One of the first concepts that we need to understand to be a successful sales leader is the difference between a Manager and a Coach. Management is defined as “a process” because it involves a series of interrelated functions. It consists of learning the objectives of an organisation and taking steps to achieve those objectives.
The management process includes planning, organising, staffing, directing, and controlling functions. On the other hand, coaching is a method used to develop people skills and competencies in order to improve performance and productivity. It also helps to prevent future issues or challenges that will arise.
Today the priority of sales leaders should be to add value and develop their sales team on daily basis, therefore adopting more the role of coach as an opposed to the manager.
To make a transition from Manager to a coach it is important to change our approach. In our consulting experience, we found that most sales managers give advice to their sales executives based on their wisdom or experience. Sales coaching is not about giving advice but rather asking intelligent questions for sales executives to resolve their own problems.
This concept is immensely powerful because coaching focuses on people’s strengths rather than weaknesses. Coaching allows every sales executive to tap into their own individual talent and resolve their own challenges. Finally, coaching is about understanding what motivates each sales executive and how to bring this motivation into alignment with organisational goals –As sales managers/directors we cannot control what happens in the external business environment, for example competition, economy, organisation changes, but we can have control of ourselves, our behaviour, if we have the power to move from managers into coaches, this will bring positive results to our team and the bottom line.
At Sales 4 Results, we work every day to build a coaching culture, and when we run sales campaigns, we coach our sales executives to become champions. We listen to their conversations; we make time to sit down with them and ask questions and make the sales campaigns more productive and profitable.
