People Are Mistaken for Employees – Sales Coaching’s Biggest Barrier

ASTD 2013 Sales Enablement Blog Series 3/27

For many sales managers who ask themselves “Why should I coach?”, the answer  seems a little counterintuitive and confusing.

Here’s their logic. Their sales representatives applied to join the company of their own free will. They then happily accepted an employment offer, and then participated in and graduated from a comprehensive training program that involved both knowledge and skills. Once on-the-job, they know what is expected from them in terms of their sales targets and ethical behaviour, are well paid, have an incentive program available, and go on conferences. Selling is their job and any job worth doing is worth doing well.

Surely, then, the “why coach?” question is just a case of reinforcing “do as we ask/expect and you get to keep your well-paid job.”

That thinking may have been acceptable in the 20^th century, but not now in 2013, and here’s why.

Sales representatives operate on three levels: one as a company/industry operative, one as a professional salesperson, and the other as a human being.

The place where sales managers get confused is when they think that it’s enough to treat their sales representatives as valued and respected company/industry professional salespeople. In truth, the sales representatives really want to be treated as valued and respected humans first and valued and respected employees second.

There is a difference!

If you find that certain sales coaches are having trouble connecting with and coaching their sales representatives, I’ll bet it’s this issue: tapping into their company-ness or sales-ness instead of relying on their human-ness.

I’d go so far as to say that their human-ness trumps their company-ness for importance. This in itself is something that conservative sales managers struggle to comprehend.

The research supports this by showing that people will always perform well for their own reasons; not yours, and certainly not the company’s.

What this means for all your sales representatives is that simply being willing and able to do their work is not enough. They need to find personal meaning in their work; doing stuff that offers purpose, fulfillment, the chance for contribution, connection, and hope. And all this sits comfortably within their range of personal values.

What’s also interesting is that these ideas expressed above also apply to the sales managers.

Another factor working against sales managers connecting with sales representatives as humans is their curse of knowledge. Because they’ve “been there and done that” themselves, they can see solutions, options, and answers far faster and clearer than their newer sales representatives can.

So while their wisdom may address the representative’s company-ness and sales-ness needs, it may not solve their human-ness ones.

In fact, Gallup research shows that inside successful business units people not only have clear expectations of what a good job looks like, they also have close relationships, can see what they do contributes to “something significant,” and are all the while learning and growing as individuals.

The sales coach’s 2013 role, then, is to align and coordinate sales representatives’ personal aspirations, attitudes, values, and beliefs (that affect their behaviours) with their sales profession and company’s business goals and expectations.

Here’s when your sales managers fail at coaching: They approach coaching by starting with company business and sales profession goals and try to align a sales representative’s personal goals, values, and aspirations. People will always perform well for their own reasons first. This means that sales coaching should not be seen in some narrow context of “correcting selling performance problems.”

The Bottom Line: “Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.” Peter Drucker

Join me at ASTD 2013 for my session “Coaching the Sales Coach–Four Pitfalls and What You Can Do About Them!” where we will present Sales coaching programs are business-critical and often heavily invested in. However, there is still difficulty in translating sales skills learned in the classroom to a sales manager's day-to-day work. One solution to this problem is for trainers to coach the coach: to move beyond delivering the two-day skills workshop and to design and implement a long-term skill development program. In this session, the speaker will discuss how trainers of sales coaching can have long-term impact, and how informal learning solutions can overcome the four main obstacles to skills implementation. He will also share more formal learning solutions and tools that have helped drive coaching effectiveness.

Lastly, this session will provide the opportunity for collaboration, as you incorporate the session material into an existing coaching skills program. -Assess new perspectives that can improve sales coaching training programs in the long-term,that lead to improved on-the-job sales manager coaching skills implementation. -Delegates will examine a range of practical applications of these new perspectives to their own programs and workplace, allowing them to develop tailored solutions that improve their current in-house coaching skills training.

The ASTD 2013 International Conference & Exposition is the premier event for training and development professionals. This year's event will take place in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. from May 19-22, 2013. Learn more about ASTD 2013's keynote speakers, educational sessions, andexposition at www.astdconference.org.