What is a Coaching Culture and How to Build One?

First thing to realize when discussing coaching is that coaching, and managing are not the same thing. Especially in sales which is extremely numbers driven and results are easily tracked.

Most organizations think sales management is having someone that manages the group to achieve an overarching sales goal. Managing a person to the numbers is NOT the same as managing the numbers to the people. A Sales Managers role is not to hit sales goals as a group but to make each individual better. If you cannot say that your sales team is 3% or 5% or 10% better BECAUSE of your Sales Manager than what is the point of even having the position? 

World Class sales organizations employ a Sales Manager whose role is to coach the sales team and prepare them for their role and the work they must do. Great sales organizations understand that people are the most important asset. Every company likes to claim they understand this but only the great ones practice it. If people are your most important asset than it stands to reason that there is potential in investing in this capital. 

Investing in the capital of people is the concept of onboarding and teaching employees how to succeed and constantly improve both over the short term and the long term. Preparation for short- and long-term success means a process of coaching and developing talent. I have also written numerous times in the past about how people learn, the learning curve. Learning occurs through constant repetition and practice. Coaching is not the same as training someone for their role and sending them on their way. Coaching is working with people constantly and consistently down the path to success and it never ends. Coaching cultures ask: Are you good enough to get better? And work towards getting better. 

Just like any process, time and effort must be put into understanding:

·       Who to Coach?

·       When to Coach?

·       How to Coach?

·       What to Coach? 

Too many companies treat coaching just like any other checklist operation. Did it occur? Yes or No. Or it is just like every other tool in the toolbox. We know it’s there; we’ve used it in the past, it works, but the daily grind gets in the way and like many other tools, it falls to the wayside.

Creating a coaching culture means accepting the importance of coaching and doing the most important step, allocating time. If it can make you 3% better, accomplishing it today creates a compound interest scenario, constantly building upon itself, improving performance for each individual and thus the whole.

A coaching culture does not focus solely on the numbers. Even though different personalities may be performing the same role, this does not mean that they all behave the same and learn the same. The Who in a coaching plan is each individual on your team. Sometimes it even includes members of the organization not on your team. I commonly see communication between departments, or lack thereof, as a roadblock to production. Communication interdepartmentally can be a coaching moment. Regardless, each individual should have their own coaching plan.

When to coach is all the time. To achieve a coaching culture, coaching needs to occur with each interaction because feedback should be provided at every opportunity.

How to coach? We might have to cover that another time. That is a large topic because to coach properly, you need a process, and your team should be trained to the process. The most important aspect of how to coach though is that if you say it, they doubt it but if they say it, it’s true. Your role as a coach is to certainly offer your expertise but most major conclusions need to be reached by the pupil. They need to discover the answer not constantly be told the answer.

What to Coach? This will be different for every individual. It is not always about the numbers. Some sales professionals can improve their numbers by improving prospecting while others need to work on negotiations. Even others sometimes need to focus on skill sets that are not even sales related. The key to determining what to coach is having a metrics. Know the numbers, know the industry, and have benchmarks. This allows you to analyze, assess and identify areas of opportunity. When discussing sales, it is impossible to not focus on the numbers, but it is the actions taken to achieve the numbers that can be coached.

In a world-class sales organization, the role of a manager is to coach people to achieve the numbers. Ask yourself if your Sales Manager improves the performance of your sales team or are they there to simply tell the salesforce when they do or don’t hit their numbers. Salespeople don’t need a manager for that. They know every single time they see their paycheck. They need someone to help them make their paycheck larger.

If you’re not coaching your sales team to get better, your sales numbers will not improve.