Sales Management Development

Sales management coaching programs in the past have been primarily about the “nuts and bolts” of coaching.  There has been a very long and very substantial effort in this area. These programs, when done well, do a really good job at exactly what they are designed to do: teach foundational coaching skills – the ABCs of sales coaching.  The important point in today’s highly competitive market is that the ABCs are clearly necessary but not sufficient to drive business results.

So in sales coaching there is an increasing need for a set of workshops which are designed to help companies parlay their investment in fundamental coaching skills training into real business impact.  To optimize sales performance it’s important to distinguish three types of Sales Management coaching programs – fundamental “how to” sales coaching, sales strategy coaching and business strategy coaching.

• Fundamental Sales Coaching. Here the key is to recognize that unique challenges exist in coaching in the sales arena; hence general management “how to” coaching programs are not as effective as programs that are specifically designed for Sales Managers. In additional the requirement that the program be customized to the specific challenges faced by your company is as important as it is for any other sales training program.  

• Sales Strategy Coaching. The objective for Sales StrategyCoaching programs is to teach the sales managers what it takes to help sales people do a better job in formulating and executing sales strategy. They differ from Fundamental Sales Coaching programs in that they focus strictly on coaching one performance area – sales strategy. When it comes to the pay off for time spent, the results for emphasizing a focus on coaching strategy is substantial.

• Business Strategy Coaching.  Historically, this type of sales coaching has been almost totally neglected. Business Strategy Coaching programs are all about helping a company drive a specific new business initiative.

The business initiative could take various forms. It might include expanding into a new market segment, or moving from a box to a system sale, or shifting from a commodity to a high added-value specialty product.  Most sales teams, even the very best, can struggle applying what they do now – to what the need to do.  Helping them make that shift is what Business Strategy Coaching programs are all about.  This type of coaching effort should not be implemented unless it is warranted by the criticality and magnitude of the shift in business strategy.  However, if the conditions are right, the implementation of such an effort can significantly impact the success of the initiative.