A decision to keep only the ‘safe’ members of a sales force has coincided with an upsurge in new business. Can coaching take them out of their comfort zone – and into new ways of selling?
Valerie is sales director of a large manufacturer. The difficult economic climate has led to a decision to reduce the sales force by 50 per cent. Valerie has decided to keep on the more experienced members of the sales team because they have strong relationships with the larger key accounts that provided a substantial chunk of her business target. However, while they are great at account management and at retaining and growing existing business, their strengths do not lie in winning new business, unlike the younger, hungrier members of the sales force.
But, now that the UK appears to be coming out of the recession, Valerie sees indicators that there is more new business out there to win. She doesn’t know how to shift the current sales force culture and have her team move outside of their comfort zone and into proactive selling. She has run in-house sessions to try and improve the team’s confidence and help them gain the skills they need to sell effectively and win new business, but this has been met with resistance. She has a couple of people who are good at selling, but needs more. Although she has considered open courses she is unsure whether this is the best option for her team. Now she has turned her attention to coaching. Could it be the answer?
RICHARD BARKEY
CEO, Imparta
Coaching is a powerful tool, but to shift people from account management to new business generation Valerie will need to work extraordinarily hard.
The bad news: only a few of her team will make the shift; the good news: only a few need to; the twist: Valerie herself needs coaching to help her focus on lead generation rather than burdening the sales force.
Very few sales people can spot, chase and close new business from a standing start. It requires a strategic ability to segment the market, very strong networking and interpersonal skills, an outstanding ability to sell in a consultative way (building momentum for a sale and delivering a pitch), as well as energy and resilience.
Valerie should segment her team. Those who are account managers at heart need coaching to help them find new business in their existing accounts. Ask them to consider the departments, business units and territories they don’t currently serve with each customer. Then coach them to identify possible opportunities there and to generate warm referrals from existing contacts.
For the few potential new business developers Valerie should arrange training in a modern, customer-centric sales methodology (an open course is unlikely to be the answer). Then she needs to coach them around these new skills – training on its own achieves little.
Valerie can make a big difference by feeding them warm leads. Key actions will include coaching the whole team (and their colleagues in service too) to generate referrals from happy clients, tracking people as they leave one customer to go to another (LinkedIn is great for this), and hiring someone to do search engine optimisation.
JONATHAN ZNEIMER
Practice director, Lane4
In short, yes, coaching can help. However, to limit the solution to coaching, particularly one-to-one, would be a missed opportunity for Valerie to maximise the engagement, and therefore performance, of her workforce.
It is critical, however, to explore what’s beneath the underperformance rather than merely fixing a symptom of the bigger issue. Losing half a sales force is a considerable organisational change. Coaching can support staff in transition, but it should not be used in isolation to treat a perceived problem. Valerie’s challenge lies in leading her organisation.
She needs to understand the dynamics of change and her role in it. Leading a “change-ready” group will be about her capacity to create a compelling “story” about the need for change and maximising the opportunity to engage the individuals, teams and organisation.
This could entail co-creating the story of the future of the organisation with other senior leaders and developing the capacity of those leaders to articulate the story. Other activities such as employee “sense-making” forums and peer support can also be useful. At the heart is understanding and managing the psychological impact of transition.
Valerie has a fantastic opportunity to help people buy in to change. Individual coaching can help, as can group coaching to share challenges. The right balance of formal and informal communication is key.
She needs to facilitate and influence across the organisation, particularly when people are making sense of change and what it means for them informally.
Coaching at Work, Volume 5, Issue 3