Focus on Sales and Customer Service: Coaching for sales people: improving the interaction between sales managers and sales people
By Peter Matthews (July 2004 Issue)
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Sales has traditionally been a fairly harsh, macho culture. Sales management has been much in evidence, sales coaching much less so. Indeed, worryingly, there may have been a tendency for what is sales management to be dressed up as sales coaching.
People who have worked in sales could now write the script for their monthly/weekly/daily one to one (delete as appropriate). The essence of it is all around outputs – how you are getting on against target. At one level, this directly ties in with the concept of GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Wrap-up – see Figure 1).
The sales manager, and hopefully the sales person, have clarity about the ‘target’ (that is, the goal). Most management information systems are such that they have clarity on the current number (‘the reality’) and therefore much of the interaction between sales manager and sales person is around debating the gap between the target and the actuals. A typical sales management meeting might raise the following questions.
* What’s your target?
* What are your current numbers?
* What is your pipeline (that is, opportunities not yet sold)?
* What is the likelihood of each opportunity closing?
* How much are you going to do for the year? ...
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