priceless. Are You Treating Them The Same?

Nov 23, 2009 Career Advice, Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Time Management Tips, Videos, accountability, training for managers

Do you manage your time as diligently as you manage your money? Do you have a consistent, weekly routine that you follow from the time you wake up in the morning up until the time you end your day, [whether that’s when you end your work day or go to sleep] that contains the specific, measurable activities and tasks you engage in that move you closer to your goals, while keeping your life in a happy balance?

If you’re in the majority of people I ask this question to, you’ll probably answer with a “No.” (I’m not surprised. After all, it was my clients who inspired me to write a book on time management in the first place.)

Here we are, on the surface believing that time is money, yet when it comes down to it, we’re not managing our time and ourselves the way we manage our money. We don’t give our time the same respect, diligence and planning it deserves the way we do money.

Watch this three minute video I did with homebusinessbrains.com and develop a deeper appreciation for the value of developing a highly structured routine. It’s time to upgrade your relationship with time. Click on the ‘read more’ link below to watch the video.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: accountability, crm, diary, routine, schedule, self management, time, time management

Part Three: Determining When To Coach Your Salespeople, When to Provide Sales Training and When To Give Them The Answer

Oct 22, 2009 Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers

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.

Tags: career coaching, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Communication, corporate training, Executive Coaching, leadership training, management coach training, management training, managing a team, managing salespeople, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Sales Training, training for managers, training salespeople

When Your Commitment To Others Sabotages Your Coaching Efforts

Oct 8, 2009 Communication, Executive Coaching, Sales Management, accountability, coaching salespeople, training for managers

Yes, you can actually want too much for your salespeople and your clients, more than they, in fact, may be ready for or even want for themselves. Jake learned this lesson quickly as a new coach.

To this day, Jake’s unwavering commitment to every one of the salespeople on his team is to help them make the long-term changes they want and need in their careers.

When Jake first started coaching his salespeople, he made a personal commitment that he would not just be a sales coach but an exceptional coach that every salesperson in his company would call on first. And in the spirit of becoming this person, he put action behind this commitment. He carefully prepared, researched, and practiced prior to every coaching session he had with a salesperson.

“Coaches deliver value while challenging their clients to achieve more through the utilization and development of their natural skills and talents so they can live up to their fullest potential” was Jake’s firm belief. He was insistent, practically obsessed with the notion that his salespeople must walk away with measurable value from every interaction and coaching session they had with him.

This manifested itself in a variety of ways. For example, if salespeople were coming to Jake ready to review their targeted objectives, he challenged them to reconsider their goals and make them even loftier, encouraging them to reach for even bigger, more rewarding results. Or, Jake might suggest that they identify a timeline in which they wanted to attain their goal or, better yet, shorten the timeline they initially developed for achieving this milestone.

If a salesperson was struggling to bring in an acceptable number of appointments each week through referrals and was considering putting together a cold calling campaign, Jake would be right there ready with the call template, opening statement, and process she needed to be effective at cold calling, including the number of dials she should start making today in order to achieve her sales goals.

You can want too much for your salespeople and your clients, more than they, in fact, may be ready for or even want for themselves.

Whatever objectives and goals his salespeople would have, Jake was ready to act as their primary source of support, encouragement, knowledge, structure, and insight needed to achieve what mattered most to them.

You name it, and Jake was ready for every conceivable question, goal, or challenge his salespeople threw at him. And, boy, did he push and push and then, when he was finished pushing, he pushed some more. Just think about what happens when you keep pushing without gauging the resistance level? You get pushback.

But why should a coach sense pushback from a salesperson, when the salesperson was the one who set the goals in the first place? What Jake wasn’t aware of was the flaw in his strategy. Look at the word client. Now, look at the word in the middle of the word. That’s right, you’ll notice the word lie. To be clear, Jake’s salespeople weren’t intentionally lying to him. It’s just that people often lie to themselves and believe the lies to be true.

These lies come in a variety of shapes and forms. For example, a lie could be an unwillingness to look at the truth, or a lack of awareness around the real issue. People can deceive themselves about the way they process information or may be unrealistic as to how fast they could move in order to reach a goal. In some cases, people don’t like the solution because it wasn’t what they expected or wanted, or they weren’t comfortable with it. This can cause pushback.

Sometimes, salespeople won’t admit that they lack the skills they know are necessary to achieve their goals. They aren’t sure they can put in the time and effort to master the skills. This new awareness may cause resistance. Rather than pushing through and forging ahead without knowing all the facts, coaches need to take the salesperson’s pulse to avoid causing further damage.

People often lie to themselves and believe the lies to be true.

To prevent forcing your agenda and expectations on those you coach, it’s critical that you find out what your salespeople’s expectations are from your coaching, the value they expect and how they want to be coached.

Take Their Pulse, Not Yours

Even though Jake’s salespeople were telling him they enjoyed and benefited from his coaching, he felt something was off. At the end of every coaching call, Jake felt like he’d just run a marathon. He was exhausted and deflated. His energy was all used up. Jake poured his heart and soul into every coaching call, believing this was what a coach was supposed to do. Not exactly.
As a new coach, Jake didn’t have enough experience to recognize that how he felt at the end of a coaching call was a telltale sign that something was indeed off. So, he did what every new, intelligent, insightful coach would do. He called his mentor coach.

Here’s what Jake came to understand. Sometimes we want so much for our clients and staff to be happy, satisfied, and successful that we have a tendency to instill our own agenda into the coaching process. If it sounds similar to having an attachment, you’re correct. However, the attachment in this situation is about wanting more for your clients or employees than they want for themselves or are ready for.

Tags: career coaching, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Communication, corporate training, Executive Coaching, leadership training, management coach training, management training, managing a team, managing salespeople, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, training for managers