5 Coaching Tips to Strengthen Your Sales Team Video

In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip Video I share with you the 5 coaching tips I use to coach and strengthen a sales team. For me, coaching is about developing lasting change within the person I am coaching. Consequently we work on agreed upon behaviors and activities. Below are the 5 coaching tips I use to coach a sales team.

1. Have Agreed Upon Goals

Agreed upon goals can be for sales results, behaviors, attitudes and activities. These goals need to be written down and you both need to agree that improvement is needed in these areas. Once you agree on these goals, you have a framework that guides every coaching session. In addition, use an individual sales plan that has all of the sales persons metric goals, their action plans, and key strategies or marketing strategies for the month, quarter and for the year.

2. Don’t Make Decisions For Them

Your sales people may lean on you at times to make decisions because it can make their life easier. Sometimes it is quick and easy to make decisions for them and I am guilty of it. But we want to be good coaches and we want to strengthen our team so that they are not coming back to us month after month for those same decisions. For instance, I may say something like, “Bill, I think that is a decision we hired you to make, so what do you think you should do?” If they are really stuck, coach them through the decision-making process.

3. Help Them Become Better Problem Solvers

One way to coach in this area is to help your team get good at identifying the core issue that needs to be solved. For example, their sales are slowing down or they are not getting a response. Moreover, it could be their prospect is not keeping a timeline commitment. What is the core issue? Is it how they’re asking for those commitments? Could it be they never clearly defined how their service could help their prospect? Help your team define and solve their problems.

4. Do Not Listen to Excuses

Do not listen to excuses or anything else outside the salespersons control. Coaching sessions are for discussing results, activities and behaviors; the things that can be controlled and the things they can make decisions about. The problems outside of their control can be discussed in another meeting.

5. Set Action Plans and Track Results

Always set action plans and track the results with your team. If there are issues that need correcting, it’s best not to chastise but to be matter-of-fact in your discussions and in setting another goal.

To conclude, with these five coaching tips you will notice that you are not coaching the same behaviors over and over, but you are creating lasting change within your sales team.

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