A Sales Coaching Conversation... with a Financial Advisor 2

Well, it happened.

And it happens with a lot of sales people that think they are their own bosses??, like this financial adviser.

What I wanted to write about was that she finally followed her sales consciousness... and that she was getting a lot of results and that I transformed her.... but not, not in this case.

In fact, it happened the other way around. She was asked to lead a project for another insurance company and this project has nothing to do with selling (she says that yes, that it has to do with selling... of course... but she has to sell hard to herself the project so she can quiet her own sales consciousness and be comfortably uncomfortable) so she will be "distracted" during the whole year from her main selling activities.

Besides being distracted by not selling and not working with discipline, she will be distracted doing a project that has nothing to do with her nature and her business.

Is that too bad?

Well, she complained about it. She told me that she has been an underachiever, this meaning that she knows can produce a lot more compared with what she was selling right now and/or the year before. Also she told me that during the last year she was distracted by a lot of 'things' including those that sometimes 'appeared' in her office and by people that 'drained her energy'.

And that she was "fed up" so she was willing to do whatever it was necessary to 'change' BUT we understood later, that in 'necessary' weren't included the basic things that an insurance sales person must (if she wants the results she says she wants) do:

• find the hundreds of opportunities that she has in her own portfolio (remember that she has been selling for the last 8-9 years) by reselling to them or asking them for referrals (really, is that very hard action to take, really?)
  
• make appointments, have interviews

Instead of doing these 'easy and practical things' she choose to do a completely different thing, so maybe she and I are going to be talking in a year.

And about sharing an unsuccessful case?

Well, almost every coach that I have met has more that one stories of failures (more than one, are you kidding?). So, sometimes it is better to share some of them to help the readers (hoping that these are sales professionals AND coaches) to mirror themselves in them.

A Sales Coaching Conversation... with a Financial Advisor

(I'm grateful with Laura McCann, lauramccann@sympatico.ca . She helped to make this article readable.)

Two days ago I met with a client. It was our first coaching conversation. Her own diagnosis of her situation was:

"I know I can do a lot more but I can get easily distracted with a lot of unproductive activities and despite the fact that I'm a very well known and respected person in the community, I know that I'm barely making my monthly quotas. I want to make the money that I know I can. Please tell me what I need to do."

First, some background. She has been selling financial products for at least 9 years. She is very well known in the Hispanic community in Toronto. She has a lot of clients in her own portfolio.

Here, I will try to reproduce the most important part of our conversation as closely as possible:

Coach: -"OK. So you know that you can produce a lot more, you know that you can sell a lot more and earn a lot more money, don't you?"

Financial Advisor: -"Yes, but I don't know what happens. For example (and this is important): I arrive at the office with a selling plan. I tell myself that it's time to produce more so I list some of the things that I should do in order to produce more, OK? That's easy, BUT, when I arrive at the office, I suddenly start doing other things, or even go out with my friend from another office to an event that has nothing to do with my business nor is the event in keeping or with what I've planned."

Coach: -"So you know what to do to sell more?"

Financial Advisor: -"Yes of course but I almost always end up doing a lot of other unrelated things."

Coach: -"OK. Let me talk to your intuition."

Financial Advisor: -"With my what?"

Coach: -"With your intuition. The little, soft voice that talks to you every morning and tells you exactly what you can do to get better results, because she talks to you everyday, doesn't she?

Financial Advisor: -"Yes, but as I told you, I end up doing things that go contrary to what my intuition tells me to do."

Coach: -"Perfect, so you have it! Now, what happens when, lets say that your intuition tells you: 'Sarah (not her real name) you need to clean up your list of clients and you need to do it today' and suddenly "something" distracts you from that and you end up in, lets say, at an event that does not lead to being productive. Does this intuition make claims to you about that?"

Financial Advisor: -"Yes, she tells me: 'What are you doing here? We are not going to get anything from here.'"

Coach: -"And?"

Financial Advisor: -"Well, I tell her that probably we might meet people that may eventually become clients and/or that could lead to future clients."

Coach: -"But you know that this isn't the case and when you say that to yourself you're sending to sleep, among other mechanisms and tricks that you use for that, this selling consciousness so she will stop bothering you with her questions about why you aren't doing what do you need to do to get the results you want."

Financial Advisor: -"What?"

Coach: -"Yes. Everyday, you know, because you listen to it from your sales consciousness, with precision, what to do so you can get the results that you want, don't you? (she nods) BUT (and it's a very BIG one), you almost always get distracted and end up doing something that has nothing to do with your selling plans. Am I correct?"

Financial Advisor: -"Yes..."

Coach: -"So, what we are going to do in this coaching conversations is to help you to simply obey your selling consciousness."

Financial Advisor: -"..."

Coach: -"Yes, you have two thoughts. One tells you to sell. The other destroys that intention and send you to do anything related with sales production. And while you are listening to both, you end obeying to the one that destroys your intentionality, your constructive efforts. The purpose of my coaching is going to help you to obey your sales consciousness and to do what she tells you to do so you can do what you know you must do to get the results that you want. Am I clear now?"

Financial Advisor: -"Am I destroying my career?"

Coach: -"Are you?"

Financial Advisor: -"OK, maybe, the thing is that I'm not getting results. So now, how can I change?"

Coach: -"Let me talk to you sales consciousness and let us hear what she wants to tell us..."

From here, her selling intuition or consciousness gave her exactly the same instructions. These strategies are neither magic nor motivational. They are simple and very common sense selling tactics and strategies that when applied, produce the desired results.

And my point is to help her in obeying it and applying them.

Argyris, Coaching, Power and Results

Since I started my private practice as a coach, I have been aware of the present debate between the coaches that give advice (including myself, a lot of times) and the coaches that help the client to come with his own answers and solutions.
My friend Abiel, from Mexico, sent me, some weeks ago, two articles that were published by the Harvard Business Review written by Chris Argyris. He is a "hidden genius" about management, leadership, learning in organizations and communication.
I knew something about Argyris because some of his theories were used by Fernando Flores in the complete design of his model called Ontological Design and by Peter Senge, but I never explored in depth his ideas and theories.
Reading these articles and some other that I found by myself, I started to realize the importance of natural coaching: this means, the client creating, within the space created in the conversation with his coach, his own solutions, possibilities and answers in order, not only to solve his current situation, but, to create a new future.
I will leave you with a paragraph that I took from one of his articles.
In the next post, I will write an example of "natural coaching" of course, in the domain of sales.

To other coaches
Also, a lot of coaches that I know, can use the following text, if they read it, to argue in favor of "natural coaching". Because sometimes there is a debate about the type of coaching but they don't know how to support their assertions.

About my practice
And for me, this doesn't mean that I will quit the practice of giving advice to my clients. What they need to know sometimes, is not 'there' period. But, I will make them to think more and more before I tell them what to do.

Chris Argyris is the James Bryant Conant Professor Emeritus of Education and Organizational Behavior at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of "Good Communication That Blocks Learning" (HBR July-August 1994), a McKinsey Award winner. He is also a director at Monitor Company in Cambridge.

Two Kinds of Commitment

"To understand why there has been no transformation (in the work force), we need to begin with commitment. Commitment is not simply a human relations concept. It is an idea that is fundamental to our thinking about economics, strategy, financial governance, information technology, and operations. Commitment is about generating human energy and activating the human mind. Without it, the implementation of any new initiative or idea would be seriously compromised. Human beings can commit themselves in two fundamentally different ways: externally and internally. Both are valuable in the workplace, but only internal commitment reinforces empowerment. (See the exhibit "How Commitment Differs.")

Compare the following

External Commitment

-Tasks are defined by others.

-The behavior required to perform tasks is defined by others.

-Performance goals are defined by management.

-The importance of the goal is defined by others.

compared with:

Internal Commitment

-Individuals define tasks.

-Individuals define the behavior required to perform tasks.

-Management and individuals jointly define performance goals that are challenging for the individuals.

-Individuals define the importance of the goals.

External commitment -- think of it as contractual compliance -- is what an organization gets when workers have little control over their destinies. It is a fundamental truth of human nature and psychology that the less power people have to shape their lives, the less commitment they will have. When, for example, management single-handedly defines work conditions for employees, the employees will almost certainly be externally committed. That commitment is external because all that is left for employees is to do what is expected of them. The employees will not feel responsible for the way the situation itself is defined. How can they? They did not do the defining.

If management wants employees to take more responsibility for their own destiny, it must encourage the development of internal commitment. As the name implies, internal commitment comes largely from within. Individuals are committed to a particular project, person, or program based on their own reasons or motivations. By definition, internal commitment is participatory and very closely allied with empowerment. The more that top management wants internal commitment from its employees, the more it must try to involve employees in defining work objectives, specifying how to achieve them, and setting stretch targets."

Argyris, Chris. "Empowerment: the emperor's new clothes. " Harvard Business Review. 76.n3 (May-June 1998): 98(8). General Reference Center Gold. Gale. Toronto Reference Library. 6 Sept. 2007

Selling Trucks With Outdated Selling Techniques

To this business owner, the question that was troubling to him was:

Why is this seller not selling?
He was supposed to sell trucks for this company. But he was not getting results.

What was happening to him?
He was applying ready to hand, very basic and common selling techniques that were unfit to sell trucks. It was like trying to sell airplanes with cosmetics selling techniques.
Let me explain.

Background
This salesman was hired to sell trucks but in the last six months his production was zero. Indeed, he was trying but he wasn't producing any results. His manager, the owner of the business, asked me to see what was happening and to help, if it was possible, him to sell.

A visit to his territory
I asked the seller to schedule at least 5 meetings with his clients so we can visit together and have a look and a close comprehension about what he was doing so he was getting no results.
He picked me up at the airport and immediately started our sales visits.

What was happening?
Our first sales meeting was with the owner of a truck company. He received us in a very friendly mood. In the moment that my client was allowed to talk he started to sell talking only about all the features of his product. He talked and talked and talked. His client, of course, while he was talking (or selling, he called it) was thinking and not very positive things (his body language was speaking louder than his words) about the presentation. My client used a beautiful brochure in this presentation (to cover the inefficiency of his presentation and praying for the brochure do the selling). The buyer, almost at the end of the conversation asked my client about the price, he immediately said it and obviously the buyer told my client that he need time to think about it. It was then when my client, like begging, told the buyer:

• "Please, why don't we start with one (truck)? Only one, please."
  

The buyer told him that he was going to think the offer an he was going to call back in two weeks. (We all know what does that means.) Then we left the office of the buyer. While we were in the car heading to the next interview he, the seller, my client, asked a question I was afraid he was going to ask: "How it was?" I told him that I was going to answer that question after we finish all his scheduled meetings with his clients.

The Next Sales Meetings
The next sales meetings went almost the same. They change their own dynamics because the clients asked several things, but the kind of presentations that my client was doing was essentially the same. The pattern was the same. What were his problems selling? I'm going to list several, but all of them have their roots in the overall selling structure that this salesman had about selling, which I'm going to explain later.

His Mistakes
He:

• never asked any questions and was blind about the client's precise situation of its fleet
  
• relied always in the brochure
• thought that he could close a sale this big (the price of his product was $23,000 USD average) in one meeting
• in three meetings he was selling to the person that has no power to decide
• was almost always talking about features ("the Pearson suspension is the best of all", "the size of the box is better than the others")
• didn't know what to do when the client told him that "...it was too expensive..."

...among others

Causes?
But what was the cause, if any, of this type of selling? He sold, in the last 10 years, truck parts. You can sell a truck part in 2 minutes. Well of course, it depends on the price of the part, but it's closed sale. The salesman is inside the store, the buyer comes in and asks for a specific part, the seller gives him his part, he pays it, and that's it. On the contrary, if 's selling trucks, and visiting potential buyers for that, he needs another type of sales method. He was unable to sell a truck with his "selling truck part techniques".

The Automatic Selling
Other problem was that this "truck parts selling techniques" automatic "used him" in almost every presentation with a potential client AND he didn't noticed that. He wasn't unaware about this and he was visiting potential buyers doing exactly the same thing with each one of them: he was used by the same sales structure he used when he was a parts seller.

The Next Step: the Design of a New Selling Structure
The problem with this kind of situation, and it's very common, is that the seller is unaware that he is being used by a selling structure, with life of his own that doesn't matches the product/service nor with the potential buyer. So the first step is to provoke awareness in the salesman. For a moment, he was in shock with the revelation that he is selling trucks with techniques that are fit more in selling cheap products. Then, the second step is the designing of a new sales process that matches precisely with the product/service he is trying to sell with the potential buyer and/or potential buyers.

The Results?
After several weeks of designing, he started to use the new sales process and also started to close sales.

Selling More: A Shift in the Belief System

Some time ago, I was introduced to a new client by a mutual friend in a restaurant. Our friend told him that I was an executive sales coach. We (the new client and I) made an appointment to meet in his office to talk about how "I could help him with his new sales projects".

When I arrived at his office he told me "I want to increase my sales by 50% in the next two years. So tell me, how am I going to get new clients in order to achieve this goal?"
"Who told you that you'll need new clients in order to achieve a 50% sales increase over the next two years?" I asked him.
He gave me an amused look and replied, "Are you telling me that I'm not going to need more clients in order to achieve my goals?”
"No,” I told him. “You can achieve that goal without new clients."

I'm going to describe briefly, in two parts, some of the steps he took to achieve his goal without searching for new clients. This coaching process was entirely aimed at creating new strategies in order to achieve increasingly balanced results for my client. In other words, to sell a lot without having to go client hunting.


Step One: Stop selling to clients who don't produce profits for the company

The first thing he did was to analyze whether every single one of his clients was profitable. The fact that they're clients doesn't mean that he was making money from them. The result of this analysis was that five of his clients were unprofitable. We searched for opportunities to turn around that situation but there weren’t any. So we arrived at the conclusion that he must stop selling to these clients. This was a radical action for him, and he reacted emotionally because he’d never realized that he could lose money with a client and secondly, and more painfully, that he had to cut his relationships with these five clients.

Step Two: Relate to your clients as if they were 'assets' instead of merely clients.

Then I suggested to him to start relating to his own clients as if they were assets instead of clients. This was a new perspective for him. He took better care of his car than he did of his clients so I suggested that he should take more care of them. This new perspective allowed him to see what was missing in his relationship so that he could take new sales actions.

Step Three: Make a shift in the commercial relationships you have with your clients.

The interactions that he and people from his company had with their clients consisted in:

• the driver who delivered the order with the warehouse keeper who opened the door of the client’s warehouse
• his receipts payable department with the client's finance department
• occasional meetings with the purchase manager

And that was all. This kind of relationship made him a traditional 'order taker'.
He didn't know anything about his clients’ situation, so he wasn't able to create strategies in order to increase his sales to them, or to adjust his own product to help them to sell more. He had no information about them.

So to make this shift, we created some easy, totally new but very powerful strategies:

1. He selected his top five clients. These were those clients who provided him with 80% of his highly profitable total sales.
2. He would start calling/meeting the sales and/or marketing division managers instead of the purchase division manager. The former are his final customers because they use his product to sell their own product (solid alcohol, coffee and flour, among other products, were packed into the cans he made for them.) He did this because the purchase manager only handed the order to him after the sales department had handed the order to purchasing, so he was the last in the chain and most of his negotiations were about price. He was blind to his clients’ marketing/sales strategies. However, talking to sales/marketing INSTEAD of purchasing enabled him to:

• first, stop waiting for the next order by talking to his real clients: sales and marketing divisions; the purchase division was not his main client (or main user)
• second, participate in the client's new product designing process; as a result, he shifted from being an 'order taker' to being a 'sales consultant' so the new orders for these products went directly to him; also, he helped his clients to create strategies to sell more of the product that he was providing, so his sales immediately increased
• third, avoid competition and price negotiations because he is at the very beginning of the product creation process not at the end AND because he's talking to marketing and sales divisions he has the advantage of knowing more about their requirements, which meant more sales for him
• fourth, have immediate feedback about the performance of his own product and his clients’ sales strategies so that he could give advice and not just act as an 'order taker'
• fifth, the beauty of this was that his competitors were still trying to sell more to the purchase manager; nobody was trying to reach marketing and sales

Final Comments and Results

It was difficult for my client to make changes to his belief system regarding how to sell.

He made several 'belief transitions', for example:

• to stop selling to the purchase divisions of his clients and to start selling to marketing; selling was a big jump for him because 'this wasn't in the tradition' that his father had established for the company

• because he always thought that he ‘just sold cans’, it was very difficult for him to start seeing his cans as a 'marketing tool', that he was actually facilitating sales for his own clients. This identity change positioned him in a very different way, because if he participated in the product design with marketing and sales, he could come up with the 'order', and as he was very, very close to these divisions, new orders for the same products went to him

The most difficult changes, as I mentioned, were those regarding a shift in his belief system. He realized that he had to change how he was selling.

For this coaching process, which lasted two years, I followed the Miller and Heiman "Large Account Management Process". (And I'm not selling it!) And it worked very well.

RESULTS

Of course there were good results:

He raised his sales by 60%.

He stopped losing money with former clients and he made partnerships with two of his five most important clients. Another two referred three other very profitable clients to him.

And finally…

We went to meet one of the marketing and sales v.p.’s of one of his five top clients.

When we arrived, they were in a meeting. One of them said:
"-You arrived just in time. We are going to launch a new product and we're trying to find the perfect package for it. Can you help us?"
We spent two hours with them. My client helped his clients with the design and we came up with the order.

My Coaching Style: Too Directive?

Some of my friends and colleagues have offered comments regarding the last post in which I wrote about one of my coaching conversations with Alejandro.

The issue that they have raised is that they believe that my coaching style is too directive.

One colleague asked me:

• "Do you tell them what to do?"

I replied that yes, a lot of my coaching has that nature. But then I started to worry because in some parts of the world, as a coach, you don't tell people what to do. You work with your client the whole coaching session and if he "doesn't get it" or come up with his own responses or answers or solutions, he can go home or hang up the telephone until the next session, still waiting, passively, for his own solutions, answers or whatever, to occur to him.
Thinking about this little controversy, I searched through my coaching notes (and found) a training course written by Thomas Leonard some years ago. Thomas Leonard was one of the greatest promoters of the coaching practice. He founded the International Coaching Federation in order to regulate this practice. He wrote several books on coaching and created, among other organizations and structures for coaching, CoachU.com, one of the first coaching schools.

Below I quote TL about a coach telling the client what to do:

"Some coaches feel that giving a client direction robs the client of the joy of discovery.
Other coaches are drill sergeants. Who's the better coach?
They both are...
Different clients need different approaches, depending on their personality/style, the situation/need and the timing/urgency.
Think Baskin Robbins 31 flavors of ice cream. The most successful coaches know all 31 flavors and can adapt to the changing needs of the clients and the marketplace.
(Note: Some coaching schools tsk tsk the idea of a coach being directive. Those schools are not training their coaches for the real world, in my opinion. One trick ponies are rarely successful.)
There are some situations in which you'll be very directive because of your level of experience/expertise, and because the client wants you to be.
One reason that most clients hire a coach is to help them get somewhere faster. Speedier. Easier. Fewer bumps. Fewer delays. Flatter learning curve. You get the picture. True, sometimes, it's more beneficial for the client to "find their own answers," but I've found that most clients want you to bring them up to speed with the dynamic of the situation/opportunity they are in, and help them devise strategies and solutions that work well. Adjust to meet the present client need.
Clients ARE hiring you for your opinions as well as your support and great questions.
Some coaches ask a lot of questions. And that's all they do. Which can get annoying. And lead to "Where's the beef?" complaints. Most clients WANT to know your views, observations, opinions, related experiences, solutions and inklings about what they are working on or how they are coming across. When a client hires a coach, they want all of the coach; not just your great personality and a question bank."

So this was Thomas Leonard's response to the question, in "How to coach anyone."

Alejandro, 2nd part

This intervention was made not inside the context of sales but inside the context of how he was "perceiving" and "relating" to a particular situation and the openings for action that that perception were opening and closing for him.
He was 'suffering' a "fear attack" and his selling activities were almost stopped. He wasn't making phone calls or visiting his clients or even trying to make a list of prospects. He was very fearful because, as I wrote in part one of this case, he was in the middle of a fraud lawsuit. The company he worked with was sued because his boss stole thousands of dollars from its clients and Alejandro was working there. His boss left the country but some of his employees stayed without knowing what was happening and some were sued.

In the coaching session he came very fearful. He told me the following:

Alejandro: I'm going to jail! When I see a police patrol immediately I think that the are coming after me. When my home or my cell phone rang I think that it's the police or my lawyer calling to tell me bad news. I'm scared.
Coach: Yes, for me that's clear. Can you do anything right know? Or everything is in the hands of your lawyers?
Alejandro: Everything is in the hands of my lawyers.
Coach: And tell me, how's your sales activity the last week?
Alejandro: Nothing because I was afraid as I told you. Sometimes I used half of the day thinking what would happen if I go to jail and that scare me the most. And then...
Coach: Yes, you are paralyzed thinking about with the fear of going to jail and also with the fear you provoke to yourself thinking about it, but I want to ask you something: lets say that effectively, you will and surely be send to jail. The judge declares that you and your friends are guilty of fraud. You lose and you go to jail.
What do yo prefer, to go to jail WITH MONEY or WITHOUT MONEY?
Alejandro: It's obvious! With money!
Coach: So?
Alejandro: ...
Coach: You need activity...and fast. And probably you're not going to believe me but if you start your selling activities as we have talked you're going to reduce a lot the possibilities to be found guilty or to go to jail. If you do your selling activities you're going to put far that possibility. On the other hand, if you use all your day thinking in going to jail, you probably are going to end there. But in the event that you go to jail, if you sell, you will go with money and feeling better.

After this part of the session, we reviewed the activities he could do through the next week in order to increase his selling activities and earn money and he found a lot. He closed a sale and started several sales processes with some clients that he closed several weeks later. He won the lawsuit and he is now very successful as a salesman. He was my client for more than two years.