As you may know, I have had thousands of sales coaching conversations with hundreds of sales professionals. From almost every industry and from Mexico, Canada, the United States, Italy and Spain.
Among these professionals, I have had the opportunity to coach sales managers. They too, have their issues, as other sales professionals.
One of them is communication. In the cases that I've shared with you previously, I've talked about what happens when sales managers don't have communication with sales representatives. And I don't mean the classic: "Do you need anything?"
In this post I want to address another issue that arises frequently in my conversations with them. Here in Toronto, I coached recently a sales manager from a manufacturing company.
Let me go directly to the conversation:
SM: -"I don't know what to tell them, I have said almost everything. I have been thinking in having guest speakers but I don't know, what do you think?"
C: -"I have two questions before answering yours:
- What exactly do you want accomplish by talking to them?
- What happens when you talk to them? It doesn't matter if you talk to them in a group setting or individually. Please."
C: -"And it happens? Do you provoke them? They change?"
SM: -"Sadly no, nothing happens. In fact, they leave the weekly meeting 'motivated' but nothing changes. And when I meet with them individually, the same, nothing changes."
C: -"That means that you don't have power."
SM: "What??!!" (I get this intense reaction almost every time that I tell a sales manager that he/she doesn't have power.) Yes I have it! (And at the same time he tells me this, I can see in his face that a question is starting to form.)
C: "-No, you don't have. Any."
SM: "-(Angrier) Yes I have. OK, tell me, what do you mean? Why do you say that?"
C: "-Let me explain. One of my definitions of power is: the ability to produce action in yourself and in others. Given the examples that you have given to me it's clear that when you talk to most of your sales reps they remain the same. They don't move. They don't take the actions that you either suggest or the ones that they say are going to take. They don't do anything different from what you tell them to do. Not enough to break the inertia. So, you are powerless and THEY are powerless. I use the previous interpretation to affirm that this is why there are no results in your sales organization, at least the ones that you want.
SM: "-(He's in shock, astonished. Nobody has told him ever that what it's lacking in his sales organization is power.) "OK, that's not easy to swallow. Lets assume that you are right. No power. What's next? How do I get this power? Where do they sell it?"
C: "-Before I answer that, let me ask you this, do you agree in that you have a problem?"
SM: "Well, yes. No doubt about it.
C: "-That's the first step. To accept that there is a problem. Now, what you can do about it?"
SM: "(Smiles) -Find who has problems and talk to them... but, you say that that doesn't work any way."
C: "-Yes but what can you change about the way that you talk to them? What am I doing?"
SM: "-Asking questions..."
C: "-Yes. asking questions. When you talk to them, how do you do it?"
SM: "-I tell them what to do or I try to pump them up. You know, motivate them...
C: "-With slogans, "Selling is a numbers game!" or "You can't control results, just activity so do more!"
SM: "(smiles) -Yes, something like that.
C: "-...but never ask a question."
SM: "-Rarely... except the common 'How are you doing?' or 'How's everything?'
C: "-Yes, but never something that could address the problem. OK, in order for you to have power and them to feel and leave conversations with you empowered, and more important, to take the agreed action you can have...
SM: "-...this type of conversations! What you mean is that if I coach them, I will and they will be empowered? OK, I see it.
C: "-The most important aspect of coaching them is to really find out whats stopping them to sell and assist them in finding their solutions to sell more."
After several weeks of trying, my client introduced his coaching practice to his office and he started to see, what exactly was happening with some of the sales reps. He acknowledge me later that he didn't have a clue about this. In his words: "Training is so superficial but I thought that with some standard training and some good meetings and some motivational speakers, everything was going to be OK but it wasn't. Now I can see that I was managing my office "blind". And you know what? Now, after some weeks, I can say that I have power. Why? Because now they are doing what it's needed to be done after they find themselves what's needed to be done... in our coaching sessions."
