Page 69 - The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - PDFDrive.com

“A common sales management mistake is to overwhelm the salesperson with
coaching too many skills simultaneously. Pick one skill and focus.”

The coach from my first example made a common mistake. Lots of new sales
managers err on the side of throwing everything they know at the salespeople
they're trying to develop.

This situation occurs most often when a sales manager receives a new sales hire
right out of training. The sales manager will likely see an enormous gap between
where the new salesperson is performing and where the sales manager would
like him to perform. The sales manager proceeds to overwhelm the salesperson
with pages and pages of feedback. I can practically see the salesperson's head
spinning. The manager's attempt to simultaneously develop the salesperson
across a spectrum of skills results in no skills being developed at all.

The best sales managers, just like the second coach in my golf story, can identify
the one skill that will have the biggest impact on a salesperson's performance,
and then customize a coaching plan around developing that skill.

If they're really good, sales managers will use metrics to properly diagnose
which skill should be prioritized.

Thus, “metrics-driven sales coaching” begins.

Implementing a Coaching Culture throughout
the Organization

In the first few months of scaling the sales team from one to eight people,
implementing a metrics-driven coaching culture was easy. I was the only leader
and I followed my own process. However, as I scaled up to 15+ managers and
added additional director-and VP-level layers within the organization,
reinforcing my cultural vision was a far bigger challenge.

I've summarized the process I ended up using in Figure 7.1.