There have been volumes written about coaching sales people and business owners. In a few strokes of the keyboard Google will find about 22,800,000 articles on the subject.
The belief in coaching sales teams to achieve higher performance is the only way we, as an industry of specialty retailers, will prosper and grow in the sale environment we have today.
It has always been difficult to hire new sales talent and many of the experienced sales people we find are more clerk than sales pros, shirking away from the customer interaction to stock a shelf or make an immediate call.
In fact it has been almost a half a century since Zig Ziglar pondered on what person wakes up and says to the world that they wanted to be a salesperson when they grow up. I did every day, from about 8 years old. That is all I wanted to be was a salesman and not just any salesman I wanted to be the best salesman in my category, my store, my city and my region.
There are few great courses on the subject of sales taught in our schools or universities today and often times the theory taught in these classes is not current to today’s customer’s expectations.
Just like everything else that technology has touched, it has impacted the way a salesperson goes to work. Many of the tactics, tricks and manipulations that worked even 10 years ago will not work today. But often times the skilled professional is not up to the date with what is happening in the world they work in and like most things we improve when there is a clear path to understanding and implementation.
Golf, Baseball, Football, Swimming and every other sport uses coaches. So why should you use a sales or business coach? Coaches are needed because most people that enter the world of “selling” are taught the product knowledge they need about the items they have, they are told to be gracious to the customer and a few entry level selling tips and then sent to the sales floor. Then they are left to fend for themselves in the human and soft aspects of their role, they will get more product knowledge but few will ever enhance the part of the job that makes their product knowledge necessary the interpersonal skills, the face to face skills and the digital skills needed today. What about the seasoned pro? Do they need help adapting to changes happening all around them? Yes they do and it is harder for them to embrace new ideas as the old ones have worked for so long.
If you have been selling the same old way for years and you’re doing ok, why change, why get better? Well in sales your livelihood depends on it. Maybe the month end, quarter end, yearend bonus can be better because of it. Maybe your company can grow and hire more people because of it. Nothing happens in this country until something is sold, selling more makes more stuff happen.
People often ask “What aspects of my business do you think I need coaching on?” I tell them to look at the goals they missed last year and discover what happened that caused the miss. I can tell you right now it is never the big things that make the major impact, rarely are the big things not covered. Impact is made by the nuances of the sales profession the ability to think on your feet and be prepared. Taking the good skills and actions sales people are using and smoothing them out, adding a slight twist to words or questions to be a bit more effective in the flip-flopped world of selling we are in today.
Learning new skills and refining old ones is an intimidating, exciting and powerful thing to do for yourself. Motivation is what is needed to stretch and there is no better motivation than a coach that wants you to succeed. Coaches see you from the outside, they see your full potential as well as your weaknesses and can provide the guidance to reach your goal.
To go beyond your current level of success you must foster the new skills and old skills you have in place to be competitive today.
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