Helping your team members make the shift from advising to coaching customers

Hello Sales Reset Leader

In our experience, most salespeople talk too much about what they’re selling.

Customers and salespeople commonly spend most of their meeting time discussing the products and services being bought and sold.

This will likely happen in many of your team members’ customer meetings.

There’s a MUCH better conversation available!

The rest of this email newsletter assumes you have read this week’s first Weekly Sales Reset“ newsletter:

• Title: Two very different ways to use all your product and market knowledge

• Subtitle: How to choose between advising your customers and coaching them

Please be aware that this shift from advising to coaching customers is VERY significant and will require much more effort than many of your team members currently appreciate.

Your team members will need to develop significantly better communication, commercial, and business planning skills to become effective coaches with their customers.

This is a long-term project! Your team members will need your continued support and encouragement.

How to improve your team's results this week

• Where to look for evidence

• Expected pushback

• Role-Play Recommendations

• Join our FREE community and LIVE! online workshops

Where to look for evidence

We strongly recommend reviewing the evidence before your coaching sessions with each team member. The evidence you find will make your coaching significantly more effective.

Before you meet with your team members for your 1:1 coaching sessions this week, here’s where to find the evidence you need. 

As you accompany your team members in meetings or as you review recordings and notes, clarify how much time your team members spend advising and how much time is spent coaching.

Review who does the most talking. How is the talking time shared? Ideally, if your team member is coaching effectively, their customer will do most of the talking.

Most customers expect to ask the majority of questions in a meeting with salespeople, and most salespeople believe it’s their job to answer customers’ questions knowledgeably and enthusiastically.

When you review your team member’s proposals

Moving from an advising mindset to a coaching mindset is a massive shift.

Expected pushback

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members.

1. Customers don’t expect to be coached: “My customers seem to understand what they need clearly and will not welcome me challenging their assumptions and expectations.” Your team member might not be confident in coaching, especially with more senior roles.

2. Junior people don’t know answers: “The people I meet with are often fact-finding for more senior colleagues”. How can you help your team members identify and engage these stakeholders and bring them into their coaching conversations?

3. Coaching customers is hard: Yes it is! How can you help each team member to develop their skills and confidence?

What are your best responses now that you know these potential pushback areas?

Role-Play Recommendations

1. Best Current Opportunity: Role-play critical elements of the coaching conversation, especially about the outcomes this customer seeks from a potential investment.

2. Most Significant Next Meeting: Look at their calendar for the most significant next meeting. Role-play the part of the conversation where your team member seeks to coach this customer.

3. Most significant Recent Loss: Review your team member’s most recent significant loss and role-play the coaching conversation that might have occurred now you know more about the situation.

(You may find these recommendations about using role-play helpful.)

Join our FREE community and LIVE! online workshops

You will see in Weekly Sales Reset that we have invited your team members to join our community and online workshops.

As a sales team leader, you are also very warmly invited to be part of our community!

Our new Sales Reset Together community is now meeting regularly. Click here to join and register to join our LIVE workshops to share experience and practice.

• Sales Reset Stories: Members meet to share their experiences and stories of this week’s Weekly Sales Reset theme. Every Tuesday at 4:30 pm UK time

• LIVE! Practice: We’re about to meet monthly to practice in small group role-play sessions using Zoom break-out rooms. On Thursday, November 7 at 4:30 pm UK time, our LIVE! Practice will focus on coaching customers.

We look forward to meeting you in our community and hearing your stories about coaching customers.

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Do your team members subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Weekly Sales Reset?