Call coaching is literally THE hardest new skill for sales managers. Yes, it’s a new skill even if you’re not a new manager. Why? Because as a seller – hell, as a HUMAN – our job is to take action to get results. We are “me” focused and “results” focused. Coaching flips this on its head as we’re told to be “rep” focused and skill improvement vs. deal focused. Let’s be clear, you guys…
THAT.
ISN’T.
NATURAL.
And the better you were as a seller, the harder it was as a manager. Great sellers are competitive, a little selfish and needy (c’mon, own that), and ruthlessly devoted to the “W.”
In fact, the very best skill coaching (aka call coaching aka just coaching) is NOT focused on the deal. It’s about the rep’s development first and foremost. Focusing on the deal over the rep is where we get in trouble and make common coaching mistakes like, “The Laundry List” and “Be Like Me.” Why? Because we’re impatient to get the win, to save the deal, to bank the commission. Let me summarize in caps, as that makes me feel like I’m really driving the point:
GOOD CALL COACHING IS NOT DEAL COACHING.
If you can enter into the meeting 100% not caring if they win or lose the revenue and only if they feel better about themselves and are excited to improve, then you get it.
You’re also some sort of superhero because that’s basically impossible.
OF COURSE, you care about the “W”. You’re in sales!!
Over my years in sales leadership and training leadership, I’ve developed a lot of hacks to fix this situation. For example, I only use call recordings of past deals. This prevents my natural sales animal from emerging and ripping the headset off a sweet, well-meaning newbie and taking over the deal (and thereby completely deflating if not scaring my employee).
I also have a GREAT way to take notes during the call to help me vent my frustrations, but still appear supportive and encouraging to an underperformer (admit it, that’s hard).
There’s also a rule of thumb to NEVER break on what to coach, plus:
How many things to coach at once
How often to coach each rep
How to track it so improvement happens
How to make time to do more coaching
It’s a complex challenge we face in doing more and better coaching on the job. And going virtual didn’t help. Alas, it’s a worthy pursuit. Frankly, I feel a bit like the Captain Ahab of sales call coaching. I’ve evolved, improved, and added to my training solution pretty much every year for the past ten years. I keep searching for new and improved silver bullets to make the transition easier and faster. And we’re getting there, folks. We’ve created a comprehensive and effective program that changes behaviors and results (contact us if you’re interested in our sales call coaching training).
I would be remiss if I did not mention the call coaching framework we created here at Factor 8: The COACHN℠ Model. It ensures reps and managers have the most efficient and effective coaching sessions possible. Check out the image below (and save it to your desktop!).
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I’ve got a quick time management tip for all of you super-busy frontline sales managers.
At 23, in my first sales management job, I was buried by everything my team needed and all the things I didn’t know how to help with. Sound familiar?
Here’s the best time management tip that you can learn that we teach in our quick and easy time management course for sales managers (it’s called Own Your Day)
It’s all about getting out of the reactive mode and into the proactive mode.
One of the most important skills that we teach new managers (who literally hug me afterward) is what to focus on first, second, third, and fourth, what to get rid of, what to delegate, what to do immediately, what to schedule for later, etc.
But here’s the crux of the skill: it’s saying NO to the rep request that’s coming at you right now.
You know the ones—people telling you about the call they just had, the deal they closed, or asking a product question. And all of that hits you before 9 am.
But here’s how to say no without being a jerk:
Scheduled meetings. When you build a sales management cadence, you’re not saying no, you’re saying, “This is so important, let’s talk about it in our scheduled call coaching,” or, “Bring that story to the huddle.” That way, you’re acknowledging their need but pushing it into the cadence.
This is probably the #1 best time management skill you’ll learn to take back your day and stop working before it’s dark (winter excluded 😉). You’re welcome.
Don’t have a cadence yet? Or a way to manage the requests? We’ve got you covered. Join our certification program, Own Your Sales Manager Role.
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This one is for the enablement folks. Truth: I’m an enablement leader in my heart and soul.
I was just talking to an enablement leader friend who was really frustrated that they spent so many months building a robust training program – rolled it out beautifully – and had to hand their baby over to the sales manager to keep those skills alive. Which did not work…
I’ve been both an enablement leader and sales manager and can tell you that sales management is the busiest job in the world. We spend the bulk of our day fighting fires and there’s never been a learning emergency.
So if you’re an enablement or training leader and you’d like some tips to get sales managers to coach more often and keep rep skills alive, keep reading.
I’ve got 20 tips to help you increase the sales coaching focus at work. Below are my top 3 (get the rest at the bottom of this article).
#1 – Don’t expect them to do more work. As I said previously, sales management is the busiest job in the world. If you want them to coach, you’ve got to fit coaching into their jam-packed schedule. What meetings do sales managers have often? Rep performance 1:1s, pipeline meetings, team meetings, and sales huddles. You’ve got to find ways for your managers to keep rep skills alive during their existing meetings.
At Factor 8, we’ve built manager toolkits that have activities a sales manager can run during a sales huddle to keep skills alive after training.
#2 – Make it easy. If they need to build a deck, it’s not going to happen. If they need to create a process, it’s not going to happen. If they need to go on a scavenger hunt to find different information for the coaching session, it’s not going to happen. You’ve got to make it fast and easy for managers.
At Factor 8, we’ve created coaching guides for various rep skills that managers can easily use for skill reinforcement. They combine a cheat sheet of what “good” looks like, which questions to ask during coaching, and a ready-to-use worksheet that coaches both the will and the skill with an easy grading form.
#3 – Most managers don’t know what “coaching” means. Sure, they understand the definition, but they don’t know what it means to actually coach a rep and they definitely don’t know what “good” coaching looks like. That means you get a lot of things like this…
“Hey rep, let’s work on this deal.” You’ve been coached. ✔
“Hey team, what’s the forecast?” You’ve been coached. ✔
“Let me get on this call and help you close it.” You’ve been coached. ✔
Folks, this isn’t coaching. As enablement leaders, we know that.
So, in training hundreds of sales managers over the last few years, I’ve learned that it’s a tough skill, it’s not natural for sales managers, and they’re too nervous to do it (though they’ll never admit that last one out loud).
Just put yourself in their shoes. Imagine going to a top player and saying “Let me listen to your call and give you feedback on how to do it better.” Sounds terribly nerve-wracking, right?
That’s why we’ve got to address it and build confidence in their sales coaching, call coaching, and rep skill coaching skills.
If you haven’t taught your managers how to coach to build up their own confidence, it’s probably no surprise that you think they can be doing more coaching.
If you’d like to talk about more specific strategies or a particular issue you’re dealing with in making that connection with sales leadership so they really get behind enablement, I’m here to talk. Email me at LB@factor8.com.
When I first started as a sales manager, I used to think that telling my team was enough.
I knew what to do, so I could tell them what to do.
Job done, right? Not quite.
The problem was I felt like I was telling them over and over again, and yet nothing changed…
“I’VE TOLD THEM 100 TIMES.” (sound familiar?)
Well, it wasn’t until I became an enablement professional that I learned various sales techniques, including that there’s a HUGE difference between telling vs. teaching.
At the heart of that is something called Adult Learning Theory,a framework that outlines the most effective ways adults learn, considering their distinct experiences, motivations, and learning preferences (NEIT).
Part of Adult Learning Theory explains that as grown-ups, our brains are organized like file folders.
You can tell a kid something new and they’ll buy it, believe it, and retain it better than an adult.
When you try to get ME to change a behavior or learn something new, you’ve got to relate it to the folders that are already in my brain
Managers/Leaders: What does it take to run a successful sales rep 1:1 meeting?
Ten bucks say you and your rep have different definitions of “success” here.
As a Rep, we want:
Some solid “atta-boys” – show me the love!
To feel “seen” by management – time and access is a big deal
To gain some insight into the team – department and company
An understanding of where we stand on the team
Development on how to do even better
Insight into career options and how to get there
A clear understanding of our next goals and how to reach them
To leave feeling important and pumped up to perform
As a Manager, we want:
To be sure our Rep knows where they stand against goal
To be sure our Rep knows how they’ll make their number this month
Clear up any behavioral or skill issues
Be sure they’re cool
Mostly, we need to be done with this meeting and get on with the next one right? Maybe during this time we could also look at the pipeline, the call coaching scores, review company announcements, and check off all vacation requests? Like really, can we just check them completely off the “to-do” list for at LEAST a month?
If I’m reading your mind right now, it’s because these are the questions I get when teaching managers the ropes. Things like…
“Why do I need a separate deal strategy, pipeline, and 1:1?”
“Do these need to be monthly or is quarterly OK?”
“I can do all this in less than 30 minutes, is that OK?”
And the fundamental difference here is that we have 8-15 of these to do a month and our reps have one. We need the team to perform and cause fewer issues, and they need to feel connected to their boss, their team, their career growth, and their company. And you guessed it, their 1:1 time is where it happens.
A recent Forbes article taught us that today’s hiring generations care most about 3 things:
Career development
Skill development
Access to leadership (that’s you, baby!)
Ready for a perspective bomb? Imagine you have kids (if you do, imagine you have easier kids 😉). Yeah, you could probably keep them alive with 60 total minutes/day of feeding, maybe some basic hygiene and transport, but keeping them alive is very different than ensuring their happiness and development as human beings. We’re all trying to spend MORE than a few hours/day with our families right?
I know, your reps are not your children.
Or, are they?
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At my very first management job, I managed a little retail pop-up at Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Funny how that experience was SO cool in my twenties, cringy in my thirties, and now just a sweet memory.
In that job, I learned the hard way how important it is to teach yourself (or your team) what a successful meeting should look like. I learned that if you don’t have a plan, agenda, or at least a list, then what you will have is a train wreck. Your meetings will be too long, too short, too impersonal, or too casual. However, with a little pre-planning and strategy, your sales manager meetings can be both impactful and efficient!
I will never forget my first “team meeting” at the retail store. I prepared for DAYS and my 45-minute meeting went TWO HOURS long. The patient, part-time adults working there were DYING of boredom. Every new manager has felt this pain, right? (Please, tell me I’m not alone). That experience stayed with me as I left retail and went into the bright shiny world of sales.
In the sales world, there are so many important sales manager meetings. As a fledgling manager, it was hard for me to understand the nuances of each separate type of meeting.
This meeting should be standing room only. The point is to get in, get pumped, and get out (and on the phones!) This meeting starts the day with focus and gets everyone on the same page. It’s also a good place to set the day’s goal – “Today we’re all going to get 5 touches.” And every once in a while, this is a great opportunity to do a quick skill reminder or overview of a new skill!
How Often:
Newbie team – Every day
Tenured team – 2-3 per week
How Long:
Short – 15 minutes or less
Insider Tip:
Keep this meeting interesting, mix it up. Don’t run the meeting every time. This is a great opportunity to give those up-and-coming managers a chance to start practicing their leadership skills.
2. Performance 1:1
Goal:
The performance 1:1 meeting should be a private meeting with just you and your rep. You will go through all of their metrics, talk about team ranking, discuss performance, set goals for the next month, and address performance issues (if necessary).
How Often:
Once per month, I recommend doing them the first week of the month.
How Long:
30 – 60 minutes
Insider Tip:
Resist the urge to make this a 15-minute meeting, even if they’re hitting all of their numbers and you don’t think you have anything to address. If that’s the case, then use this time to build your relationship. Go beyond the numbers. Most Millennials and Gen Z crave connection to their leaders. This is a perfect chance to do just that!
3. Call Coaching
Goal:
This meeting is all about skill-building. Coaching is not about performance or discipline. We are discussing and building new skills. If you’re coaching regularly, then you’re not waiting to find something wrong. You’re either encouraging already stellar behavior or getting ahead of those areas of opportunity. This usually works best if you and your rep listen to the recorded call and score separately before your meeting. Then you come together to compare notes. Using this structure not only builds their sales skills; it helps them learn how to self-reflect. This meeting can be 1:1 or you can do a group meeting up to 3:1. Just be careful, in a group meeting it’s important that each rep still receives individual feedback on their call.
How Often:
Newer or Underperforming Reps – Once per week
Tenured or High-Performing Reps – Once per month
How Long:
15 – 60 minutes
Insider Tips:
You don’t have to find something wrong! Coaching sessions are a great time to boost your rep’s confidence by sharing positive feedback on their calls. You can even dive deeper into their strategies and share them with new reps! (Use our COACHN℠ model to help you in your coaching sessions!)
Be sure you chart their progress and present a visual representation of it at least twice per year. Seeing a visualization of their progress (or lack thereof) can increase engagement, both in top-performing reps and in reps that might be underperforming.
4. Pipeline
Goal:
This is a full team meeting. We are talking big picture only in pipeline (forecasting, wins and losses, clarifying needs to meet goal, adjusting expectations, and sharing strategies). To keep yourselves on track, stick to the facts – no stories. If a particular deal or client needs to be drilled into more, book a 1:1 or group strategy meeting only for the people who need to be involved.
How Often:
Newbie Team – Once per week
Tenured Team – Once per month
How Long:
Varies based on team size
Insider Tip:
Individual pipeline meetings kill your day and don’t do anything to motivate your newer or underperforming reps. It’s going to be easier for Rob to tell you 1:1 that he’s not going to hit goal. Announcing this to the whole team will be a bit more intimidating and can provide a little extra motivation.
5. Sales Strategy
Goal:
This is where we look at how deals and performance are trending. We also talk about getting deals unstuck, strategizing how to penetrate accounts, etc.
How Often:
Newbie & Mid-Level Reps – Monthly
Top Reps – Quarterly or Bi-annually
How Long:
15 – 60 minutes
Insider Tip:
These meetings work really well in a slightly larger group 3:1. If you are struggling with a particular rep, try pulling in your top reps to help with this brainstorming session!
It’s important to have your top reps present their book of business to you twice per year, even if they are continuously hitting quota without issue. Give them love!
6. Team Meetings
Goal:
This is a chance to get everyone on the same page about general items. It could be reviewing training skills, making team or company announcements, discussing customer success stories, answering product questions, or simply doing team-building exercises.
How Often:
Newbie Team – Monthly
Tenured Team – Quarterly
How Long:
60 – 90 minutes
Insider Tips:
Try to frame company policies, product roll-outs, etc. in terms that are going to be important to your specific team. At least one team member is bored 75% of the time… most of the time it’s because they think that the issue doesn’t pertain to their job.
Also, this is another meeting you don’t have to run every time. Have an up-and-coming leader? Let them run with one meeting. Have another department you work closely with? Bring in one of their leaders to provide a new perspective.
7. Rep Career Reviews
Goal:
Talk about career goals and make a plan on the skills needed to get them there. Career advancement and development are continuously two of the top elements Millennials and Gen Z are looking for from their employer. This is the perfect opportunity to provide them with the feedback they desire!
How Often:
Once per quarter
Instead of creating an additional meeting, use one of your monthly 1:1s each quarter for this meeting.
How Long:
60 minutes
Insider Tip:
Strive for equal talking time during this meeting. The best way to understand where they want to be is by letting them tell you.
If your company has a standardized annual review doc, use that during these meetings. It’s a great tool to help you track progress.
8. Team Training
Goal:
Different from a team meeting, this is the place where we answer the “how do I…” questions in greater detail. Track your top skill needs, watch for industry trends, survey your team, and then work with your enablement department. This is a great place to bring in a professional sales training provider (ahem, that’s what we do here at Factor 8)
How Long:
Depends on the skill being taught. Consult with your trainer and decide together how much time works best for that particular skill.
How Often:
Monthly or Quarterly
Insider Tip:
Do not do this all alone! If you have to do the hiring, training, coaching, firing, AND the rest of your job, you will never go home. If you have an enablement team, use them. If you don’t perhaps a training partner is the right move for you.
Have the team do pre-work and homework if you can. The more you can get pre and post-engagement, the higher the retention rate for the training will be.
Applaud improvement, any improvement. The goal here is to build a growth mindset within your organization. If you have a performance-based culture that is only celebrating the “winner” of the staff ranking, then that means that some of your team is “losing,” even if they’re hitting their numbers. People stay in jobs where they feel successful and there is more than one measurement for success.
Now, is this a list of all the sales manager meetings you will be a part of? No, but it’s a good place to start if you need to either begin setting up your schedule or if you need to take back control of it. As a manager, sometimes your day can get away from you while you are working hard to help each member of your team. If that’s the case, use this list to find the right meeting to address the question. How would you spend the extra time you’ll get back each day?
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Learning to be a great sales coach is hard – really hard. It’s the hardest thing we teach new managers who were formally reps. Now, it’s not as hard as climbing Mt. Everest or teaching your grandma how to order presents online, but it’s rough.
It’s the #1 skill that most new managers struggle with. If you’re a naturally phenomenal coach, congrats (seriously!), but the rest of us are struggling. Why? We don’t often know what defines great sales coaching. So let’s break it down…
The Difference Between Presenting vs. Facilitation vs. Coaching
The lines are often blurred between presenting, training, and sales coaching, especially when we don’t have staff and resources dedicated to each. Why does it matter?
Well, does this sound familiar?
“I’VE TOLD THEM 100 TIMES!!”
We’ve heard it from managers and VPs (and parents 😉 ). It’s rough, folks. If people aren’t retaining what you’re telling them to do, they obviously aren’t going to do it. So we have to back up a few steps and make sure it gets in their brain and sticks.
What is presenting?
We define presenting as…Introducing new information through speech often using slides/visual aids.
Watching a webinar? You’re listening to someone presenting. Sitting in a lecture hall in college? That’s presenting.
Now the downside to presenting is something called The Forgetting Curve. If you’re in sales enablement or training, you’ve likely heard of it. It shows us that by the end of the day, reps have lost 50% of what you taught them. In a week, they’ve lost 90%. So it’s pretty obvious why they aren’t doing what you told them to do – they can’t even remember it!
There are two ways you can beat The Forgetting Curve.
By utilizing great facilitation or training. The better (and more interactive) the training, the more likely the skills will stick. The more often reps actually do something, the more likely they’ll remember it and the more likely you’ll get results.
Through coaching. All you have to do is tell people what to do and then 1:1, 4x throughout the week, go and coach them on the same skill. You’ve got time to do that, right? 😐 Nope! That’s why good facilitation is the better option.
What is facilitation?
Folks the name of the game to get people to do what you need them to do, to get results, to get commission checks is: RECALL. They can’t do it if they can’t remember it.
In order to obtain recall, you need to have good facilitation or training. Unfortunately, most facilitation is broken. You can’t just tell someone to do something and expect them to do it perfectly, they need to practice.
Grab a sheet of paper and draw a picture of the Statue of Liberty based on memory. Assuming your side hustle isn’t as an artist, it’s probably going to look like something a child drew. Why? Well, when was the last time you drew something? Drawing is something we did a lot as a kid until other things became more exciting or interesting. We quit practicing, and when we quit practicing, our skills freeze.
For many of us, teaching is also a skill frozen in time. We think of teaching and we see ourselves sitting in a lecture hall with someone talking at us, telling us what to do. And we know that’s not how people learn.
That’s why we’ve got to redefine teaching and facilitate instead.
We define facilitation using the acronym CUP. It stands for…
C = Connect. If you want people to remember things, apply them, and do what you tell them to do, you have to help them connect with the information (it’s called Adult Learning Theory). It basically says that adults have filing cabinets in their heads. If you tell a kid something new, they’ll accept it as fact. Adults won’t even log it until you help them find the file folder. That means you’re helping them connect with it.
U = Use. Great training takes longer because we’re facilitating them actually getting their hands on it. I’ve watched people do systems training where their team is just sitting and watching. Totally hands-off, and totally a waste of time. If we want people to understand, we have to get them to use it.
P = Practice. We absolutely, positively have to practice. End of story.
By using the CUP method for facilitation, that’s how we beat The Forgetting Curve. Expect 70-80% recall. Get some buy-in along the way, a little practice and roleplay, synthesis with what they do on the job, and you’re looking at 80-90% recall. Plus, you’ll create new habits.
What is sales coaching?
Everyone does it a little differently, but a lot of people confuse sales coaching with leading, but with a few questions sprinkled in.
We define sales coaching as… Ongoing development method used by leaders using questions to inspire and deliver personal feedback on skills.
Pay attention to the bolded words. If you’re just giving people advice or there are 25 people in the room, that’s not coaching. When you’ve got a team of reps in the room, what you’re really doing is presenting.
ACTION: Go and CUP check your virtual sales training. If you’ve got a lot of videos and little practice, people aren’t doing what you tell them to do. Leaders, if you do a lot of announcing without any coaching, follow-up, or roleplays, they’re not doing what you tell them to do. And when it’s something critical like learning how to sell and be successful in new hire onboarding, you’ve got to do all 3.
If behavior change is critical, start with the 1-2-3 punch. Begin with the presentation, then facilitate, and then coach. Now, coaching alone CAN be powerful (but not how you think…)
Great coaches have 1 thing in common: they motivate people. Motivation is the key to everything. It affects recall (information + caring = recall).
Our job as managers and coaches is to ensure our reps leave our coaching sessions feeling like superheroes. That’s why we teach the 5:1 method – share 5 positives and 1 area for improvement. It’s also the #1 mistake new managers make. Why? We hear the laundry list of things that went wrong on a sales call and can’t help but tell them every single one of them.
The power of sales coaching is in the questions you ask. Said in another way:
“Leaders who ask more, get more.”
That’s why we coach in questions. It’s called “Instinctive Elaboration”. It’s the secret behind the Factor 8 SWIIFT℠ intro where we’re literally hijacking the brain of the prospect to answer our questions even if they didn’t mean to and it’s why it works to get them talking.
It works like this: how old are you?
Did a number pop in your head? Now it’s halfway out of your mouth.
The brain stops what it’s doing and starts answering questions whether it wants to or not.
Here’s more proof: how much do you weigh?
I know you didn’t want to share it, but you thought it, didn’t you? 🙂
We’ve spent years mastering the art of coaching and have compiled the best sales coaching questions ever (and they’re backed by science).
1. “Tell me about a time you had to do something similar?”
This helps them connect. Unfortunately, not all of us have the time or tech to do the CUP theory. We use a lot of video, but do videos actually teach? We don’t think so (read more about that here.)
2. “Why are you so good at this?”
You can ask this to anybody in any coaching session and something happens in the brain called “Confirmation Bias”. If you ask them a ‘why’ question, they’ll look for the reason that it’s true. This instantly boosts motivation.
3. “What happens when you knock this out of the park?”
This question builds confidence by creating mental imagery, scientifically known as “Functional Equivalence.” You’ve probably heard it with Olympic athletes where they picture themselves doing their gymnastics routine perfectly in their head and it fires the neurons as if they’re doing it. If you can get your reps to picture success, they’re more likely to achieve it.
There’s also something called the “Pygmalion Effect” which says that if your manager believes in you, you’ll believe in yourself more. Read differently:
“Leaders who expect more, get more.”
4. “What are you most proud of on that call?”
If anybody has reps that beat themselves up a little bit, this question is for you. The brain will search for an answer and find it – guaranteed.
5. “What should we do next?”
This is all about active recall; going in and finding the information in the brain. The other question we ask is “what was the customer thinking?” This is out of our head and our noise and puts ourselves into the shoes of the customer which is what we’re trying to do. It shortens ramp time, folks. Ramp time isn’t about me not knowing it, it’s about me not knowing when to use it. And if we can burn the pathways in the brain to recall the information we need at the right time, that’s how we get people to learn and apply skills faster.
6. “What one thing is most important to work on?”
You can use this in any coaching interaction anywhere and the science behind it is called “Implementation Intention.” Studies show that if you work on one thing and put a plan in place, it’s 2-3x more effective.
Coaching your team is more than just sharing information with them—it’s about really changing the way they think and act. By incorporating presenting, facilitating, and coaching, you’ll move from just talking at your team to actually sparking real behavior change.
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Fact: Sales management is the busiest job in the world. Okay, maybe that’s not a real fact, but if you’re a sales manager, you probably feel like it is. Chances are, you’ve got a pretty tremendous and stressful workload. According to the American Institute of Stress, 39% of stress reported amongst employees in the US is caused by an overwhelming amount of work.
So, what happens when you can’t get it all done? For starters: you go home later, you feel less satisfied with your accomplishments, and you add an extra level of anxiety to your plate. Let’s get some of that time back in your day.
Here are our top 8 sales management productivity tips:
1. Make Proactivity the Goal
Start by leaving your reactive self in the past. How? First, we need to identify your priorities. I get it, you received 100 emails just in the time you are reading this blog. But you were not hired to write emails. So, let’s take a closer look at what you were hired to do and what your priority should be. Next, set your daily goal to hit that priority. Setting (and hitting) that goal will make you feel a lot more productive and will make it easier for you to stay on track. Finally, we need to learn how to recognize whether the new things that come our way each day are proactive versus reactive. This will help you say “no” at the right times and help you prioritize the things that you really NEED to get accomplished.
Hint: Reading emails = Reactive. Helping reps with questions that pop up = Reactive. Calling a strategy meeting to help a rep hit their goal = Proactive! Creating a new KPI report = Proactive!
2. Rethink Meetings
Your meeting cadence is the process that organizes your team’s regular interactions. When scheduled properly, the cadence will prevent you from handling a series of reactive “fires” every day. Create the cadence that works best for you and your team. We’ve taken a bit of time to dive into the 8 essential sales manager meetings. Check out this deep dive and learn which meetings are short, which are long, which are 1:1, and which should be done in a group. Read more here: 8 Essential Manager Meetings. While you’re working on your meeting cadence you can also perfect your 1:1 meetings.
3. Live in the Matrix
Have you used the Eisenhower Matrix before? If not, it all starts by asking yourself 2 critical questions. Is it urgent? Is it important? From there we break things down into 4 groups.
Is this a Fire Drill?
An item to Schedule?
An item to Delegate?
Or an item to Trash?
Let’s dive in a little deeper to see how these questions help us categorize each task. First are the urgent items. Urgent means time-sensitive and goal-related. Maybe the customer is on the phone and needs an answer to close the deal, or maybe the contract department is reviewing your deal in 1 hour and you need to tie up a few loose ends first.
Next are the important items. Important means it is critical to the mission but it is not time-sensitive. These important things can be scheduled out. This might be mapping out a strategy for a certain campaign, or reviewing the team\’s numbers to ensure they will hit goal.
Now, let’s see how the two questions help us categorize our tasks
Important + Urgent = Fire Drill – do it ASAP
Important + Not Urgent = Schedule – put some time on your calendar to complete the task
Not Important + Urgent = Delegate – find the right member of your team to handle this task
Not Important + Not Urgent = Trash – remove it from your plate
4. Start Saying “No.” A LOT
Spoiler alert: You’re about to find out that 3 out of 4 requests aren’t urgent OR important. Oftentimes, they’re actually something your rep can figure out on their own. So, we need to get REALLY good at pushing pop-up requests to meetings, delegating to others, and taking them off your plate!
Here’s how we’ll do it:
Identify the proactive tasks
Categorize tasks according to urgency and importance
Properly respond to requests. It looks something like this…
“Hey, (Rep) this sounds AWESOME! But I’m late on a deadline right now, could you bring the story and the call recording to our call coaching session next week?”
OR
“Whoa, (Rep), I need to stop you a moment. This sounds important and I want to give it the time it deserves. Please put it on the agenda for our 1:1 next week?”
If you’re on Slack, it could sound like this…
Manager: What’s up?
Rep: Got a minute?
Manager: I have 30 seconds right now, or 15 minutes at 2pm. Hit me back then if you still need help?
Here we are putting the action item back on them. You’re not saying you will call them at 2pm, you’re saying call me if you can’t figure out a solution to your problem.
OR
Rep: Got a minute?
Manager: Sorry, in a meeting. Can you reach out to Bob, please?
Here we are delegating to someone else to help the rep.
5. Get COACHN℠
I probably spent 3 hours preparing for my first team meeting. From the scheduling, to figuring out what to say, to deciding what I needed, to realizing I forgot really important things, it was draining, to say the least. What I realized is that if I streamlined the process and prepared for each meeting the same way, I could save myself HOURS of previously wasted time (I only say wasted because those hours were not helping my team reach goal).
Through that painful process, we developed the COACHN Model™. This acronym is about to make your meeting preparation SO MUCH EASIER!
COACHN℠ stands for:
C: Clarify Expectations – This sets the tone for the meeting. “Last time you decided to work on your intros and I know we have a few calls scored. Let’s see how you’re improving.”
O: Observed Behavior – You start first, lay out facts, and list your observations before you…
A: Ask Questions – Great leaders talk in questions. Have them prepared before your meeting.
C: Commit to Actions – Your number of action items should be 0-1, their action items can be anywhere from 1-4
H: How Can I Help – This helps the rep learn to trust you. Growth is good, but we cannot grow unless we can admit that we need help!
N: Next Steps – We are agreeing at the end. “You own this, I own that, we’re going to meet again ______. Will you (rep) please send the invite!”
6. Have One Source of Truth Within the Organization
Use a standard coaching form. Define what “good” is across the company. If people move or shift, you don’t need to retrain or redefine these elements. If you need a place to start, you can grab our Call Coaching Activities here to help you prioritize and plan your coaching sessions.
7. Stop Proving, Start Delegating
It’s time to put your reps in charge. I get it, you want to help them. But you need to stop giving the fish away. Stop solving all of the problems and owning all of the actions. It’s time to teach those reps to fish instead!
Here are 6 easy things you can delegate TODAY:
Grading their own call recordings and creating a list of skills to improve
Sales huddles – Not all of them, but maybe 1 per week
Notes from all meetings (actions, decisions, and deliverables)
Their PIP actions and check-ins
Scheduling follow-up meetings
Team meeting training
This one will require a bit more guidance, but instead of running every training session, let\’s open up a few for peer training. You will need to double-check their work beforehand (no one wants a 2-hour “look at me” session). But if you have a top rep that is CRUSHING prospecting or brush-offs, let them show the rest of the team how they do it.
8. You Cannot Control How Much Other People Care
This was a tough one for me to really wrap my head around in the beginning. But the truth is that there is a reason that you were promoted to manager. There is a reason that other people will remain as a rep. You cannot control how much other people care. When you care more about their job than they do, it will cause numerous problems.
Let me tell you a little story. Back at the beginning of my sales career, I had a rep, let’s call him “George.” Well, George just could not seem to get himself to work on time. I got one excuse after another. There was a part of me that felt guilty that I didn’t have car trouble and that I could afford a new alarm clock, etc. One Thursday during lunch I left work to go across the street to buy George a new alarm clock (I know, I know). That was when it hit me. What the hell was I doing? If George didn’t care enough to figure out how to get an alarm clock on his phone or borrow a buddy’s clock, or heck, go to Goodwill and buy a used one, then why did I care so much? That was my “ah-ha” moment. I was caring more than George and no amount of new alarm clocks was going to force him to care more.
You need to stay within your span of control. You can control your schedule, your reactions to things, and your time. You don’t control your team, you can’t control a pricing increase, you don’t control what the customer’s going to say, you just don’t. You can influence your team’s skill level, activity, and focus, but you can’t control it. There are a lot of things under your concern, but that you can’t control. There is very little you can actually control. So, stop spinning your wheels and stressing out about it. You can provide coaching and help when appropriate, but “George” is either going to make it or he’s not.
BONUS!
Kill all of your notifications! All of those Instagram posts and text messages can wait until your lunch break. These notifications will only distract you and make completing your tasks take much longer.
Time block goal actions on your calendar. Block out checking your email, your phone messages, etc.
Keep tasks in the same place. Your meetings and your time-blocked tasks are on your calendar. But I’m betting you also have a bunch of other things to do. Compile all of those to-dos into one list. Whether it’s an app or a paper list, keep everything in the same place so nothing slips through the cracks.
Set a time for similar actions and tasks. If you have 3 tasks on your to-do list that require emails, complete those tasks during your time block to check emails. If you need to go pick something up, do it at the same time you need to go to the post office. By grouping similar tasks together, your mind will be able to focus more efficiently and complete those tasks faster.
I know this was A LOT of information and your inbox has probably increased by 200 emails now, but if you take the time to start implementing at least some of these sales management productivity hacks that we talked about here, it will make a difference: in both your success and your happiness! You will feel and be more productive. It will just take a little practice!
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My first year in sales management was rough. I try hard to celebrate that sweet, young thing instead of cringing, but it’s hard some days. I remember some doozy mistakes:
Motivating over email. I had 2 reps on my new team that hit the end of their ramp and went against quota before anyone else. Chris and Melissa (no kidding, 23 years later). I thought they might need some boosting, and I never saw them as they sat way on the other side of the office as I did. So I sat down and crafted a long letter.
Go. team.
There were so many things wrong with that email!
Shall we talk about coaching? I was terrified. To be clear, I had no experience selling what they were selling, no experience managing, and had never call coached in my life. Yeah, saying I avoided it like the plague would be an understatement. Except for my tenured guy, Noonan. I always tried to coach with him because I’d learn something. Guess who REALLY didn’t want my novice help? (he’d applied for my job)
Bingo.
Meeting management. Looking back I think I managed everything ad-hoc except for our team meetings. Those would go on for HOURS because I crammed everything into one. I’d prepare for DAYS. I’d still go long. THEN the guest speaker would come in.
Nightmare.
Yeah, these are real stories. It took me about six months to figure out the job and for my team to excel. And we did. We became number one in the division in those 6 months. Most days I think they did it in spite of me! And because I still feel the embarrassment, frustration, and exhaustion in my body as I type this, I’ve spent my career trying to fix it for others.
Factor 8 management curriculum is literally job training for sales managers. Not leadership training with a few sales role-plays, it’s how to do the freaking job. Like I wish someone would have taught me. It’s one of the key 3 ingredients in the over 100+ promotions we’ve earned with our #GirlsClub communities! Here are a few nuggets we teach and share. If you’re a new manager or an aspiring one, I hope you’ll take one (or a few) of our online management courses or programs. They’re bite-sized versions of our Fortune 1000 corporate programs.
Tip 1:
Get your house in order. A manager’s cadence is akin to a rep’s sales process. It’s the dance steps, the framework, the skeleton on which you’ll hang your management suit. Get it locked down. We teach about six essential manager meetings:
The performance 1:1
The sales huddle
The quarterly review
The team pipeline meeting
The sales strategy meeting
The team meeting
Each of these has different goals, timelines, and preparation actions, but once you lock these in you’re halfway home to getting a hold of your day. If you’d like to see your family or some daylight hours during your first year, believe me, this is key!
Tip 2:
Delegate everything you can to these meetings. Keep the line away from your desk and work through needs in their appropriate meeting. It’s like getting file folders for all the crap on your desk. Be clear:
Sales Reps are like water. We will ALWAYS flow to the path of least resistance.
Asking you to help or do it for me will always be easier than me looking it up or figuring it out. Resist, dear friend, resist. Fish. Teaching. Eating. You get it, right? Remember, daylight hours! When we spend all day with a “line at our desk” (remote equivalent: Slack blowing up), we feel GREAT we helped people all day and we had some answers, but then we get to keep working all night to do our real job.
Tip 3:
Get really clear on your job role. You’re going to WANT to solve everything for your team because this validates you. We all feel nervous in these new roles and it’s hard to immediately strike the right balance of power. New leaders are either baby tyrants or mother hens. Leading through telling or leading through helping. Find the middle ground. On two sides of the paper, fill them up. Now you know what NOT to do.
Tip 4:
Stop doing your old job. The Peter principle is a real thing. It means you’ll keep getting promoted until you reach your limit of competence. Translated, that means until you quit learning the new job and we find you still doing your old job. Don’t fizzle out at the first leadership rung. No, you can’t keep any accounts. No! Uh-uh! Zip! None. Give it to a rep on your team and help them be great instead.
Tip 5:
Celebrate failures and wins. Every week come together as a team to talk about the week’s highlights. It keeps you all focused on the W’s, motivated to do it again, and builds unity. Keep it short, but be sure it also includes failures. The best sellers and managers see sales as a sport in which they’ll continuously improve. That means failing. No’s. Lost deals. Hang-ups. For you it means upset. Missed opportunities. Stepping in it with your boss. Share these with your team too. If you can vulnerably share your journey to being the best leader you can be for them, they’ll cheer you on your journey.
So will I.
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In all my years of sales leadership, there has never been a sales coaching emergency. You? Ever gotten a call after hours along the lines of:
“Panic! They don’t know how to…!! Help!?”
Exactly. And this is actually why, despite all our good intentions, there are precious few true coaching cultures in sales organizations. Even though we know the benefits – coaching skills that exceed expectations result in 94.8% of reps meeting quota and a top demand from the Millennials and Gen Zs you’re trying to hire (source: like every study published in the past five years).
Since there ARE sales emergencies, customer emergencies, product emergencies, and political emergencies every single day (and the non-emergent intentions), it’s no surprise that meetings get pushed to the bottom.
If you’re a sales leader, the most important place you can start is by assessing your current culture of development and sales coaching importance. Here are a few questions to get you started:
How often are my managers scheduled to call coach? How often do they really?
What is coaching more important than? ($1M deal?) What is it not? (reporting request?)
How eager are reps and managers for coaching sessions?
Are we hiding or celebrating fails?
Are reps getting built up or brought down?
The goal here is to determine if you have enough coaching, the right kind of coaching, and the kind of culture that supports it.
Starting with question 1, you may be surprised to learn that nearly 50% of reps disagree that they’re getting as much coaching as their managers state. Some of this is due to canceled or pushed coaching when fires happen (and let’s be honest, they happen daily in sales). I think the root of the problem here is how we define coaching. Most managers believe they’re coaching during a 1:1 meeting, a “how’s it going” chat, or a pipeline/deal conversation. Sorry…
“That’s NOT coaching!”
Our definition of best-in-class coaching is:
Sales meeting is present (ride-along, recorded call, live video meeting)
Manager asks questions about the reps’ skill
Rep receives custom feedback on their execution
Rep leaves feeling more confident than when they walked in
Sadly, this means that if you’re playing a call at a team meeting (great job by the way), this is sales training, not sales coaching. At most, you can provide custom feedback on a rep’s skills for about 3 people and 3 short call recordings in an hour. Yes, it also means that giving someone a laundry list of what to improve also doesn’t count as coaching. That’s just bullying. Inspect some sessions. You’ll be surprised – and you’ll be showing coaching’s importance with your presence.
Sales Executive Council also tells us that call coaching (aka skill coaching) is sales managers’ #1 worst skill. I’ve been hiring and training sales managers for 20 years and I wholeheartedly agree. And the hardest skill to shift is the laundry list of improvement items. It’s so easy for us to hear the challenges, and so hard for us to resist giving just one more idea for improvement. 90% of sessions during role plays come off negative at first, and it takes us at LEAST three training and practice sessions to start to even this out.
Like most leaders who came up through sales, I’m 100% guilty of the coaching bully myself. In fact, as we train sales managers how to coach at Factor 8, I modeled the curriculum after all my own personal atrocities. “Be like me…I do all the talking…Debbie Downer…” You get the picture. If you relate to this, you’ve probably also taken over a call or two you were meant to be silently observing.
That’s why I only coach recordings now. I just can’t be trusted during a live call. It’s also led to my #1 tip for antsy sales coaches:
“Coach the rep, not the deal.”
When we approach coaching with the intent of building confidence and skill vs. saving the deal, everything changes. Imagine the deal already lost. Resist the temptation to even ask about the outcome. Focus instead on engaging this seller, and helping them love their job, love their company, love their manager, and love sales.
It changes everything.
A note on culture. Spend a minute Googling the concept of a “growth mindset.” It’s our ultimate goal for sales coaching cultures. It’s a magical land where everyone cares more about improvement than winning. Did you just laugh out loud, my sales leader friend? Before you dismiss it, realize it’s the calling card of nearly every great athlete, and imagine if all your “A” players just kept getting better. How do you get here? A few ideas:
Weed out your problem leaders. Yeah, the person you pictured is exactly who I’m talking about. They probably have veteran reps and accounts and are a fixture in your org – like a barnacle on the underside of the boat, they aren’t uplifters. Just note: culture is formed not by your intent! It’s defined by the worst behavior you’re willing to tolerate. His name was Brian at my first sales management job, and his attitude led the whole division to a culture of hazing and sink or swim. NOT the coaching culture the new workforce is craving!
Share your failures and encourage your managers to do the same. A coaching culture is one where we’re not afraid to fail. We willingly share bad calls. We welcome feedback and input. Sorry, but humans aren’t built to be vulnerable and they will need a lot of role modeling here until your people feel safe to do so.
Reward improvement. If you want a growth mindset culture, you can’t just reward the winners. Find ways every month to celebrate improvement. Could be a metrics jump, a KPI improvement, skill gains, CSAT ratings…you get it.
A final word of advice: over-correct. My first Sales Director job came on the heels of me launching a training department. There was no other sales leader as dedicated to developing people as I was. It still took me 6 months in the new gig to start talking about and prioritizing training. So I get how hard it is and how busy everyone is and how many emergencies keep coaching at the bottom of the to-do list. So, if it’s your goal, you’ll need to triple down to shift the pendulum. Dedicate six months to overdoing it. Talk about it in every team meeting and all-hands. Drop into coaching sessions and coach the coaches. Reward top coaches and rep improvements. Add it to contests. Ask your manager for skill trends in every meeting. Spend money on sales manager training. Be sure it is OVER represented in your calendar, your budget, and your voice for long enough that your team knows it isn’t a flavor of the month.
Got a tip? Drop me a line and let me know what’s worked for you! lb@factor8.com.
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