A recent global survey of salespeople highlighted that they want four hours 1-2-1 coaching from their sales manager a month, roughly an hour a week. Surveyed salespeople, who rated their sales manager as poor, received an hour or less of coaching a month. Those that rated their managers as high quality, productive managers received 4 hours a month. Where do you fit in this scale?
So when you are managing a team of sales people, how can you find the time to coach each of them individually? Just as you would with an external sales meeting, you need a methodology to ensure you are being effective and efficient in managing your internal team. So we have developed a coaching model called C.O.A.C.H.© to help you remember the order of a 1-2-1 that will ensure the best outcome for you and your sales person…
The C.O.A.C.H.© acronym stands for the 5 stages of the chat:
Stage 1 – Catch up on previous events in and out of work if that’s the relationship you have. Basically tune in to your team member.
Stage 2 – Objectives is the topic or area you intend to talk about, what are the things that have come up on your radar and equally what has come up on theirs, (Remember – ‘First Seek to Understand Then Be Understood’).
Stage 3 – Applaud is the essential part of sharing how much value that person has put into the team/company/themselves recently and that the area you are talking about now isn’t the only area you are rating them on.
Stage 4 – Clarify Next Steps is the ‘track to run on’ for them over the next week/month/quarter that is going help them achieve their objectives.
Stage 5 – That leaves stage 5 which is referred to as the empowerment statement, where you as the leaders say “How can I help?” The idea being that you have the opportunity to remove any hurdles that may arise before they start or better still they agree that there is nothing in the way and they should achieve their goals on their own.
So turn a new leaf and ensure you are coaching your sales people regularly and effectively and watch the results. Remember, effective sales leadership is about ‘PEOPLE NOT PAPER’ and so this is where emphasis of a leaders’ time should be spent.
