Business Problem: How to develop sales leaders that were focused on metrics into sales coaches focused on developing people
Problem:
This company believes that their leaders need to be good coaches to be successful. In the past, sales leadership was more about managing metrics because experienced sales people were comfortable calling on agents and talking about their product.
With the downturn of the economy, recent acquisitions, and agents having access to product information on the internet, sales people can no longer rely on product knowledge but have to do more business consulting. It has become imperative that leaders put more emphasis on retooling their sales people for the “new normal” economy. Additional challenges include:
§ The sales team is all remote
§ Many sales people have been around for a long time and are set in their ways
§ Most of the leadership were good sales people but had not been taught how to be good leaders
Action:
I worked with the senior leadership to establish some coaching guidelines:
- 25% of sales leaders’ time should be spent coaching their team. (The major role of sales leadership is attaining goal through their team)
- Coaching time should be invested to coach good sales people into great sales people
- Get rid of poor performers rather than investing valuable time in them
- No coaching by email. Coaching is either done by phone or in person
Each leader attended a one-day training on how to be an effective coach. This was followed by six individual coaching sessions to ensure success using each leader’s real situations.
Results:
The customer developed a computer application to track coaching time and quality. Measurable results include:
- Coaching time has increased to over 30%
- Coaching quality has increased according to criteria that I helped them develop based on their competency model
- Very few poor performers remain and plans are in place to replace them
- remiums (sales) have increased while the industry as a whole has decreased. Even more importantly, two underperforming regions are now at goal. Another underpreforming region has exceeded goal.