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Posts Tagged ‘sales management coaching’

Recognize Those Defining Moments To Transform Your Team Through Coaching

Jul 8, 2010 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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72 Hr. Book Event EXTENDED: Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions is #1 Best Selling Book on Amazon

Sep 22, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is the best book ever written on sales coaching.” – Brian Tracy

Named Best Sales Leadership Book of the Year and one of the World’s Best Business Books of 2009, in Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions you’ll get a step by step, award winning process you can follow to coach your sales team to bring in more sales today.

You’ll discover how to:

  • Blow your quota away and get your salespeople selling more today. (Most companies increase sales between 12-20%.)
  • Turn underperformers into super-achievers in less than 30 days!
  • Attract and retain top sales talent.
  • Avoid the mistakes that lead to coaching failure.
  • Coach your team to become accountable and self-motivated. Stop wasting your time continually pushing for results.
  • Empower your people to solve their own problems and lessen their dependence on you.
  • Eliminate time consuming distractions, fires and costly staffing problems that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
  • Plus much more!

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

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PODCAST: Coaching Mistakes Managers Make. What You Can Do To Improve Sales Performance and Drive Higher Sales Numbers Today

Jul 22, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching tips, management tips, podcast, training for managers


Listen to the podcast here.

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

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

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

Listen to the podcast here.

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PODCAST: Leadership Strategies That Motivate Your Team to Higher Performance

Jul 10, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Leadership Academy, Sales Management, articles on leadership, coaching for managers, management tips, podcast, training for managers


Listen to this podcast here.

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

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

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

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

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

You can tune in and listen to this podcast here.

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

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PODCAST: Want Full Accountability Within Your Team? Coaching People to Become More Accountable

Jun 8, 2009 American Entitlement, Executive Coaching, Sales Management, accountability, coaching for managers, coaching tips, management articles, management tips, podcast


Listen to the full podcast here.

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

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

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

  1. Is there a consequence to their actions or non-actions? And that consequence can come from you (i.e. the affect on their salary, position, job, bonus, satisfaction, peace of mind and so on) or from a personal cost they would feel themselves by not changing.


  2. Building off number one above, it’s all about how you position this conversation around accountability. This is always a tough job for managers, because most of the time, they get on their soapbox and preach the consequences to their team. This often sounds like: “You can be more successful if….” or “You can make more money if only you would …...” or “If you don’t turn this around you’re going to (be out of a job, get fired, fail, and so on).”


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

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

    Listen to the full podcast here.

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