Tweet

The Impact of Coaching Salespeople and Sales Managers

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: Yesterday I presented at the Sales EdgeOne Three-Day Sales Summit and my co-presenter, Donal Daly, cited a statistic from Gallop: Organizations that use coaches get a 26% ROI from that effort. That statistic surprised me in two ways.

The Impact of Coaching Salespeople and Sales Managers

Yesterday I presented at the Sales EdgeOne Three-Day Sales Summit and my co-presenter, Donal Daly, cited a statistic from Gallop: Organizations that use coaches get a 26% ROI from that effort. That statistic surprised me in two ways. First, my experience is that the organizations that we provide coaching to perform much better than that (the quoted statistic is not 26% growth, it's 26% ROI!); and second, if more companies were aware of that statistic, they would embrace using outside coaches! I was still thinking about that this morning. I thought back to my childhood and thought about the the coaching I had then, and later in life, and the impact it had on my success.

First there was music. Through the years, I had a private piano teacher, 2 private trumpet teachers, and a private music teacher (all coaches). As a senior in high school, I was one of the top trumpet players in the state. That would not have been possible without the coaching AND hours and hours of practice.

Then came baseball. My dad got me started and taught me the basics. To become an all-star, it took two tips from my two coaches that made the difference. Tip #1 transformed me from average fielder to an excellent third baseman. Tip #2 morphed me from strike-out king to excellent hitter. It was the coaching and the hours and hours of practice!

Then came tennis. My dad got me started and taught me the basics of tennis too. By the time I was 13, he got me a coach. Although she was 88 years old, she was sharp as a nail, had as much energy as me and got me to the next level - good enough to get to the finals of a New England 14 & under tournament. At 15, a much younger, wise old coach helped me develop some "touch" and add some "shots" to my repertoire. The summer after high school, yet another coach (the tennis/goal setting story I included in Baseline Selling was about this coach and it was the most referenced story in the book) helped me develop the mental aspect of my game and that was good enough for me to enter my freshman year of college as the #2 singles player on the team. It was the coaching and, in this case, day-long practice sessions.

Then came sales. The music, baseball and tennis coaches conditioned me to be change ready, always strive for excellence and outperform the expectations I had for myself. I competed with me. The sales books, tapes and videos I devoured when I was a young salesperson, the lessons I learned from my early sales managers, my own ability to improve what already exists and my ability to develop what doesn't yet exist tells the rest of the story. It was coaching and practice.

The Sales Force Evaluations we provide are important. So are the candidate assessments. Systems, processes, strategies, pipeline, metrics and recruiting are important too. But without question, the biggest impact comes from coaching. Think of sales and sales management training as opportunities to develop best practices, good habits, important competencies and a complete framework of capabilities. Then use coaching for tips, personalized adjustments, advanced skills, and subtle tweaks that result in significant, rapid improvement and results.

Coaching anyone?

PS - everything I wrote does not apply to golf (for me).

Related Articles
  Half of All Sales Managers Should Consider...
  More Than Half of All Sales Managers Should Consider...
  Sales Coaching is Like Baseball - How Do You Rate?
  Sales Coaching - Are Sales Managers Any Good at This Function?
  Your Salespeople Can't Even Do That?
  Sales Coaching - The Big Differentiator
  UK Sales Coaching For Sales Managers - A 60 second tool
  Sales Management Training Tips: Sales Coaching vs. Admin?
  A Missing Link to Sales Improvement?
  Beating The 80/20 Rule
  A Top Sales Manager Adapts To The Situation…And Not The Other Way Around
  Sales Management | How To Be A Flexible Sales Leader
  Sales Leadership - A Balancing Act Between Compliance and Quotas
  How Can Anyone Spend That Much Time on Sales Coaching?
  Sales Management Training Tips: Pursuing Sales Results vs. Developing Your Team
  The Coaching Imperative
  3 Reason’s to Invest In Sales Management Training
  When Sales Goals Change but Behavior and Results Don't
  5 Ways to Gauge Sales Management Coaching
  Do You Need Your Salespeople to Love and Respect You?

Article Tags: all star, amp, baseball, baseline, basics of tennis, coach, dad, donal, gallop, mental aspect, new england, next level, private music teacher, private piano teacher, statistic, summit, third baseman, trumpet players, trumpet teachers, two ways



Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
New Small Business Topic - Hello everyone, I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section? Here's a list of what we currently have: Angel Investors Branding Bank Loans Business Coaching Business Plan Franchises (New) Insurance Legal Marketing Public Relations Sales Small Biz Loans Venture Capital
Re: Hello from Missouri - [quote="MichaelH":gxmrz8rk] If anyone in those markets in a managerial or owner capacity would like to offer some simple numbers help I would be greatly appreciative. To be honest, I've actually posted an ad on my local Craigslist for help, and offer $5 PayPal to anyone willing to help... haven't had any results yet! [/quote:gxmrz8rk] Unfortunately, to get people to respond to anythign these days, you probably need to up the ante to at least $10. Managers to whom time is money aren't going to take even 5 minutes out of their day to answer questions and then just get $5 for it!
Social IMPACT!! Marketing - How it will change your Business - SEO,SEM and more recently SMO have been the catch phrase for those wishing to optimize their sites for the search engines and all will see you gain some level of success, but I am about to introduce you to a new catch phrase SIM or Social Impact Marketing, a system that has been developed at Kooiii tested on Kooiii and proven to be more effective than any of the other 3 systems in use. When we started Kooiii 6 or so weeks ago we were building a site that had nothing as far as SEO,SEM or SMO properties it was lost way back in the depths of most search engines and had an Alexa rating of 3.8 million, it was lucky to get 12 visitors a week and that was mostly my business partner and myself with the odd visitor that somehow found their way to the site by mistake. Our original idea was to build Kooiii as a Search Platform that was capable of spidering some of the most popular social networks, however we realized early on that those coming to Kooiii would also want some form of social interaction with our site if it was going to go anywhere so we implemented a simple to use Micro-Blogging system as the front end of the system we were putting together. Not having money to promote our new baby we had to resort to using all the free avenues we could find in order to attract people to the site, of course this meant utilizing as many of the social networks we belonged to as possible, Not being spammers and not wishing to appear as such we decided that we would simply keep active on the social networks while sharing and posting to our profiles from kooiii, it was at this point we realized we were onto something suddenly within a week we saw our Alexa drop dramatically and our membership start to grow not only on Kooiii but also on the social sites we belonged to, people seemed to be drawn to us like we were magnets and Kooiii went from 4 members (all admins) to over 1500 members quickly. By teaching those that joined Kooiii to also share member posts on the social networks, not only those we were posting but other members posts as well we saw the birth of a completely new way to promote something, see everyone saw the same effects we were seeing not only was Kooiii skyrocketing up Alexa but the members sites and popularity were also soaring and so Social Impact Marketing came into the world of the Internet. So lets re-cap SIM it's a system where members of Kooiii cross promote each others offers using a socially connected Micro-Blogging system creating tremendous buzz about the offers throughout the wider social scene in other words causing Social Impact using Marketing techniques resulting in massive targeted traffic generation to a specific site or page for basically no monitory outlay.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

What is Discretionary Cash Flow

Smart & Simple Internet Techniques

4 Steps To Hypnotize Your Business Prospects

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.