You Lead Teams, Manage Things and You Coach the Individual
It’s happening all across the agribusiness industry: Mergers, Acquisitions, and Consolidation. One of the results of these three events is overloading your sales managers. Now, I understand the thought process of increasing a sales manager’s workload and adding salespeople to their area. Sales managers are expensive and if you can do with one less, then you can save quite a bit of money. After all, “if they can supervise 12, what’s a couple more?” The answer to this rhetorical question is “probably no difference when it comes to leading a team”. However, managing and coaching are a different story.
As you increase the number of direct reports on a sales manager, you increase the number of hours they will spend managing their salespeople: working on reviews, handling employee issues and getting their salespeople the resources needed to go sell. And I know that most companies aren’t worried too much about a sales manager’s workload, but they should and here’s why. First, as hard as it might be to believe, sales managers are human and they too only have 24 hours in a day. So, if you increase their workload, they have to find time from somewhere. Unfortunately, that time comes at the expense of coaching the individual. When given the choice between leading the team through tough times, managing the sales team so they can function, or coaching one individual salesperson, most of the time the priority will go to managing, then leading, then coaching.
The reasons are easy to understand. Managing things typically has strict deadlines: annual reviews, sales reports, submitting budgets, annual projections, completing hiring paperwork, etc. These all have deadlines in your company. You have responsible sales managers and they want their team to have all the necessary resources to succeed. So, managing is top of the list over leadership and coaching. Next comes leading the team. Deciding on direction and strategy are next on the priority list. The whole team is looking to them to provide guidance and wisdom in the face of tough times. Again, they are responsible leaders and after dealing with the management things, they provide their leadership. By now, it’s 8:00 p.m. and they need to take a break. Guess what was left out of their day? Coaching Jennifer on better ways to close the sale…coaching Kevin on how to ask better questions to get out of the price resistance game he is stuck in…. Coaching Brian on why his high “D” DISC profile is offending his peers and coworkers.
It’s strictly a function of time and not desire. Most sales managers enjoy the interaction of helping their salespeople one at a time on sales calls. But, managing and leading the team takes priority at the expense of coaching. And when they do finally get out there to coach, they spend half the time doing administrative work with the salesperson.
A few quick notes before we jump into the list. First, coaching should be defined for the purposes of coaching a sales team. I am referring to the one to one interaction of working with a salesperson on improving their performance. It is not leadership nor management, which are important to run a business. Coaching is all about the individual.
Secondly, you need to know that I sell coaching services. So, you could form the opinion that I’m just promoting coaching to try and sell coaching service. You would be right and wrong. Those of you that know me well, know that I am very straightforward and open about motives. So, you would be right in thinking I want to sell you coaching. I do if I am a good fit. However, the purpose of this article is to help sales managers understand why they need to bring in an external coach. So, yes, reach out to me if interested in talking about how my coaching program works.
Last week’s blog: 5 REASONS SALESPEOPLE NEED COACHING
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Quick review from last article on why salespeople need a coach. 5 Reasons to get coaching!
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6 Reasons Sales Managers Fail at Coaching
- It’s not happening: Often, companies use their sales managers to do coaching. It sounds great and makes perfect sense, but has two major problems. The first problem is “it’s not happening”. The sales managers are too busy managing things and leading the team. There are only 21 working days in a month. So, if the ratio of manager to salesperson is any higher than 1:8, the coaching program will suffer. They just run out of days to fit it all in. Managing things and leading their team will always take priority over working with the individual. If your managers are honest with you, they will confirm this.
- It’s hard to read the label when you are in the jar. It’s hard to see the forest due to the trees: As a sales manager, you work with your team every day, for years. So, you naturally form opinions, biases, etc. This makes it difficult to rise above the relationship and provide pure coaching.
- Accountability: One of the key elements of a coaching program is individual and team accountability. An external coach focuses on making sure the program follows a logical, sustainable course. Consider them an accountability partner in your coaching journey. Additionally, accountability to the coaching process is a key role that an external coach provides.
- Sole focus on coaching: A coach has one function, to coach. That’s it. No discussions on getting reports done, signing paperwork, responding to emails, completing credit applications, etc. They show up and coach till they jump back in their car and go home.
- Because coaching your kid doesn’t work (as well)– Ever coach your kids? It’s a great experience and I highly recommend it. However, there are always those times when the lines are blurred between parenting and coaching. And that’s what happens when you coach your salespeople. After 15 years of reporting to one sales manager, I knew exactly what he was going to coach me on and he knew exactly how I was going to react to his coaching. Over time, we just skipped those coaching conversations because we knew them and their outcome.
- ROI – You already saved money by not hiring additional sales managers. By not providing adequate coaching, you are living off borrowed time. Development opportunity is the #2 reason people leave their company. Coaching provides a framework to develop the individual in their career and reduce turnover. Turnover costs range from $20K up to 3X the salary to replace a salesperson, depending on several factors. Either way, it’s expensive and disruptive to have turnover. Additionally, a Richardson Study found 86% of the companies that implemented coaching felt they had a positive ROI on their investment.
Establishing a solid coaching environment can be one of the most important rewarding and profitable activities you accomplish in your company. From reduced turnover to higher engagement to increased sales, it just makes good sense. Send me an email today and we can talk about how to develop your coaching program.
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