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
Your Playbook for Winning More Sales Today
Sep 15, 2009 Executive Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers
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.
Tags: book event, coach training, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, management coaching, Sales Coaching, training for managers
Podcast: Managers, Coach Your Salespeople to Bring in More Sales by Relinquishing Your Role as Chief Problem Solver
Aug 30, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, coaching for managers, management tips, podcast, training for managers
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:
Motivating your sales team by tapping into their individuality
Listen to the podcast here
Tags: career coaching, coach the coach, coaching, coaching for managers, executive coach, Executive Coaching, management coach training, management coaching, Sales Coaching, team coaching
Sales Managers: Get Your Salespeople to Sell More: Listen to This Webinar Now!
May 1, 2009 Business Coaching, Career Advice, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Interviews, Leadership Academy, Sales Management, coaching for managers, management tips, training for managers, webinar
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:
The burning question today is, what can managers do to get their people motivated and performing at the level they need to be at consistently while still having time to focus on their other priorities?
Why do so many potentially good sales managers fail?
Managers struggle most when dealing with an underperformer and making the determination about whether to support them, do nothing or let them go. How long should you stick with a salesperson who has potential, but doesn’t produce?
If you had to identify just six key metrics that sales managers should use to benchmark their sales team’s performance, what would they be?
If coaching is the missing discipline amongst managers and sales leaders today, then why do so many coaching initiatives fail within organizations?
What do you think, are great sales leaders born or made? What are the characteristics of the very best?
What are some of the inherent challenges/barriers for management who are looking to make the shift and truly coach their sales team?
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.
Tags: Executive Coaching, management coaching, sales leadership, sales management training, training for managers, webinar, webinars
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