Listen Now

So that’s it, James is leaving your sales team.   He has been with you 22 months but an attractive SDR Manager offer has come up and he is dead set on going.   It’s a pity because you (and the business) have invested considerable time in developing his sales skills.   You see James’s potential developing as part of your team   BUT     James sees his potential developing elsewhere   So what are the pull factors and what are the push factors?   Which ‘pull’ factors make James new role more attractive than being a part of your team?   Which ‘push’ factors make James want to leave?   I’m going to help you figure this out!   There are three simple RULES to make the exit interview a success.   And there are three easy QUESTIONS you can ask to make it a positive, constructive experience for both parties.   Check out the episode now if you want to learn.

It’s that time of the year again. Not Christmas!   I’m taking about your SKO or Sales Kickoff.   A great SKO is going to achieve focus. Everyone will be on the same page and clear about the direction of the business.   Your SKO is a change to reenergize the team and excite them about the year ahead. New products, new features, new campaigns, new ideas, new goals etc.   The SKO is also going to strengthen your leadership and reconnect people to you and each other. It’s a chance to recognize, reward effort and achievement.   In today’s episode:   What is the value of running a sales kick off? How to make it memorable and powerful What to do afterwards to make it stick   Check it out now!

How many times have you wondered what the difference is between training and coaching?   I had a conversation just before Christmas with a sales leader about which would make sense in 2022 for her team of approx 160.   The terms are often used interchangeably. It’s time to clarify which is which!   In today’s episode, I am going to share 15 key differences in 20 minutes.

I am giving you a self-assessment this week   This will help you to reflect on how you are applying your skills as a coach to your sales team   I invite you to score yourself on a scale of 1-5   There are 21 questions so have fun and answer them as best you can.   You can then take time to reflect on what you need to do to improve.   Sales makers are action takers so listen now!

It’s that time of the year again!   This week, you’re getting a tour of the highlights from the podcast this year.   We covered loads in 2021 so it’s time to look back and share the good stuff.   Great interviews with sales leaders and coaching tips in this week’s episode!   Thanks for your loyalty and support this year! 🏆          

Increasingly you rely on technology to run many aspects of selling.   You’re possibly using at least one tool that uses machine learning to automate part of your sales process   But the heart of selling is still human. The sales business is still a people business.   That’s both upside and a challenge.   It’s upside because humans can use intuition and emotional intelligence in a range of situations that machines can’t yet quite match   It’s a challenge because there is no one type of human. All of your people have different personalities types.   The same is true for your prospects and customers.   The good news is that you overcome this challenge by recognising 4 main personality types and learning to work with them.   In today’s episode   What are the 4 main personality types? How can your recognize them? How can you work with them Why this is a game changer

What a year it’s been. 2021 is nearly over and it’s time to look back.   As a sales professional, it’s the right time of year to take stock of what you have achieved.   In today’s episode, we’re going to consider 10 qualities which make you a quality sales leader.   You’re then going to score them as A, B or C.   When you do this, you will begin to see opportunities to grow as a manager to your sales team.   You can then reflect on these and use them as a basis for creating a successful sales year in 2022.

Your one-to-one coaching conversations can be unstructured ’water-cooler ’moments, casual catchups,   They can also be structured check-ins to follow up on KPIs, meetings, prospecting etc.   The most important thing is to make sure they take place. Why?   They keep you in touch They keep you informed They keep your people on track   You can help your team to uncover, understand and unlock their own performance when you make time for regular 1:1 coaching conversation   Not everyone will need the same amount of 1:1 time with you.   New hires often need more than experienced salespeople. But it’s quite subjective.   When you coach your salespeople, you are helping then to think for themselves and to develop a degree of self-reliance and autonomy.   Listen now for more ideas.

Years ago, I worked with a Head of Sales called Rafi who always encouraged me to read each morning.   Business newspapers, blogs, in fact anything that would help me to be better informed.   Many sales people tell me that they have no time for researching because they’ve got calls to make.   But that’s like saying ‘I’m too busy driving to stop for gas’ OR ‘I’m to busy earning to make time for learning’.   How can you sell if you don’t know what you’re solving? How can you solve if you don’t know what the problem is? How can you understand the problem if you don’t know who has it and how it impacts them?   We sell to people so we need to:   Keep reading Keep informed Keep up to date   That means making time for research, and making sure that your people can leverage it in sales conversations.   Check out today’s episode now!

Kevin - a recently promoted Sales manager - told me: all I ever seem to do these days since I took on this leadership position is either preparing for meetings, attending meetings, or following up on meetings. This isn’t what I signed up for.   People like Kevin are frustrated by the burden of end-to-end meetings and meetings about meetings, and meetings that don’t contribute to results.   Most sales managers would rather do the kinds of things that identify, progress and close sales opportunities than clocking up meeting miles. True?   Let’s look at some ways to get more from your sales meetings through coaching.

To make the territory review / planning session a success, you need to get your reps to engage in strategic thinking (not just tactical thinking).   A coherent territory plan ensures your salespeople are focused on the opportunities that will maximise yield by allocating the appropriate territory, accounts etc. based on their skills and experience.   I like to think of salespeople as having a franchise. So, let’s imagine that you owned the Master Franchise for a region or national territory as part of a fast-food chain.   You would be expected to come up with a plan to generate as much business from that area as possible. You would need to find, onboard, and develop franchisees who could maximise revenue opportunities for you, right?   Think of your salespeople as franchisees.   True, your reps are salespeople, but they are also business owners.   That they ‘sit’ on a territory and are expected to come up with a business plan to maximise its yield.   Today, I’m going to give you some ideas and fresh thinking.

I had a conversation with Paul and Aisling, 2 SDR Managers recently   As we approach Q4, they expressed concern that some of their top performers are thinking of brushing off their CVs and crossing street to competition.   Sales people come and go but there are few challenges which cost you more than losing people you:   Don’t want to lose Can’t afford to lose Struggle to replace   And your top producers are hard to find and harder to replace than anyone else. Agreed?   In today’s episode:   Who is thinking of leaving your team? Why might they leave? What are you going to do about it?

The performance review is usually a formal, pre-scheduled one-to-one conversation that takes place at quarterly / half-yearly intervals.   The main purpose is to review your rep’s results. A secondary purpose is to provide some developmental coaching.   The key thing to keep in mind is that you are there to review the rep’s performance not the rep her/himself.   I have seen many times well-meaning managers appraise the results of someone on their team, but they do in such a way that the rep feels they are being reviewed rather than their work.   The consequence? Defensiveness, resistance and sometimes outright hostility.   The first problem is that the performance review is often perceived to be corrective by design. When that is the impression, your rep may clam up and what was meant to be a coaching dialogue becomes an appraisal monologue.   Let’s use today’s episode to look at how you can coach the performance review right!

Last week, I gave you some question sets to use when coaching someone on BANT.   This week, we’ll do the same for MEDDIC   There is any number of ways of asking these kinds of questions   What you will notice is that they are not designed to be easy-to answer and there is no ‘one-way’ to answer them.    I want you to use the questions to help your rep to challenge their own assumptions, spot information gaps and then come up with a plan to close them.

This week, I’m giving you some question sets to use when you’re coaching BANT.   These are simply questions which you can take, tweak and try out.    These are not for your reps to ask your prospects.   These are here to help you coach your rep.    You need to ask these continuously in all kinds of conversations.   You want to see your rep think about how they are using BANT.   Not just gathering facts but using them to qualify in / qualify out quickly.

I ran a workshop recently for a bunch of newly promoted Sales Managers and detected a little bit of apprehension. No surprise.   Many sales professionals - even those in senior positions - baulk at the idea of forecasting. Why is this the case?    Here are three myths that tend to surface:   Forecasting is shrouded in some mathematical mystique which make it difficult  Forecasting is the language of senior managers or those who sit in board meetings Forecasting has got nothing to do with me…I’m just a (blank)…   Sales forecasting means having confidence in your version of the future and being able to stand over it.   If you’re engaged in activities which have a direct effect on future revenue streams and you are accountable for delivering on those things as a sales person, then forecasting is in your remit one way or another.   Today: How do I coach my sales team to forecast?   Listen now!

The goal of coaching, mentoring, training and all other interventions is to improve the performance of your people, right? No matter which of these you choose, you have to start with an understanding of three things:  What should performance be?  What is performance right now?  What can I do to close performance gaps?  You do this for each individual. This is your basic Performance Audit. The reason we do this is to decide which of the interventions listed above is the appropriate one.Think of this as consultative diagnosis. With the answers to the three questions, you can create a basic coaching plan. Without these answers, you cannot know what to coach, who to coach or why to coach.

How good are you at asking questions?   Do you find yourself leaning more towards asking or telling?   I’m guessing that you are naturally inclined to tell people when you have information, and you are naturally inclined to ask people when you don’t have information.   It’s true, right? I want you to flip this around!   To succeed as a coach, you need to ask questions a lot more often than you currently do. (A lot more).   You need to resist the temptation to give your people answers even when you know the answers.   You need to ask questions to help your people to find their own answers.   This is what makes coaching so powerful.   Today:   What Socratic Questioning is What ICE questions are Some Question Dos and Donts How to go easy on yourself when coaching   Check the episode out now

Do you wonder if you can coach your sales people? Right now, I am training 4 cohorts of new sales managers to coach. It’s a program designed to give sales managers the skills, the framework and the tools to coach their sales team I asked the VP of sales what she thought was preventing managers from coaching in the first place She gave me some interesting questions that the team raised. How do you know you can coach your sales people? I am going to answer that and more in today’s episode Check it out now!

One of the things that you can do as a manager is create conditions where people want to listen to their own calls so they can derive benefit from past performance.   It concerns me when people say I haven’t got the time to review my own calls. But that’s like saying I’m too busy driving to stop for gas.   In today’s episode we’re going to talk about how we can coach the planning stage or preview of upcoming calls.   We’re also going to look at how we can debrief or review past calls.   When your sales people are clear on the goals of a call and how they will add value on the call, they’re going to have much more productive calls.