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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, follow up with questions like these:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Imagine being able to transcend the boundaries of what you think is possible and become powerful beyond measure? It starts with identifying your Junoon.

I am excited to announce the availability of an intriguing book written by my friend Razi Imam. Razi is an incorrigible entrepreneur who has taken an interesting approach in helping people achieve extraordinary results.

Told in the context of a story, Razi’s book “Driven” teaches the ancient Eastern concept of “Junoon” as the means to help people find their dreams and get in a state of single-minded focus that makes the achievement of those dreams and goals a certainty.

Whether you want to start a business, learn a sport or solve a major world problem, achieving the state of Junoon is where you start.

When Razi asked me to share my Junoon, it was an opportunity to take an immediate and important pause in my day to reflect upon his request. What came out for me was a moment of intrigue, of inspiration, of focus and of unwavering passion for my convictions and purpose.

Your Junoon is not just the vision for your life or career. Your Junoon is not simply a list of your goals. Yes, your Junoon encapsulates these things but it is more – even more than the declaration of the source of your power. Writing my Junoon was powerful exercise, to say the least. The following paragraph is my Junoon, which I share with you here:

“Imagine being able to tap into your deepest level of authenticity and full accountability that makes us all powerful beyond measure. To empower others to break through what may have initially been perceived as an insurmountable challenge. To be human, to find strength in vulnerability, to deeply connect with people and touch the lives of others in a way that transcends the boundaries of what we think is possible.

To profoundly impact a culture – one person at a time, whether in our community, our schools or our businesses. To live in the relentless pursuit of wanting to serve others. To channel your vision, beliefs and convictions so strongly that they become contagious and echo indefinitely throughout the halls of change.

To be inspired by a mission bigger than you that engulfs your thinking and is manifested in everything you do – to the point of obsession. To awaken the gifts and tap into the value of each person that may lie dormant so they can achieve the things they never thought could be. To know that where this all starts is at the home; with my children the ultimate source of my power-and purpose.

My children fuel my inspiration, my passion and are the center of my universe. This is my Junoon.”

Driven will give you the infinite inner strength, heightened awareness, hyper focus and deeper insight to overcome the most overwhelming of obstacles in pursuit of your dreams. Razi has crafted the formula so that who you really are, who you want to be and what you truly want can work in harmony. Driven will enable you to recognize how influential you are and can be.

What is your Junoon? This book will show you how to tap into your purest source of greatness and heartfelt energy that will drive unprecedented change – and make you unstoppable.

Download a free chapter now at Drivennation.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What jumps out for you?

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

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

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

*What does confidentiality look like?

*What can you honor?

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

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

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

You Gotta’ Have Trust.

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

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

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

I don’t think so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the link to the Prospecting Calculator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 3-4, Doral Arrowwood, Rye Brook, N.Y. (just 10 minutes from Westchester County Airport (HPN) in White Plains, N.Y.)

I’m pleased to offer you the opportunity to have a complimentary registration to the upcoming Enterprise Engagement Expo and Conference, June 3-4, 2010 which I am speaking at. Simply go to eeaexpo.org, and use the code PF2010 to register to get complimentary conference and exhibit area access. I’ll be speaking on the role of sales leaders in relation to fostering a deeper level of engagement with their people and meeting with clients and potential clients in a “conversation center” at the event where we’d be happy to meet with you as well! (I’ll be there on June 3 only.)

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

The Enterprise Engagement Alliance Networking Expo and Conference, June 3-4 at the Doral Arrowwood in Rye Brook, N.Y (near Westchester County Airport) offers a unique introduction to a proven path to business success critical to professionals seeking to improve the performance of their organizations and themselves.

The program is designed to help you learn from experts, peers, and leading suppliers about the emerging new of enterprise engagement and how you can profit from it.

• Translate theory into results from experts, colleagues, and top suppliers of engagement services in educational, roundtable, and one-on-one meetings.
• Get answers to questions and solutions to challenges—every education session is followed by a round-table discussion with the speakers and others with mutual interests, so bring your questions and challenges and a willingness to share answers.
• Learn about an emerging new field that crosses traditional lines between sales, marketing, human resources, and financial management;
• Gain new insights into the role of leadership training, polls and surveys, communications (social networking, promotional products, face-to-face); measurement; rewards and recognition, customer loyalty, and more;
• Make yourself more effective as a leader by understanding the emerging field of enterprise engagement;
• Make contacts with people and resources who can help make it happen for your organizations.

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

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.

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.

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.

Would you like to eliminate fear and rejection from your prospecting? And get a win on every call?

You can with Art Sobczak’s Smart Calling method. Art works with thousands of sales reps each year helping them get more business by phone. In his new book, Smart Calling – Eliminate the Fear, Failure, and Rejection from Cold Calling, Art gives you the field-tested, practical information you need to make your calls work.

Check it out here.

Packed with hundreds of real-world examples, Smart Calling shows you how to:

*Grab your prospect’s interest in the critical first 20 seconds

*Use “social engineering” to get the inside scoop on prospects

*Turn around buyer resistance

*Have screeners, gatekeepers, and assistants working for you

*Get stalled prospects to take action

*Stay motivated and avoid morale-killing rejection!

Most of the time, cold calls don’t work and end up wasting everyone’s time. Smart Calling gives you a new and better way to approach prospects and win sales. Order Art’s book today and start Smart Calling.

Get exclusive bonus gifts, e-books, and recordings from authors and experts like Zig Ziglar, Jill Konrath, Bob Burg, me, and many others when you order Art’s new book today.

Go here right now and get details about purchasing the book and receiving your special free gifts.

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.

Professional selling and the ability to prospect effortlessly is a combined result of who you are, how you think, and the way you come across, not solely a function of what you do.

Imagine for a moment that each person looks at life and more specifically, cold calling, through a certain set of lenses or a set of beliefs that define our perspective about life, our career, and the events that we experience.

There is a saying I heard early on in my sales career, “Selling is a transference of feeling.” Although this is true, consider what happens if the feeling you are transferring to your prospects is the wrong feeling because your beliefs or thinking are coming from a negative, fear based, limiting, or self-serving place. If you are prospecting because you need to close more sales in order to save your job or to make enough money to pay your bills, you can bet that your prospects are going to pick up on your underlying intentions and run the other way.

Consider one of the objectives of a cold call or a sales presentation: to create a feeling within the prospect that stimulates interest and motivates them to take the next step and hear more about what you have to offer.

Therefore, it’s critical that you are transferring the right feeling and attitude to your prospects.

Here’s a video that supports this core philosophy – sales champions are created from the inside out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is her question and my response follows.

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

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

Here was my response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does this make more sense now? Let me know!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BONUS QUESTIONS: Building Deeper Accountability around Meeting Deadlines

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Your sales increase and your people are selling more

*Performance and productivity improve

*Underperformers get turned around or handled quickly and appropriately

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

*Performance issues decrease

*Communication breakdowns are practically eliminated

*The overall culture of the company is dramatically improved

*There’s greater alignment around goals with less pushback

*You attract better talent to your organization

*Top performers are happier

*You retain your best people

*Your team becomes more accountable and self reliant

*You find your job more fulfilling and satisfying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Their level of buy in around their goal.

*Their level of confidence around attaining their goal.

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

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

*How they want to be managed around their goals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step Five: Facilitate this conversation using the following questions:

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

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

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

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

A few months ago, I was interviewed by Geoffrey James who writes the Sales Machine column for BNET. (Geoffrey is also the author of seven books and the columnist for Business 2.0, CIO, The New York Times as well as many other publications.)

Today, he wrote about something we discussed during our conversation, which is one of the most important characteristics that successful people possess, especially top sales champions. And that is, the importance of being process driven rather than being so result driven.

No, I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t focus on the results, or set goals. After all, we need to have something to measure our success, especially in sales, and we need those goals to help determine an endpoint to strive for, something that we’re focused on attaining and the gauge that lets us know when we’ve ‘arrived’ at our destination.

What I am suggesting is to also adopt a mindset that may seem, on the surface, to be in conflict with the belief that you should stay focused on your goals. So, if you suffer from absolute or ‘either or’ thinking, this concept may be a real challenge to wrap your head around. Since we’re on the subject of healthy thinking, absolute thinking is something worth abandoning as well. It’s not one way or the other way; instead, it’s both. (“Either-or” vs. “And.”)

Those people today who challenge status quo and traditional ways of doing things are realizing the benefits of embracing not just one but two truths; two conflicting truths that can, in fact, live together in harmony. Yes, I know this sounds counterintuitive but that’s the paradox and the source of power for those who adopt this mindset.

That is: be mindful of the future, while engaged in and living in the present. To get a bit more cerebral, your process lives in the present where your results or your goals are all living in the future. And if you’re always focused on the result or outcome you seek, it’s going to affect what you need to be doing in the present moment. That includes the quality of your activities, the way you communicate, how well you listen, your level of creativity and ultimately how connected, present and engaged you are with people, especially your customers.

The point is, once your goal is set, continually thinking about or obsessing over your goal or the results you need to achieve doesn’t make that goal manifest itself any faster or easier. Instead, it actually winds up becoming a diversion, keeping your stuck in the future. The real cost is, you’re not being fully present and focused on today and more important, the actual process that’s going to take you to your desired destination.

Think if it this way. If I wanted to move a concrete wall, does the act of pushing on that wall all day make the wall move? Not even a little. It’s the same as spending all of your time thinking about the goal or the result. Doing so doesn’t move you any closer to your goal.

Once your goals are set, they’re not going anywhere! Now it’s time to shift your focus on developing and fine tuning your process which is what will ultimately be the vehicle that will take you to your goal.

Below is an excerpt from Geoffrey’s post based on our interview. You can read the full post here.

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Sales pros always have goals, and most enjoy the process of achieving them. But did you know that goals can be a major impediment to your success?

Take cold-calling, for instance. Most sales pros see cold calling as a goal-oriented activity — fill the pipeline with “X” number of prospects, in the hopes of creating as many customers as possible.

That makes sense, but it also encourages sales pros to see each conversion that results in a prospect as a “win” and each cold call that ends in some other way as a “loss.”

And that’s setting yourself up for failure, because the nature of cold calling is that only a small percentage of the people you contact will be potential customers. The majority will be people who simply aren’t interested or are not a fit for a variety of reasons.

However, if you’re caught up in the “win/loss” way of thinking, you may feel like a “loser” even if the person you called had absolutely no use whatsoever for your product!

Not surprisingly, sales pros begin dreading it, avoiding it, and become increasingly less effective when they actually get around to doing it.

The root cause of this deeply flawed “win/loss” thinking is focusing on the goal rather than the process. If you’re focused on the result, you are visualizing the future (i.e. “will I make my goal???”) rather than experiencing the present moment.

As a result, there’s no way that you can really listen to the prospect, because your attention is on a possible event in a future-yet-to-be. Because your focus is elsewhere (on your goal, that is) you’ll find it difficult to be creative and flexible in responding to what the potential prospect actually says.

Here’s how you fix this. Define cold-calling as a process rather than goal-oriented activity. Stop focusing on the result and start focusing on the potential prospect and the process of communicating with that prospect to determine if in fact, there’s truly a fit.

Changing your way of thinking is that you’ll immediately become more effective because it removes the “sting” of contacting a lead that turns out, for whatever reason, not to be a real prospect.

Rather than a “loss,” the event simply becomes something that you happened to discover during the process of cold-calling.

More importantly, treating cold-calling as a process keeps you focused on finding ways to help potential prospects and customers – and on not wasting the time of those who don’t need the help.

Your true goal shouldn’t be to make your sales goal, but to emulate an Olympic athlete. Top athletes visualize “winning” (the goal) before competing, but when they’re actually performing they focus on what’s happening right then and there.

Here’s the cool part… the real reason for this entire post. Focusing on process rather than your goals increases the chances that you’ll fulfill your goals.

In other words, know your goals, then forget them, and put your mind into the process. If you do this right, your goals will take care of themselves, because your process will make them happen without you wasting time obsessing on them.

You can read the full post here.

With the timely pressure that we place upon ourselves in the New Year when declaring our resolutions and charting our goals, many people often fall short of attaining their goals or honoring these resolutions. Sure, there are many reasons why we may not reach our goals but before we point our finger at things like lack of execution, resources, skills or effective time management, we need to first look at the source of the problem; that is, the goal itself. In other words, are you sure you’re setting the right goals for yourself?

Sure, our goals are supposed to resemble and support that which we want to bring into in our life or career, yet many times, people set goals around what they think they want, what they think they need or what they think they should be doing.

Several years ago, I introduced the difference between priorities and goals and the importance of aligning the two when setting the right goals. Here is the full definition and an example to make sure that you’re setting the best goals for you.

Priorities vs. Goals- What’s the Difference?

Definition:

Priorities: What is most important and meaningful in your life today (activities, values, beliefs, lifestyle, principles, standards, hobbies, integrity, etc.) that you are not willing to compromise or sacrifice in pursuit of something else (such as a goal).

Goals: A future based anticipated expectation, possibility, measurable end result or experience that you are working towards creating, achieving or bringing to fruition that has not yet been realized in the present.

Comparisons:

*Present Focused vs. Future Focused

*What Is Happening vs. What Will/May Be

*In The Present vs. In The Future

Here’s an Example:

John had a goal of being a top producer in his company. As such, he looked at the other top producers and the activities they engage in which make them successful. The top salespeople are working twelve hour days, sometimes even seven days a week. Thinking, “It worked for them, so I guess I should do that too,” he decided to give up a chunk of his family/personal time and other enjoyable activities/hobbies in his quest to become financially successful.

Although John’s priority was spending time with his family, he didn’t understand why he felt miserable and encountered resistance while attempting to achieve this goal.

Once he created a personal strategy and a routine for achieving his own bigger goals that supported his lifestyle and priorities without having to sacrifice what matters most to him, he was able to reach his goals with less effort and enjoyed the process even more.

Here’s The Key Point:

If you are encountering resistance while attempting to reach certain goals or performing certain tasks, chances are it’s either something you really don’t want to be doing, an old goal that may not serve you anymore (a “should“) or you are operating from someone else’s agenda (also a should)! The bottom line is, these goals don’t support your priorities and you’ll continue to feel “off” or out of your integrity throughout your pursuit of these misaligned goals.

Take the time to align your goals with your priorities. Otherwise, you’ll feel confined or powerless to make changes, allowing situations, circumstances or other people to influence or control you. Discover what YOU truly want by aligning your goals with the priorities in your life rather than the “shoulds.”

The fact is, “Should-based goals” do not support your priorities or personal vision. So, if you are unsure whether the goal, activity or task classifies as a should, take a look at your lifestyle, values and priorities and see if they are all in alignment. If the goal doesn’t support them, it’s a “should.” So, don’t “Should” on yourself!

Benefit of Getting This Distinction:

At the end of the day, your goals need to be aligned with your priorities. Honor the priorities in your life by making them non-negotiable.

Before you map out your goals, determine the priorities in your life that you’re not willing to sacrifice. This way, you can identify the activities you need to engage in and what you are willing to give up today (maybe even a conscious, short – term sacrifice of certain priorities) in pursuit of a bigger dream tomorrow.

When your goals are aligned and balanced with your priorities, natural strengths and talents, you’ll maintain your integrity, feel calmer and will experience greater peace of mind while traveling on your path to achieving bigger goals and meaningful, long lasting results. You’ll find the process of working towards these goals more enjoyable and fulfilling, without feeling as if you’re continually pushing for something to happen. Instead, you’ll be pulled towards your goal with less of an effort.

Once you can orient your life around your priorities, you’ll find that you will actually have fewer goals that you’ll feel compelled to attain or be driven and consumed by. If you design your life and career around what is most important to you on a daily basis, you’ll avoid becoming hooked or attached to creating something ‘better’ at a future point in time, which can rob you of the quality of your life today.

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

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

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

The 10 Best Books to Read in 2010

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

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

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

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

This book will show you how you can:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?”

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.

There may be times when someone holds certain perceptions or beliefs about your product, service, industry, performance or processes that may be inaccurate. Or, maybe you need to enroll people in an alternative solution, a new way of looking at a situation or a different way of thinking. When this occurs, and you’re running into resistance from the other side when trying to create buy in or you are hearing conflicting opinions which you do not agree with, you may react by telling the person they’re wrong. Or, you attempt to fill in the conversation with statistical data, evidence or proof that supports and defends your point of view in order to convince them to agree with you.

Lets face it, when someone is told they’re wrong or their belief is in conflict with the position you’ve taken, they either shut down and stop listening or come out fighting in an attempt to defend their stand. Once this happens, a confrontational atmosphere is created between you and the person you are speaking with. When you invalidate someone’s viewpoint, they become further entrenched in their case and are less willing to budge or move off of their platform.

Rather than react to their remark, demonstrate your interest in understanding what motivates their thinking and reasoning in the first place. Become interested in gaining a greater awareness around where they are coming from and seize this opportunity to validate and connect with some aspect of their feelings and thinking. Saying things like, “I appreciate how you feel” or “I understand your feelings/position on that” lets the other person know that you are sincerely trying to understand and respect their view and what they had said, rather than dismiss it. This demonstrates a willingness on your end to smooth out the playing field, continue the conversation and find a common ground and solution, without becoming argumentative and defensive.

To avoid confrontation, detach from your agenda and outcome for a moment and instead, respond to a person’s statements or comments with a question that directs the conversation toward creating a new opportunity, belief or solution. Questions allow you to correct someone gracefully or explore a new possibility without having an emotional reaction, dismissing their opinion and feelings or telling them they’re wrong.

To avoid the battles that happen in daily communication, focus on helping other people get what they want in every conversation. This is especially important if you’re running into situations like these with the people you work with. We often forget that, while we may all hold conflicting viewpoints, you are still ultimately working towards one collective goal, objective and vision within the organization. We need to continually be mindful of our shared goals and keep this in front of our line of vision. This approach enables you to do so, while acknowledging and respecting each other’s differences. You’ll also find out that you have more in common than you had originally thought.

Drive these types of conversations with well crafted, neutrally charged questions that are not loaded, manipulative, adversarial or have a hidden agenda attached to them. The byproduct will be healthier collaboration that ultimately gives you what you want with less effort. These questions will also help foster a deeper level of buy in and the mutual alignment of goals that you need in order to ensure that together, you generate worthwhile results over the long term. The following questions will enable you to create new opportunities that you would not have noticed before and uncover innovative ideas that are otherwise left unexplored.

1.What else do you feel might be possible? What else could be true?

2.Can you please share with me your thinking on that? What does that (solution, approach, problem, etc.) look like for you? What does that look like through your eyes?

3.May I share my view on that? Are you open to hearing another point of view on that?

4.Is it possible that there may be another approach/solution here? Is there a different way we can look at this?

5.Is it possible that there may be more/other facts to consider?

6.How can I best assist you around achieving what you want most?

7.When did you decide that was true?

8.That’s interesting. Can you share with me why you feel/see it that way?

9.What else is true about that? Is that the truth or is it something else?

10.I’m not too sure what you mean. Can you say more about that?

11.How do you mean when you say (better results, well trained, not qualified, not professional, unmotivated, poor service, etc.)? What does (success, persistent, organized, responsive, more responsibility, a qualified selling opportunity, overwhelmed, etc.) mean to you/look like to you?

12.I hear that you’re saying this can’t be done this way but what if it could be done? What would that mean to you?

13.What would be possible if…..?

14.What result are you looking to achieve here?

15.What is most important to you?

16.What’s the common ground that we share? What’s the common objective that you see here? What do you feel we are in agreement around?

D.T. Suzuki (Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, October 18, 1870 – July 12, 1966) was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin (and Far Eastern philosophy in general) to the West.

There is a Zen story he tells that captures the attitude of mindfulness with respect to living in the present and living in a state of gratitude.

There are several versions of this story. Here’s my version, edited in the way I like to tell it:

An honor student, frustrated with his life and with school, worried about what tomorrow may bring, approached his teacher asking for some guidance.

“The story goes,” says the teacher in response to his students request for help, “That a Buddhist Monk was walking through the mountains one day. Then, out of nowhere, a tiger appears, chasing the monk towards the edge of a cliff. The monk, in his quest to escape the tiger, runs to the edge of the cliff and climbs over the side, where he sees five other tigers 15 feet below him, waiting to eat him.

So the monk is just hanging there, holding on to a vine on the side of the cliff, waiting there for the little chance he has to escape or for his imminent demise. Then, as the monk hangs there, exploring his options, he turns to the left and sees a strawberry.

He smiles, “Wow what a magnificent strawberry!” he says to himself. So, he picks it and he eats it.

The student waited for his teacher to continue but it was clear that the teacher was done with the story. “That’s it? That is it the story? The monk is about to be eaten by tigers so he reaches out to pick and eat a strawberry?” the student exclaimed.

“What’s the point?” he added.

The teacher replied, “The lesson is to know and embrace the experience of being alive. You must be alive every second you are alive.”

The student responded, “But teacher, everyone is alive when they are alive.”

“No,” said the teacher. “It’s the experience of being alive in each moment, in each experience, good and bad. We must be alive every second we are alive and not simply exist and live out our days.”

The student, confused, questioned his teacher, asking, “But everyone alive is alive, aren’t they?” he insisted.

“No. Look at you now,” explained the teacher. “You are running around being chased by tigers, consumed with your thoughts of how it could be better, how you could be better if only things were different. Yet, you have shared with me over the past year several difficult situations, in addition to the circumstances that I have observed, how you were about to be eaten by tigers and how you have been saved in each situation. You can’t be alive if you are living in fear and if you’re living in fear you can’t see and experience life; the magnificence of your life that is right in front of you in each moment.”

The teacher asked, “Are you running around, grinning over the feeling of being the luckiest, most fortunate and appreciative person in the world because of what IS present in your life today, or are you consumed with fear, what you DON’T have in your life or what may possibly happen some time in the future?”

The student thought for a moment, looked up at his teacher, smiled, and continued on with his day……

So, what magnificent strawberries do you have in your life? Stop, look around. There they are. Right in front of you. Your health, your family, your children, your job, a hobby, a sport, your natural gifts or talents, even the people in your life. Pick one today. Relish every bite.

After all, what’s the purpose of eating a strawberry? To get to the end or to savor and enjoy every delicious bite?

During this holiday season, I hope you can experience the sense of gratitude for what is around you and a deeper appreciation for is in your life today. Balance being in the present moment today while managing your goals and dreams, without living in them, which then takes you into the future. Live every day with a sense of gratitude, and you’ll be the richest person in the world.

Wishing you and your family a healthy, appreciative and enjoyable holiday season.

Many of us consider learning the act of acquiring new information. The fact is, learning happens every moment of our lives. It isn’t just about assimilating knowledge but recognizing the lesson in every experience, even the value in every message that each person shares with us, growing from it and moving onto a more productive path.

While we draw into our life that which we need to learn, we often resist the lessons in front of us, since we may associate “learning the lesson” either as a result of doing something wrong (often from our childhood, for example, “If you touch a hot stove you’ll get burned”) or a task we have to finish. (“Do your homework or you’ll be punished.”)

As adults, this feeling fostered in our youth perpetuates, often blinding us to the valuable lessons and experiences that show up simply because we’ve been taught to resist them rather than embrace them.

When you are faced with a challenge or an upset, do you tackle it head on or have tendency to avoid them hoping they’ll ‘fix themselves’ or go away? When you’re handling a problem, do you address it in a way that permanently eliminates it or does it reappear? If you find similar challenges reappearing in your life, it’s a strong sign that you didn’t get the lesson the first time around or you missed out on a subtle, new opportunity to learn and grow or act upon a solution presented to you by someone who could have contributed to you.

Here are two universal laws worth adopting. The first one is, “We attract what we need to learn.” And in conjunction with this universal law, is another which makes this first one so challenging, and that is, “We resist what we need to learn the most.”

Consider every person you interact with in your life has some gift or knowledge worthy of sharing. Become more sensitive to the value in the message, without discounting the messenger. Allow each situation or challenge, even every person you come in contact with, to leave you with something valuable that can contribute to you in some way.

Here are just a few questions you can ask yourself to become more connected to the value in every experience. “What is the value I am leaving this conversation with?” “What can I learn from this?” “What am I resisting here?” “Why is this causing a reaction in me?” “What about this (situation, person) is making me feel uncomfortable?” What’s the A.F.G.O. here?” (A.F.G.O. = Another Fabulous Growth Opportunity!)

Although you need the right answers to keep up, to get ahead you need to ask yourself the right questions. Therefore, focus more on the question than on the answer. The question is the answer.

Anyone can have a great day. But lets face it, we don’t get tested on our good days. We get tested on our “bad days” or our tougher days. These are the days when the true essence of our character, convictions, beliefs and abilities are being challenged and have the opportunity to shine; our defining moment. These are the days when we can show the world what we’re made of. So, what are you going to do on a bad day? Embrace the test and make it a great day.

So, what can you learn today?

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.

Think about the intention or the end result of your prospecting 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.

Here’s a video I did on cold calling that I recently produced with a great new company I’d like to introduce to you that’s offering some free and valuable advice to home businesses and career minded professionals. That company is Home Business Brains. Click on the “read more” link below for the video.

Homebusinessbrains.com offers a complete spectrum of small business information, designed to move you through a step by step process that will help you implement key strategies to build a successful business.

I volunteered my time to be part of this small business expert community which truly serves small business owners and entrepreneurs, whether starting out or already up and running.

The amazing part of HomeBusinessBrains.com is all the experts volunteered their time to give real-world use-it-today information, at a time where it’s never been more important to be of service to our communities.

Right now HomeBusinessBrains.com is offering a Free Sneak Preview with over 100 videos of leading small business experts… Including me. Over 65 Small Business Content Subjects with Complete Information You Can Use today!

To support them in their launch, I’ll be sharing a sneak peak to several videos that I did with them over the next week. So sit back, tune in and enjoy! I look forward to your comments and hearing how these videos have motivated you to achieve better results today.

You can check out more of my videos at this first of its kind Multi-Media Educational Hub for Small Business Entrepreneurs here or click above to start watching today’s feature video that I did for them.

I received the following question from a salesperson the other day who was struggling when it came to qualifying his prospects during a cold call. He was looking for an effective way to best qualify his prospects and how to avoid wasting time when meeting with the wrong ones. What follows is his initial inquiry and my response, which I felt important enough to share with you, as many salespeople seem to be struggling with this very issue today.

That is, “When cold calling, exactly how much initial qualification is enough before determining the next step in my selling process? Do I do all of my qualification up front on the phone before scheduling a face to face meeting or do I wait until I meet with the prospect and then conduct a more robust needs analysis? How do I make this determination?”

Here’s the email I received:

“Hello Mr. Rosen,
I am a salesperson selling health insurance who is currently working on my sales system. My target market is owners of small businesses. I call them and set appointments from telemarketing leads. I have a script in which I use to set the appointment and qualify them, before meeting them face-to-face. I’d be curious to know what strategy you feel is best regarding my two approaches below.

First Approach: Do minimal questioning and qualification and just set the appointment. Then at the appointment, conduct a fact finder to find out their situation and what they like or don’t about their current health insurance plan. Then, set another appointment and come back with a proposal and recommendations. I will pre-close them on the first visit.

Or is this a better this way?

Second Approach: Call and qualify them and ask them all the questions over the phone to find out their current situation on this initial phone call. Then, I will bring the proposal to the first face to face appointment, recap what we discussed over the phone, explain the plan and try and make the sale. Pretty much try and make the sale on the first face to face visit.”

Here was my response:

The answer is – BOTH. There’s always a minimal amount of non negotiable qualification that must be done before meeting with a prospect. Then, when determining how much deeper you can go in your qualification, depending upon the situation it could go either way, so let the customer decide.

The IDEAL scenario is the second one you mapped out. And it’s all in the spirit of saving you your precious and limited time following up and meeting with people who you shouldn’t be meeting with in the first place. The cost of meeting with unqualified people is compounded exponentially because you’re not only meeting with the wrong prospects but you’re now losing time that you could have invested meeting with the right ones – the ones that your competition is meeting with.

Of course, there are those situations where the prospect simply doesn’t have the time nor desire to answer all of your questions during an initial phone call and at that point, it’s going to be a judgment call on your part. So, to minimize the risk of meeting with the wrong prospects and maximize your time when meeting with the qualified ones, what I would recommend is making a list of the non-negotiable qualifying questions that must always be asked, regardless of the situation, so that you get a baseline understanding whether or not this person is even a candidate for your product or service.

Here’s a great way to handle how much qualifying you can do over the phone and how to do it in a way that would encourage the prospect to spend more time with you during this initial telephone conversation.

Simply put, let the prospect decide. After all, people want to save as much time as possible and would appreciate any opportunity to be more efficient when it comes to leveraging their time. That said, the next time you speak with a prospect over the phone, use the following approach during your initial needs analysis/qualification process.

After asking them a couple of preliminary, non negotiable questions, deliver the following message.

“Mr./Mrs. Prospect, I know you’re busy and I want to respect your time. That said, I want to share two options with you that would save you some time when deciding what solution is best for you and whether or not there’s even a fit here. We could schedule a time where I can visit with you to learn more about your business and your objectives and then at that time, schedule another meeting where we could discuss my proposed solution, or, to speed up this process and avoid scheduling another meeting, we can continue our conversation now on the phone so that at the end of this conversation, you would have a very good sense as to whether or not I can deliver more value than your current solution is providing you and if it even makes sense for us to meet face to face in the first place. Which option would work better for you at this time?”

When you give people a choice and share with them the benefit of investing a little more time with you on the phone, you’ll find that your prospects are much more willing to do so. And if you’re saying that your prospects are, “too busy to spend more time with me” or “this won’t work in my industry,” I would challenge you to re-think whether or not this is truly your prospect’s objection or a costly assumption that you’ve created in your own mind. If this new marketplace has changed the way we sell and engage with our prospects, then the old rules of how we qualify and set appointments with our prospects much be challenged as well.

This win – win saves both you and the prospect time, while ensuring that you’re meeting with more of the right prospects.

Landslide.com recently recorded a video for a series with the theme: “Respect sales.” The idea is to show how sometimes people think salespeople have it easy – they get to travel, play golf, go on dinner outings etc. but the reality is far different.

So, what actually happens when a salesperson takes a prospect out on the golf course? Any good salesperson knows that deals just don’t fall out of the sky. Follow Landslide’s sales guy as he puts up with his difficult prospect and tries to close the deal. Click play on the video below.

If the video does not load, here is a link to the video.

I want to pass along to you an invitation from Zig Ziglar which my friend, Tom Ziglar just informed me about that I’m excited to share with you. Next week, you can participate in a very special live webcast that Zig Ziglar is hosting on November 17, absolutely free.

It sounds like the last few weeks for the Ziglar family have been incredible. Zig just turned 83, will be celebrating his 63rd wedding anniversary later this month and Zig’s new book, Embrace The Struggle, was just released.

With so many people facing their own struggles today, including Zig’s own struggle after a recent accident, you can’t help but find hope and encouragement when you see how Zig himself is embracing his struggle.

If you haven’t already seen it, The Ziglar family has created a very powerful movie, “Embrace The Struggle,” that tells in two minutes the Embrace The Struggle message. When the movie is finished, it will end on a registration page for the free webcast.

You can watch the movie here if you have not seen it yet.

Or, you can go directly to the registration page here.

I know that Zig Ziglar has made an impact in my life and in the lives of thousands of others.

I’m certain that anyone in the midst of a struggle who participates in this webcast will find something that will help them embrace their struggle.

Join the Ziglar family for a special evening with Zig Ziglar, Tom Ziglar and Julie Ziglar Norman, as they discuss how Zig has embraced his struggle from a brain injury and the resulting short-term memory loss. Your life will be impacted as you see this family rise above their circumstances – and thrive!

Below are the details of the webcast:

Title: Embrace the Struggle

Speakers: Zig Ziglar, Tom Ziglar and Julie Ziglar Norman

Date: November 17th

Time: 7:00-8:15 pm CST

To Register:

You can watch the movie here.

Or, you can go directly to the registration page here.

Follow me on Twitter here.

“Should I be tweeting, Keith?” This question comes up more and more when speaking with clients. Since there are several factors to consider when answering this, my response to this question are additional exploratory questions that guide a conversation to help individuals and companies determine whether it makes sense for them to become part of the Twitter universe or, twitterverse, which according to the urban dictionary is defined as, “The cyberspace area of twitter. This naturally extends beyond twitter.com to anywhere you can twitter, which includes cell phones.” (Yes, be prepared for more jargon and a new language.) Here are a handful of those questions:

1.“What do you already know about Twitter?”
2.“Is this something you’re setting up as a personal account or for your business?” (What are you using it for? Staying in touch, for fun, to achieve a certain goal or objective, to make money, etc.”)
3.“Tell me why you feel you want to/need to be tweeting?”
4.“What are your goals and expectations?”
5.“How much time do you have to devote to this?”
6.“If this is for your business, who will be doing the tweeting?”
7.“What message are you looking to deliver?” (Around your personal brand, corporate branding, certain theme or platform, marketing messages, notifications, events, special offers, attracting prospects, nothing specific, etc.)
8.“What results are you expecting?”
9.“How many followers do you want?”
10. “Who do you want to follow you?” (“How many people, what audience, why do you want them following you,” and so on.)
11. “How will this complement your current marketing campaign and align with your social media strategy and objectives?”

Once we siphon through the answers to these questions, we can then start mapping out whether or not it makes sense for them to invest their time tweeting and a strategy to go about doing so that would achieve their objectives.

I know it’s easy to get caught up in trying to get as many people as possible following you on Twitter, and social media is all the rage. (Just Google “social media” and you’ll get 203,000,000 results. Probably even more since this blog went live.) For some people, Twitter has become a downright obsession, an ego stroke, a validation, a need to be needed, a way to feel ‘connected.’ (I’ll have to address what ‘connected’ means in another blog.)

Sure, there are those people out there that have earned the bragging rights to say they have tens of thousands of people following them on twitter, but I can tell you this with great certainty, if you’re looking at it from the perspective of what the financial benefit or monetary impact could be and how much personal income has been generated, I wouldn’t run out to swap your W2 statement with most of them. That being said, there’s always the few exceptions.

Like any new strategy you’re considering adopting, if you’re looking at Twitter as part of your overall marketing campaign in order to leverage it as a social media communications tool, there needs to be a healthy balance between the quality of your efforts and the quantity of them. There’s no, “one solution.” What’s needed is a holistic and well balanced approach to utilizing a variety of marketing vehicles that would reinforce your brand, provide further exposure and put you in touch with your target audience which, collectively, would achieve your marketing objectives.

Just think of selling; if you look at selling as a numbers game rather than a science or strategic benchmarking process, you’re in big trouble. After all, you can have thousands of prospects in your pipeline but what are those prospects worth if they’re not a fit for your product or service? The costs are significant: time and money wasted on engaging with the wrong people multiplied exponentially by the time you are not spending targeting, calling on and following up with the right prospects.

Depending upon your goals and the responses to the questions I posed earlier in this blog, Twitter may certainly prove to be one very important spoke on your marketing wheel that’s worth leveraging (it’s been worthwhile for me), that complements the other marketing platforms you utilize.

To reinforce this point, here’s a short movie aligning the values of legendary Zig Ziglar and his son, Tom Ziglar with Twitter. In this movie, you’ll find some great, classic quotes from Zig Ziglar, as well as a handful of guidelines from Tom on how to leverage and maximize Twitter to your advantage.

And yes, I do tweet as part of my overall social media strategy. So, feel free to follow me on Twitter here.

Enjoy the new Ziglar Twitter Movie. Click here to watch.

For more details or to nominate one visit this page: Here’s The Link

Do you know a true sales star? One who closes more deals and brings in business for your company or a company you know?

It’s time to pay tribute to those sales professionals out there who are the ones that are driving the success within today’s companies. AllBusiness.com wants to honor the top-performing salespeople who are working hard to make a difference in this competitive market. Tell us about the salesperson in your network or company who you feel deserves the limelight.

Nominate Your Top Sales Star!

We’ve put together a panel of sales coaches and experts who will select one salesperson each month from among the nominees and I’m personally excited about being a member of this panel. We need your nomination.

That person nominated will be profiled in a feature article for AllBusiness.com and our sister site, Hoover’s, and will receive free membership in a sales networking and coaching program. Every nominee will receive a FREE six month VIP Membership over at Top Sales Experts.

One annual winner will get a package of sales training and coaching programs, membership in Top Sales Experts, and additional tools and resources to continue developing their expertise and talent.

Lets honor the top-performing salespeople who deliver results in today’s competitive market. They deserve it and you can help make that happen.

For more details or to nominate one visit this page: Here’s the link.

Also note, there is no deadline for entries each month; all nominations received are carried forward.

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

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

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

Scenario Three:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scenario Two:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned for part three later this week.