As Colin Wilson highlighted in his recent post on this site, the primary role of a sales manager is to ensure that his team “hits their number” – that they’re performing.

An effective sales manager will use many skills in order to achieve this objective – and will vary their use according to the needs of the salesperson being managed. An experienced and motivated salesperson may primarily need support and admin tasks taken off their hands. An old hand who has lost motivation may need re-energising. A new recruit may need initial training and coaching. Part of the skill of the sales manager is to understand what help each member of their team needs in order to achieve their goal. And sometimes it may be just to “hold their feet to the fire” then to get out of their way.

One area, however, that is almost always important is that of coaching.

It’s unheard of that a sales team is comprised entirely of superstars all operating at the peak of their capabilities. In almost all situations, most members of the sales team will have development needs: areas where they can improve their performance (sometimes significantly). Sometimes these needs can be met by training. But most often, the gaps are very specific – and frequently the salespeople are not aware of them themselves. It takes the skill of the sales manager to identify what the improvement need is, and how it can best be made – through awareness, training, experience, coaching, motivation, etc.

Just as in sports, a good coach can make the world of difference to the performance of a team. And good sales coaches share the same characteristics as good sports coaches:

They may not necessarily have performed at the very highest levels themselves – but they know exactly what excellent performance looks like. They are able to accurately assess where the team member stands against that benchmark; and they know what steps it will take to get them to deliver an excellent performance. They won’t overwhelm them by trying to change too much at once – but they will work on the fundamentals first, then on the next level, then on the next level – until performance reaches its highest possible level for that person.

In my time working in a variety of industries from pharmaceuticals to consumer goods to heavy industry I’ve seen both good coaching and bad. But in the area where I’ve spent the last few years – professional services – good sales coaching is almost unheard of.

In professional services, it is almost always the senior professionals who do the selling. Clients are buying an intangible product – and so they want to meet and discuss with the person who will actually be doing (or leading) the work as the primary part of the sales process. However, selling very rarely comes naturally to professionals (lawyers, accountants, consultants, achitects surveyors, etc.) and sales coaching is even more alien.

It takes all the courage a professional can muster to give feedback and coaching to another professional on the hard, technical aspects of their work – let alone the subjective area of interpersonal and selling skills .

Most senior professionals “fail” the basic tests of being a coach:

• They themselves are not experts at selling – they don’t know “what good looks like” enough to be able to pass on that vision to younger professionals.
• They lack the framework and understanding of different stages of skills in sales to be able to accurately assess the current capabilities and progress of their teams.
• They don’t have a strong repertoire of interventions they can use to improve the capabilities of their teams. Usually they have a “one size fits all” mentality – they improve skills by training, or on the job coaching, or mentoring, etc. If their preferred method doesn’t meet the needs of the “trainee” – the learning simply won’t occur.

In order to develop expert performance in a skill, you must perform it many, many times – and get feedback from existing experts to allow course corrections to be made and learnings to be derived. Unfortunately, many professional firms have an unwritten “sink or swim” policy. Those who display a natural aptitude for sales will be given opportunities to perform their skills in real world situations. Those who don’t, don’t get this opportunity. As a result, Most professionals end up being “filtered out” of a business development mindset and strategies.

But no one is in a better position to offer coaching to junior professionals than their seniors. No one else has been in similar situations they can share, no one else witnesses some of their key presentations & pitches to top clients.

Senior professionals need to take this coaching role seriously to maintain the competitiveness of their teams and companies. They must overcome their own discomfort over their lack of knowledge to build a clear picture of “what good looks like” in the practices they manage. They must overcome their dislike of potentially uncomfortable situations and deliver timely and appropriate feedback to the teams. And finally, they need to understand not only what’s needed for their team’s roles: but also what is needed to continuously improve their sales management capabilities.