ManWmnDollarSignInSky


Those of you familiar with Renbor know that our Objective Based Selling framework is built on the EDGE process: Engage-Discovery-Gain-Execute. You are also probably aware that we advocate a straight forward approach to front-line sales management. You can review our process and related issues by reading The Yin Yang of Success for Front Line Sales Managers. But as with most things, straight forward does not equate to easy, and success still comes down to execution.

For those that didn’t read the piece referenced above, in a nut shell it comes down to defining and communicating clear expectations, that’s the management part; the helping your team member achieve those expectations, the coaching part. For a number of reasons many sales managers are not good at either, through no fault of their own, tey are often thrust into the role without much preparation, see Management By Osmosis. But usually the part of the process that presents the greatest challenge is the coaching part.

The flow is a mutually agreed on objectives, clear and doable action plan, timeline, measures and review. Working with managers the real difficulty is getting to the “mutually agreed on objectives”, how to get agreement on what the manager see as an area needing improvement without making it personal. One easy way of course is to focus the discussion on aspects of executing the defined sales process (you all have one right?), making the discussion objective rather than subjective.

The question I am often asked is “how do I get the rep to talk about and acknowledge that what I see as an area for improvement will be accepted and taken on by the rep?”. Well let me ask you, how do you get a prospect to open up and discuss issues that will meaningfully move the sale forward in a mutually beneficial way?  (Drum roll) Questions!

After all how different is selling from coaching?  Done right not that much, in both instances you are trying to get the other party to buy in to your solution. (For the moment let’s accept that the solution makes sense.)

In both instances you need to engage with the other party, deal with the fact that they are, at least on the surface, happy with the status quo, and get them involved in a process of discovery. If you execute the discovery process properly/efficiently, demonstrate impact, you can gain commitment, execute the sales and then work on growing the relationship.

In Coaching as I selling, a critical factor in your success hinges on how well you execute the Discovery stage. You can, and many managers do, come in to the meeting, and tell you rep what he is doing wrong, and there’ll be a lot nodding, a lot of supposed agreement, and little if any noticeable change in their performance. Sort of like when a rep tells that buyer what they need and why, right at the start of the meeting, then spend the rest of the meeting trying to shoehorn the buyer into their solution; at times they really punish the buyer by using a PowerPoint right out of gate.

So to be an effective coach you have to get your rep to buy into the solution that will help him/her better execute your sales process, and in the process sell better.  As with a buyer, you need to Engage, then use questions to Discover and uncover the opportunity; Gain mutual agreement on the solution, course of action and timing, and then Execute – EDGE.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto