Sales Coaching in Malta

17/02/15 11:06 Filed in: Sales Training
Training vs Coaching
Would Jose

Coaching, vital but a hard sell in sales training businesses!
Are you getting the best out of your training budget? We are often contacted to provide "Training for my team" and almost every time the biggest help in driving performance would be coaching or a mixture of both training and coaching.
Clearly understanding the concepts of say sales training is handy, but if you cannot move from the classroom to real life delivery and practice, training is of little value.
When running my own sales teams I used to spend the majority of my time working with team members, coaching them to enhance their strengths and work on any weakness they thought they had and a few that they maybe did not see for themselves and asking a lots of questions. This gave them the opportunity establish improvements for themselves, very powerful.
I'm a salesman through and through and my most difficult sale always is to sell coaching! even though for me its been the clearest mechanism to drive performance in every business I have worked in. Its clearly where I would choose to spend my money as an experienced trainer.
My clients have a high propensity to buy sales training programs with audio visual presentations, etc and 30 days telephone support, they have an ingrained belief that this is best for their teams and have no trouble getting funding! Coaching and Soft Skills training is vital but seen by many clients as like buying Yoga or personal development and not "real" Business Training!
But making a case for the really good stuff, small team and one to one coaching is much more of an effort and a harder sell to them, crazy!
I am going to be working on my own sales skills improving uptake of coaching!
"You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within." Bob Nelson
Use 20% effort in Recruitment, 30% Effort in Training 50% of your development effort in Coaching!

Practice, Practice, Practice.
Heres the deal, we know that all high performers, be it sports persons, theatrical performers and artists get the very best out of themselves by practicing.
  • Football teams spend a very high percentage of their time practicing and a small part playing.
  • Team members have to prove themselves in training before they play in a competitive match.
  • They compete for places based on their practice performances
  • They demonstrate that they can remember and execute strategies and plans.
  • They demonstrate that they can make the training a reality
  • Then they only get picked to play for the team when they are safe to play their position and can deliver the team plan.
So why don't we use this clearly well defined and proven mechanisms in our businesses?
What might happen?
  • If irrespective of business size we RECRUITED sales staff with the right Soft Skill genetics to be great in sales and not just by what it says on their C.V. Love of people, Great listener, good advice giving and consultative skills etc.
  • Have an ASSESSMENT to test they actually have the aptitude and skills.
  • If we were to give these team members SALES TRAINING which was highly practical, based on proven success and developed their people skills to be capable of delivering a great sales process and plan.
  • Worked with them in small groups and one 2 one to develop the practical skills and confidence that comes from COACHING and questioning.
  • Gave them time so that they could question, and develop skills for objection handling and developing product knowledge.
  • Use Role play and have fun with it make a team comfortable with PRACTICE.
Your teams spend very little time with clients, so they need need to be a the top of their game when they do. Did you know that on average commercial teams spend only 90 minutes or less per day with clients?
Making the Coaching a reality in your team
  • Start a coaching rota.
  • Ask a lot of questions
  • Record progress and achievements
  • Work like a premier league football manager!
  • Make your team comfortable with showing you and not telling them.
  • Share best practice around the team.
  • Remind them of the basics they could have forgotten.
  • Everybody hates role play but knows it helps!
Pretty sure you will really see the benefits, for sure you will learn a lot about your team if you have not coached them before.
Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer. Phil Dixon
Quality coaching & Role Play must never be seen as just an add on to training, because Practice makes Perfect.....
As ever, shout if you need help.
Good luck,
Mark
Mark D’Mello “Affordable ideas for your staff and business success, call for more information, happy to share what we know"
Mob +356 999 777 59 or info@mdmello.com
http://mdmello.com/ - Business Consultancy & Traininghttp://www.356trainingmalta.com/ - Staff Training & Advice http://mdmello.com/Contact/Mark/Mark.php - Social Media Contacts
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