Put simply, coaching is a process to improve performance that focuses on helping an individual unlock their own potential to maximise performance.
Coaching helps them to learn rather than you teaching them.
Most sales managers are poor coaches lacking the ability and skills to help individuals reach their full potential.
Now’s the time to learn the skills to become an excellent sales coach!
Developing a Coaching Mindset
What is a coaching mindset? And why is it so important?
Reality is most sales managers are poor coaches ..not because they aren’t professional, hardworking and committed individuals
Root cause? The mistaken assumption that Good Salespeople = Good Managers
It’s a familiar story, star salesperson gets promoted to Sales Manager. He or she is logically senior management’s No1 choice.
They build rapport easily, deliver valuable customer solutions and a solid pipeline with consistent top results.
They loved selling but now they are finding it challenging to help develop others, analyse data correctly, do management reports and attend boardroom meetings..
It’s a totally different skillset and Senior Management didn’t recognise this fact.
No investment was planned to help the new manager develop the skills for this role.
Now they are struggling to manage their calendar with both demands from their team and management expectations.
Trying to pull themselves out of the minutiae of everyday sales life and constant firefighting. But apprehensive to express these concerns for fear they will appear incompetent.
The truth is – Great managers are made not born
They need support and investment to become great sales leaders
So What is this MINDSET ? Why is it so important?
A Coaching mindset allows you to think differently about your leadership behaviour and take a fresh perspective
This isn’t some stale ‘training technique’ you use on your people,
It goes way deeper than that. It touches your PURPOSE.
What is Your Purpose as a Sales Leader? – Your WHY?
Your contribution can be of outstanding value. Your legacy is now.
Think about the positive impact you could make on the lives of others?
You have the potential to create a High Performance Sales Culture, an environment that enables and empowers people. Unlocking their full potential and abilities.
It’s a change to a superior level of behaviour and leadership in everything you do.
A coaching mindset allows you identify opportunities for individual development.
Instead of telling them what to do.
You use insightful questions to help salespeople discover for themselves solutions to their challenges.
Help them set their own goals and take responsibility for implementing them.
Providing ongoing support and accountability to embed long lasting performance improvement.
For most of us this requires a mental shift and a change in our behaviour. It’s a skill and an art we need to learn and continue to practice in daily life.
Whilst learning this can be done in a short period of time, mastering them will take several months to get comfortable with.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could avoid learn these skills first time?
Instead of falling into a lot of common mistakes right from the start.
In next week’s article I’ll share the 10 Top Coaching Mistakes to avoid to get superior results from your team.
If you’d like to discuss improving your own skill set then let’s have an initial telephone conversation.
https://calendly.com/peter-holland-1/strategy-session-1
Committed to Your Sales Success
Peter
