Does my sales team need spectacles?

Spectacles? Um…

Do not be alarmed that it is not an advertisement for the purchase of spectacles or contact lenses.

However, this issue has to be addressed if we link it to your sales team’s activity.

One of the things that we most love internally in Ideas and Challenges is the theme of coaching.

Not the “Life Coaching” aspect that is so fashionable, but the more entrepreneurial aspect of “Executive Coaching” and “Sales Team Coaching” in which we have been giving letters for years and in which we were pioneers in Portugal.

You might think:

“But isn’t that a fad?”

Yeah, it does look that way when you look at everything that’s going on around you. However, all fashions have good and bad things.

In the case of sales coaching, the processes that we implement, and that later the companies and their commercial managers continue by themselves, are, in our opinion, among the most successful in the evolution of sales teams.

One of the assumptions of coaching is that the Coach cannot give way to his Coachee.

“Oops? Can’t you lead the way?” You might be thinking.

Yeah, that is correct. The idea is that the coach helps the person or team with whom he or she is working to question, challenge and even force them to look at the situations or difficulties that arise with other “glasses.”

In the years of experience we have as trainers, consultants, and coaches in the sales area, we often see a somewhat complicated phenomenon.

It’s about post-program enthusiasm.

“But people being excited about a show they’ve just done isn’t good?”

Yes and no!

What happens is that this enthusiasm is not sustainable in time after the program has ended?

Usually, we call this: “the return to our origins.” In other words, we slowly returned to the old habits that initially led to the implementation of the training or consulting program.

No matter how excellent the training is, and believe me, we are among the best in Europe to do it, when there is no internal alteration of the “ecosystem”, that is, of the conditions, processes and other variables, the phenomenon of the “return to the origins” ends up happening.

So why can the sales team coaching make a difference in these processes?

By working with the sales team on one of these dynamics and by not giving solutions, the team is “forced” to discover the answer for itself, counting, of course, on our help and guidance.

When we create something, and when that something is achieved in a team with the participation of everyone, we end up with a much higher level of commitment.

This is where the science of the implementation of a “Sales Team Coaching” lies.

In practice, what we are doing to them is changing the lenses with which they see the problem, situation, or other themes.

Do you want an example that you can work with today’s team?

Be aware that what I’m going to ask you to do is not easy and will often force you to bite your tongue so as not to give the solution!

At the next sales meeting, choose a topic to work.

Place this topic on the board and ask your team to jointly invest 15 minutes without your intervention to generate ideas for resolving this situation.

Try not to intervene and let the dynamics of the team flow.

When presenting the ideas, they have created, try to question, without criticizing.

Use these questions to generate different views:

“Where are we?”

In other words, what are the current situation, its conditions, and associated themes?

Try to ask why we have reached this point, which variables have contributed to this situation, etc.

Try not to invest too much time here that would be working hard in the past and what we want is to project the team for the next steps, that is, the solution or solutions.

“Where do we want to be?”

Try to get them to define the ideal situation. What’s your characterization, market, customers, sales, whatever makes sense.

Question with simple questions, like:

Why is that?

In what situations?

What would be the added value?

Why would that be important to our team?

Don’t worry if you look innocent. Experience tells us that when we look innocent, like children, people try to explain things to us in a more straightforward way. In this case, other aspects of the matter in question which had not yet been observed can sometimes be discovered.

At last:

“How are we going to get there?”

As you can imagine, this is about the concrete plan of action.

Try to have them generate the ways to get there, don’t blame them right away unless it’s something impossible. Let the process flow and fine-tune the path the team is giving you with questions.

The advantage of this process is that as the path they are giving you has been designed by them (team) your level of commitment will be much higher.

This week stop for a moment to think:

“Am I not fogging up my commercial team’s glasses?”

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Also published on Medium.