I recently completed a sales leadership coaching engagement for a global technology client. The client was keen on developing new approaches for his high performance sales teams, which focused on business led outcomes for their top strategic customers.
Given a highly competitive selling environment, the need to build deeper business relevance with their customers is a key differentiator. One objective of the coaching framework was to help the sales teams create business impact for their customers, thereby building a mutually beneficial partnership.
Through the course of the yearlong engagement, I discovered 6 key areas that helped keep us on track and drive successful outcomes for the client, the sales teams and most importantly, the customers they serve.
1. Executive Sponsorship & Buy-In
The importance of having executive sponsorship and buy-in at the top level cannot be underestimated. This ensures sales management support for the program at the mid levels throughout the sales organization. This brings accountability across the entire team, up and down, knowing that the top line management is serious about talent development and wants to build results for positive change.
In addition, management sponsorship helps foster recognition and best practices that can be shared across the broader organization. This becomes a great motivator for certain teams to be showcased at the quarterly all-hands sales meetings and can drive the participation levels at the coaching sessions.
2. Team Engagement & Cross Collaboration
Those teams who had identified key stakeholders across multiple roles that had the same end goal in sight helped create success faster for the customer. Teams that had a robust profile of roles and responsibilities also established great brainstorming dialogues, resulting in new ideas and approaches to customer driven outcomes.
Cross collaboration among other functional teams is important. Encourage the team members to explore outside their own stakeholder groups, and build their own knowledge and expertise thereby enhancing their relevance to the customer.
3. Clear and Agreed Upon Outcomes
At the start of the coaching assignment, have clear, attainable and measurable outcomes for the scope of the project. Create a cadence for review that is documented so that modifications to the coaching framework can be addressed if directional change is required. Trust me, there are always opportunities for change by either the client or the provider! By having regular touch points with the client ensures a higher degree of success and deepens the trust in the partner relationship.
During the course of each coaching session, summarize the conclusions, such as the level of customer impact that can be created and/or new approaches or opportunities to be taken by the team. Have clear actions to take forward prior to the next coaching call, so that the team can be productive between sessions.
As a coach, always ask for feedback at the end of each call; what worked well; do more or less; are expectations being met? This may be challenging particularly when coaching a larger group of individuals, where some may have different points of view depending on their role and area of responsibility. This also creates further dialogue and can help uncover areas of potential development that is needed.
4. Project & Time Management
Don’t underestimate the administration details and project management that may be required for a lengthy coaching engagement.
Coaching multiple teams with multiple members puts administrative strain on calendaring, reporting, tracking of participants, and in some cases, time zone challenges. Having the right calendaring tools and applications such as video collaboration, and document sharing can help with effective communications and manage your and your coaching teams’ productivity.
5. On-Going Assessment
Throughout the course of the coaching engagement, show flexibility and be proactive in between coaching calls to maintain momentum. For example, reach out periodically to certain team members (voice/email/chat) before or after scheduled calls to ask how things are progressing. This fosters a trusted engagement and may invite the member to choose to be more open in a one-to-one setting. Ideas can be further explored if necessary to help shape the future coaching session(s) with the greater team.
Equally, at the executive sponsor level, the same applies: engage with the executive sponsor in between the formal reviews or read-outs. This was invaluable for the engagement I did, as the it gave me an opportunity to share my observations of the team and focus on key development areas that the executive was keen to understand and support.
6. Next Steps / Implementation of Key Learning’s
So what’s next? You’ve just completed a 12-month sales coaching engagement and whether you are the individual being coached, the coach, or the executive sponsor, what do you do with what you have learned?
As a coach, take the opportunity to formally wrap up the program with the members of the team you have coached. I’ve discovered that a combination of verbal feedback and documented findings/observations is most helpful.
The agenda works best with the team (each member) first providing their feedback (eg. what’s worked well; what didn’t; what did I learn; what will I do to change my behavior; how will I incorporate this in my day-to-day role with the customer). This encourages discussion among the team, gives each member an opportunity to share and provide feedback and offer reflections on their key learning’s.
Finally, the review with the executive sponsor should address a number of key areas:
- Overall, has the program met the desired business outcomes by the executive? (Link back to the agreed upon goals).
- What impact has the coaching had on the team? Individual? Management? (Link back to the final coaching session feedback with each of the teams).
- What steps will the mid management take to instill/incorporate change into the organization? (Link to suggestions offered by the teams/coach).
- What steps will the individual members take and incorporate into their personal goals?
- What key talent should be mentioned and be recognized as best practice?
In summary, knowing the needs of your client and building a coaching program in partnership are important ingredients to success for long lasting results!