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Enablers Story – A proven process for developing a culture of coaching

Create a culture of coachingYou know that you need to build a culture of coaching to win…

An Enablers story….

“(Insert your name) We need to get the front line managers to coach more”

Pause. You breathe for a second as your heart rate accelerates, your mind races, your palms sweat. It is coming.

“(Insert leader name) I agree with you, have you thought about how to do this?”

Pause.

He looks into your eyes, even zoom cannot mitigate the burning sensation of doubt and fear in your sales leaders eyes

“(Insert your name) yes, let’s create training for…..”

And here is where your leader lost you.

You could have taken a different path.

It could have been an easy conversation.

He could have come open for suggestions, you could have known, heck there should have been some data share in the screen, but no, again, lets create a program no one will actually complete, let’s all fail again, lets see how many more calls in your revenue intelligence tools go untouched.

And then came the end of quarter and still the same results: Jimmy carried the team, Angie was able to make it to the finish line in minute 90 and the rest of the team – again – made it another quarter barely there.

“What should I do differently?” you ask yourself.

My dear Enabler, you are not alone, and also, this should not be all on you.

Far too often sales organizations are faced with the same story as above, attempt after attempt to create a culture of coaching that seems to go nowhere. And the reason this happens is not because there is a lack of understanding that this is a problem, it is a lack of consistency that comes from a lack of structure that comes from a lack of understanding why coaching is important and what are the benefits.

I will not dwell on the details of failed attempts of doing this, rather I will give you some easy-to-implement tips to start building a strong coaching culture in your sales org. Let’s build a happy ending story for your coaching culture!

Main characters on our journey to a culture of coaching

  1. The Outcome: what is that one metric you are looking to impact with coaching?. I know, there are so many! But trust me, the best way is to pick one, only one and focus your initial efforts on it. Remember you are building chapter 1, there will be many more chapters to write.
  2. The Data: always start with data. Look into what is the issue in your sales floor, organize it by teams/regions – do this in a way that is logical for your floor. Find top performers and low performers and then see patterns in time. You might need a buddy in Rev Ops to get this, but that is fine, some raw data, an excel sheet and your beverage of choice will help.
  3. The Playbooks: does your team use them? If the answer is not obvious – e.g. your team does not work from a set methodology, or playbooks have not been formally written – review how your team sells in terms of the selling stages, buyer’s journey, persona and challenge your product/solution solves.
  4. The “social proof” group: there’s always that front line manager that is doing coaching, maybe with no structure, but the effort is there. Or maybe there is one always willing to try something new with the goal to generate better numbers. Whoever you pick, make sure you pick a manager and team that will work wit you in the process of iteration of the coaching playbook

The story line:

  1.  Identify: using the data from step one, layer the information from step 2 and understand what are the top performers doing right, how are their managers helping them and what are the trends you can find. This might mean conversations with those front line managers and with the sellers
  2. Use your tools!: Revenue Intelligence or call recordings or libraries of calls, if you have a way to listen to calls and classify them this is a great place to do this. As you identify the trends in point 5; then create common words and phrases you can start to look for and group calls with.
  3. Create assets: and it is not for training. Create the scorecards based on your findings – for a specific call – cold call, discovery, demo…etc. Create an excel sheet where you outline the questions a person would answer to have a good call – hint: remember your playbooks? Here is where you bring them and match them to what should be used from the playbook in a call to make it a good one.
  4. Create the space: when will the coaching sessions be held, how many people, what needs to be done before a session and how will the session run – this will be where the most iteration will happen, so be prepared to make changes as you go.
  5. Bring it to life! Hold the sessions, and be consistent. Just like anything else in life being consistent and making sure this happens when it has to happen will allow for results – even to show if what you chose to focus on coaching was wrong (yes this can happen!) so make sure you have the next step figured out. 
  6. Validate your data: based on the outcome you set to observe at the beginning of the exercise, make sure to have a way to see how the coaching is affecting it.

Do you see your culture of coaching forming?

Primetime!

  1. Show and tell: by your deadline, make sure you gather your story and create a killer stage presentation! This is where you will show the other sales managers the results of coaching and that you are ready to help them replicate these as well.

So, dear Enabler, have these tips help you change the narrative of your story?

Tell us more about your challenges and how we can further help you!

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