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Hi!
Here's the July 2011 issue of Psyche-Selling TM eNewsletter, and many companies are now using the summer months to train and coach their staff to better results.
While most sales managers believe and agree that training and coaching is important to boosting their team's performance, few however do so systematically. In fact, most sales managers would also admit they need help in brushing up their sales coaching skills so as to get better results.
While coaching sales people is largely similar to coaching in general, there are some information that sales managers can leverage, and some techniques to help sales managers spend less time and get better results.
Hence, this month's topics:
This issue's main article is on "How to Spend Less Time and Get More Results for Your Sales Coaching ", and we look into practical and simple ways that sales managers can implement effective sales coaching strategies and improve their teams' sales performances.
In brief:
To read the rest of this newsletter, pls. click here (http://www.psycheselling.com/page4.html.
In the meantime, click here if you want to join our LinkedIn Winning Proposal Best Practice discussion group. You will get advice and support on how you can formulate winning proposal strategies and win more deals. How to Spend Less Time and Get More Results for Your Sales Coaching by c.j. Ng
Kathy has just been promoted as Sales Manager of her team, and she just found that being a Sales Manager is quite different from being a Sales Person. More importantly, there seems to be tons of people issues that she would have to help resolve through coaching.
For instance, there's Sam, who's a new sales person and showed a lot of promise during his initial training with the company. When he went on his work, he also put in lots of effort. Still, after 3 months, there wasn’t any results generated.
Then there's Susan, who's one of the better sales persons in the team. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been producing much results lately. When asked about her performance, she replied that the customers just need a little longer time to make the decision this year..
And there's Simon, whom had been in touch with a prospect for quite some time. He had seen their decision makers, technical buyers and even end-users. While responses were positive, there was no further progress in the customer's buying process.
To make things worse, Kathy hadn't even received much coaching from her former manager when she was a Sales Person, and hence don't even have a role model to emulate when she needed to coach her team. The good news for Kathy is that coaching for Sales People is not as difficult or as daunting for newly on-boarded Sales Managers. The concepts are simple and easy to master, although it will require some practice to get the best results!
Where You Are, and Where You Want Your Team to Be
The approach that most Sales Managers take when
coaching team members is that they tend to look at
low-performance incidents sporadically and just give advice on
how their team member needs to do to correct that behaviour. This action is what is known as
"Corrective Feedback", which could be part of
coaching, but is inadequate to equate it with
coaching.
To make coaching really deliver desired results, we
can borrow concepts from the
Six Thinking Hats
to formulate an effective coaching strategy.
Here are the first steps:
For instance, let's look at the following numbers
and see if you can tell who's the best sales person:
Now take a look at the following numbers and decide
who is the sales person:
Actually
the question here should NOT be "who is the best
sales person". Instead, it should be focused
on what are the strengths and weaknesses of EACH
sales person, and then develop a coaching strategy
to help that sales person to be
the best-possible
sales person you want he or she to be.
Conveying Your Coaching Message
Although coaching your sales team is really about what you want your team member to become, you will need that team member to agree to your goals and objectives for him or her. Coaching is a 2-way street, and hence if your "coachee" does not agree or buy-in to your goals, the coaching will fail.
As such you will need to communicate your Blue Hat with your team member clearly, and be open to feedback if there are any disagreements or modifications to your original plan.
During your coaching session, you will need to communicate the following:
Despite your best efforts, not all coaching will turn out in the way you envision it to be. But that's OK. What is more important is that you adapt different coaching strategies to different team members based on their:
Current behaviours, traits and performance metrics Temperaments and communication styles of each individual
Achieving Sustainable Results
While MOST sales managers agree and believe that training and coaching team members is very important for boosting the team's performances, FEW actually took systematic steps to train or coach their team members.
The key word here is "systematic".
Coaching your team members, while very important, is usually
NOT urgent. That is, if you don't coach
your team members today, nothing catastrophic is going to
happen tomorrow. Hence, with the heavy workload and
the number of more urgent matters to attend to, most sales
managers keep on postponing the required coaching for their
team members until it's way too late. Hence, to achieve sustainable results with your coaching, you will have to:
Need help in spending less time and getting more results for your sales coaching? Simply e-mail info@directions-consulting.com or call +86-136 7190 2505 or Skype: cydj001 and arrange to buy me a mocha. All information shall be kept in confidence.
Power Breakfast Hour: 19 Aug 2011
Join International leadership, innovation and sales force effectiveness consultant c.j. Ng in this Power Breakfast Hour in Shanghai where you will find out:
How to apply the Six Thinking Hats to formulate effective coaching strategies to boost your team's performances How to achieve sustainable results with your sales coaching in simple and practical ways.
VENUE: Crowne Plaza Shanghai • 400 Panyu Road (near Fahuazhen Road) • 上海银星皇冠酒店 • 番禺路 400 号 （靠法华镇路）
To make this a more conducive discussion, we are expecting a small group of about 15 people only. The room can only take in 18, so please register early to avoid disappointments. Please e-mail your registrations to sales@directions-consulting.com
You can also download our Power Breakfast Hour video on Taking On the Giants: How to Sell to BIG Companies even when You have Small Budgets and little Brand Recognition.
Pls. check out our web sites www.directions-consulting.com and www.psycheselling.com/page4.html for more inspiration. Need a Keynote Speaker for your Annual Conference?
Whether you are holding a conference for your regional staff, resellers or even customers, we have the right speaker who can help you deliver the spirit of your conference, and effect positive changes to meet your goals.
The topics our speakers can speak on include:
Simply e-mail your requests to info@directions-consulting.com or call +86-21-6219 0021 for enquiries. Sample video and audio recordings available upon requests.
Practical Tips for Managers: Are You Managing Like a Parent or an Adult?
By By Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ
Where does entitlement in our organizations come from? Are employees just naturally entitled, or is there something about our leadership that’s contributing to the problem?
In the late 1950s, there was a school of psychological thought called Transactional Analysis that identified three states (or "voices") within which we interact with other people. And it provides a particularly good model for addressing entitlement in organizations.
Here are the three unique voices (or "ego states" as psychologists sometimes call them) that drive entitlement in the workplace:
Parent Voice
The "Parent" voice is a giver. (Which, as you'll see in a moment, is often not a good thing in the workplace.) It could be giving criticism. It could be giving permission. It could be giving security. The giver says, "I’m going to tell you how things are, give you permission, give you criticism, give you security, and you will thus be dependent on me to give you all these things."
Child Voice
The flip side of the giver is the taker or “Child” voice. This is the role where we take. We are dependent on the giver for our emotions, our reactions and for how we think. We’re in a reactive, taking role.
Adult Voice
Finally, the third voice is the “Adult” voice. The adult voice is our logical, independent, self-sufficient, rational (calm, cool, collected) voice. This is the person who says, “I will solicit my own feedback. I will go out into the world and figure out things for myself, and I’ll do it calmly, coolly, collectively, rationally and self-sufficiently.”
Now, the Parent-Child dynamic – and thus entitlement itself – has nothing to do with our chronology. In other words, it has nothing to do with our age or whether or not we are parents or children. Someone in their 80s can act in Child mode, and someone in their 20s can act in Parent mode. Instead, it's all about how we interact with each other.
So to answer the question from above, "Where does entitlement come from?", entitlement in an organization comes from the people in your organization inhabiting Parent and Child voices. It’s not just employees in the taking role, and it's not just managers in the giving role – it's both of these groups playing their respective roles that perpetuate a culture of entitlement.
In many organizations, managers, executives and human capital systems assume the Parent role — giving performance reviews, giving raises, giving information, and giving permission. Meanwhile, in those same organizations, the employees are squarely in the Child role — taking the reviews, raises, information and permission.
For example, it's pretty typical for a manager conducting a performance appraisal to give praise or criticism while the employee takes feedback and reacts accordingly. But we don’t want managers conducting performance reviews by just giving praise or criticism while employees just passively take it; we want them to have an Adult conversation where they can share their various perspectives, take ownership, and become more self-sufficient. Wouldn’t you rather have your employees coming into these conversations armed with great self-awareness, understanding and owning their personal opportunities for improvement, and taking full control of their lives and careers?
To fix entitlement, the goal is to get everyone in the Adult voice. Managers have to leave the Parent role and move into the Adult role, and employees have to leave the Child role and move into the Adult role – and it’s a challenge for both.
For managers, it can be scary to leave the Parent role. After all, it means giving up control. The more employees become self-sufficient, the more they realize we don’t have all the answers; the more they realize we're not always correct; the more they challenge our management decisions. By the same token, it can be scary for employees to leave the Child role. After all, it means they will have to
No doubt these are challenges, but accepting a culture of entitlement is a much more dangerous alternative.
Even though giving up control is scary for leaders, and giving up passivity is scary for employees, ultimately, the only way to overcome entitlement is to get both groups into Adult roles. It is a delicate balance, but as you'll learn in our upcoming webinar, transforming a culture of entitlement into a culture of accountability and proactivity pays off in profit, productivity, growth and more.
If you would like to get more and better ideas how to change an entitlement culture in your company, you can e-mail info@directions-consulting.com or call +86-136 7190 2505 or Skype: cydj001 and arrange to buy me a mocha. All information shall be kept in confidence. About PsycheSelling.com
Sales... ....the lifeblood of a company, a matter of "life and death", survival or extinction. Indeed, something that needs to be studied, applied and re-modified consistently.
Yet today,
Psyche-Selling TM is set up so that companies and sales people can make healthy profits and STILL provide genuine solutions to customers.
Psyche-Selling TM would like to create an environment where customers can trust sales people to give them what they want, and NOT be pushed with all kinds of products and services. In return, customers will become loyal fans of these ethical and professional sales people, and repay them many fold for the long-term.
Psyche-Selling TM will not rest, until the above is achieved. Not just in China. Not just in Asia. But everywhere where buying and selling takes place.
Psyche-Selling TM is a wholly-owned brand of Directions Management Consulting Pte Ltd that specialises in the field of improving sales performance by enhancing the performance of the entire sales team. Apart from the regular "selling skills training", Psyche-Selling ng TM conducts pre- and post-training analysis, interviews, monitoring and reviews, working closely with managers and even senior management, to deliver real improvements in sales leadership and performance.
Hence, Psyche-Selling TM would like to be known as the preferred choice of outstanding and remarkable clients, and pride ourselves as such. We will also be continuing to assist our clients achieve greater heights in 2009 and beyond.
Enquiries and suggestions, pls. e-mail info@psycheselling.com or visit www.psycheselling.com
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