six elements of coaching guide · solutions, allowing you to solve issues and effectively coaching...

SIX ELEMENTS OF COACHING™ GUIDE

An efficient coaching culture is integral to your business, and is achieved when leadership inspires purposeful, profitable, professional growth amongst team members.

While the precise way to coaching faster, more strategically executed deal closings will vary from organization to organization-- we’ve identified core tenets which translate to any business, in any industry.

Design

Develop

Deploy

Measure

SIX ELEMENTS OF COACHING GUIDE™

Coaching is a partnership, rather than a transactional interaction.

Traditional management protocols tend to represent a “do this, get that” proposition. This is transactional, which creates an environment wherein managers are telling rather than instructing-- inadvertently encouraging direct reports to fall into the habit of looking to managers for answers. And when managers are functioning as problem solvers rather than enablers, it’s a poor use of their time-- the company’s time-- and does little to help sales representatives build their skills and confidence.

Not all talent is equal. Everyone on your team has different levels of experience and skills, and should be coached accordingly. To simplify this challenge, our coaching framework shows you how to create coaching plans for each member of your team.

By streamlining this process, we have reduced your time identifying problems and solutions, allowing you to solve issues and effectively coaching much faster.



The Six Elements of Coaching™ is a program for organizations that are looking to transition from transactional interactions between sales representatives and sales managers into a strategic, well thought-out conversation focused on enhancing selling behaviors. The Six Elements of Coaching™ is designed to communicate, track and measure a sales representatives progression based on the organization’s competency model.

Participants are challenged to consider the following:

• What are we doing to create insight / value for our salespeople?• What issues or opportunities are we helping them to discover in our coaching sessions?• How do we plan for successful coaching conversations?• What kinds of questions do we ask using inquisitiveness?• What specific skills do our sales managers need to develop in order to become great coaches?• What specific commitments do we want our salespeople to make based on our coaching?• How do we measure success?

The Six Elements of Coaching™ integrates the most important aspects of sales coaching — planning and asking questions with inquisitiveness, creating a strategy, building credibility, identifying solutions, articulating value during coaching engagements, and gaining commitment throughout the process.

Important Outcomes

Identifying issues and opportunities with deal strategy and help managers to correct them.Target the few, crucial improvements that will make a big impact on your reps’ results.Maximize time and make the process of the deal coaching simpler and more efficient to execute.Establish a process of continual improvement that managers and reps buy into and actually enjoy.


Inquisitiveness is Key: Maintaining a position of curiosity helps coaches identify and assess rep’s needs

Organizations are often flooded with methodologies designed to encourage the use of questions to explore needs and develop opportunities. Reality is, most of these questioning models were developed around some body of research over a decade ago. Let that sink in. It’s time we move managers beyond asking basic, scripted questions-- and get them curious enough to do some diligence!

Initial communications need to be backed by research, enabling thought-provoking, customer specific questions. In the absence of these types of questions, reps are inundated with low-value, interrogative questions about sales opportunities. The quality of the answers managers receive, is directly proportional to the quality of the questions they have asked, and the same applies for customers.

2 3 4 5 6Inquisitiveness1


Designing Strategy: Aligning sales strategies and actions to focus on the customer’s needs – solving problems and avoiding consequences.

What are the criteria that decision makers are using, to make a decision? This is when Inquisition and Identification combine to reveal your strategy! Strategy is often loosely defined or left to the reps’ interpretation as it relates to coaching. This is a mistake. A big mistake. Designing the strategy for coaching and customer engagement must be directly aligned with the decision criteria being used. If the criteria has not been thoroughly defined, this presents an opportunity to boost credibility or cycle back to the inquisitiveness element.

3 4 5 6Strategy

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Establish Credibility: Building trust through a series of commitments, actions and results with the sales team.

Effectively enabling organizations to understand the cost of inaction, and the benefits of taking action, is critical to productivity investment. It begins with proving consistent credibility. Whether navigating an existing partnership or nurturing a prospective relationship, your credibility is paramount to all the other five elements of coaching. You cannot afford to sacrifice your credibility due to being unprepared or underdeveloped.

3 4 5 6Credibility

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Identify Solutions: Sharing insights, solutions, and best practices to help colleagues avoid business consequences.

Use the responses received as a result of navigating the previous elements to identify what problems can be solved and what professional consequences can be avoided. It’s no secret that adult learners take action for one of two compelling reasons-- to solve a problem, or to avoid a consequence. As a coach, our role is to clearly identify, articulate and prepare the sales reps to act on problems and consequences, so that they can confidently, effectively, identify solutions.

3 4 5 6Identify Solutions

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Articulate Value: Effectively communicating the benefits of planning, challenging assumptions, and accurately defining relationships.

Our research shows the ability to articulate value or the absence thereof separates average performers from high-performers, and defines whether a manager is behaving as a ‘manager’ or a coach. This element goes beyond regurgitating value propositions developed by marketing or ‘data dumping’ to move an opportunity forward. It requires the coach and the rep creating a compelling narrative through storytelling. This process is integral to establishing a solid, sustainable strategy.

3 4 5 6Articulating Value

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3 4 5 6 Gaining Commitment1 2

Gain Commitment: Summarizing business needs, required actions, and positive outcomes required by customers and sales representatives to achieve the desired outcomes.

High-performing coaches are continuously gaining commitment throughout the entire process. They are consciously and unconsciously considering:

What is it that you want them to prepare for the next step? Do you want them to learn by participating, observing, or reflecting? What is a realistic time table to

achieve these commitments?

The objective is to compare what you have observed, what commitments were established, and what resources are required to make this coaching strategy a valuable use of everyone’s time. Then, use the deliverables accomplished or remaining to adjust and refine in the next coaching session.



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3

5

2

4

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INQUISITIVENESS

CREDIBILITY

ARTICULATING VALUE

STRATEGY

IDENTIFYING SOLUTIONS

GAINING COMMITMENT

Maintaining a position of curiosity to help sellers identify and assess customer needs.

(internal and external)

Building trust through a series of commitments, actions and results with their sales team.

Effectively communicating the benefits of planning, challenging

assumptions, and accurately defining relationships.

Aligning sales strategies and actions to focus on customer needs – solving problems and

avoiding consequences.

Sharing insights, solutions, and best practices to help colleagues avoid business consequences.

Summarizing business needs, required actions, and positive

outcomes required by customers and colleagues to achieve the

desired outcomes.

How Good is Your Sales Coaching Framework?


six elements of coaching guide · solutions, allowing you to solve issues and effectively coaching...

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