Sales Coaching, Practice and Building Top Performers Faster: An Interview with Mary M. Joseph

At SalesGym, we’re always on the lookout for interesting sales executives to interview and tap their thinking on trends, top performers, coaching, and building better sales teams.  In a recent interview with Mary M. Joseph, Sales Learning & Development Director, Media Industry, she shared some fascinating thoughts into how sales managers build better performing sales teams.  Her insights included:

Early in the interview, Mary’s enthusiasm for mastering the art of selling and influence came out as she reminded us how important selling skills are and how universally applicable they are to so many areas of life…

“You can take sales skills with you wherever you go. Sales is everything, it’s in everything we do. It’s exciting and kids are the best at it! Think about yourself as a kid, or when you just got your driver’s license. What did you say to your parents, or your guardians, or people around you? You told them you wanted a new car! Think of all the things you said to try to close that deal.”

She went on to share her thinking on a wide variety of topics and in this article we’ll focus on four important areas:

• Why sales leaders often avoid coaching
• Mistakes salespeople make that need attention
• The importance of building a practice culture
• A simple formula for better sales meetings

Why sales leaders avoid coaching

We’ve interviewed over 150 executives from a wide variety of industries in the last two years.  When asked what their biggest concern about their sales organization is, over 90% told us that ineffective sales coaching was at or near the top of the list. Most shared that they’d spent a lot of time and money on trying to improve sales coaching but weren’t really seeing that shift and, in fact, confided that even after several sales coaching training sessions, many sales managers simply don’t do the kind of coaching that salespeople, especially newer ones to the organization need most.  Mary shed some light on why this might be happening…

“A couple things that can end up happening with sales leaders as they become further removed from the sales process is that fear can set in when it comes time to step into the realm of coaching. Moving from the front line to leadership causes that shift and the fear comes from potentially not knowing answers to the questions their salespeople ask. This can hinder them from spending that quality time and coaching to improve performance. It can be difficult to give real-time feedback and really zone in on the root cause of the struggles that salespeople are having and the obstacles they cannot seem to avoid.”

What we’ve noticed is that although nearly all sales organizations want their front-line sales managers to do more coaching, often, no one is coaching the coaches.  When leaders spend time coaching the coaches, it creates a chain reaction as Mary explains,

“When leaders spend time with front line sales managers, it gives them the confidence to spend time with their salespeople. Then they become excited to see their salespeople grow and improve. It becomes this win-win for everybody when the leader is that much more involved in how the salesperson is doing. When people are happy in the workplace, it leads to motivation and productivity, bottom line.”

It’s also critical to clearly define what sales coaching is. Often, sales managers weren’t coached much when they were salespeople so they develop a mindset that defines coaching in a narrow way as Mary explains,

“Often there isn’t a clear definition of coaching, especially in the workplace. What does the organization expect? Do all parties involved align on the definition of coaching? What is your skill set? Maybe you’ve never coached before and yet you have come upon these coaching expectations and the organization has not done the due diligence to make sure your skill set for coaching is aligned with the organization’s definition of coaching.”

Mistakes Salespeople make

Ideally, coaching is focused around reducing the mistakes salespeople make when talking to customers and prospect and exposes them to what top performers are doing so they can make that shift. It’s important for sales coaches to understand the truly significant mistakes that need to be addressed as Mary explains,

“A commonality among salespeople can be shaky self-confidence and the ability to humanize the sales conversation. First, many salespeople will lead with the product because it is comfortable or they can wrap their brain around learning the nuances of a sell sheet. And second, is only thinking of their own agenda and the reason for the appointment or meeting, forgetting that they are meeting with human beings and it should be about them. A salesperson may tend to take over versus having a two-way dialogue and just realizing that they are speaking to another person or people in the room. The goal is to have a very natural conversation. It is easier to do this when you lead with insights to gain credibility and make the conversation all about the client. One goal is to become a trusted partner.”

Too much talking and too little asking and listening is a bad habit many ineffective salespeople get into and year after year, decision makers complain that salespeople simply talk too much.  As Mary explained, building an agenda around what’s important to the decision maker(s) is a valuable first step to breaking this results-limiting habit.

Another critically important skill is asking better questions as Mary explains,

“If you as a salesperson are asking better questions and you’re actually waiting for the answer, then you are having two-way dialogue which leads to that close and being able to say hey, ‘We’ve had this great discussion, let’s move forward. It makes sense for your business. We have identified the gaps, let’s fix it. Let’s form this partnership.’ Versus walking away feeling that you had this great meeting and patting yourself on the back, but there was no action. When you’re sitting with a current or prospective client and you’re having that warm dialogue and you’re treating people like human beings and are not making them sit through this long presentation, but you’re having a conversation, it really improves the outcome.”

Using silence and longer pauses in the conversation can really help develop a better two-way dialogue. Often, salespeople are simply listening to respond and jump in and start selling the moment a decision maker mentions even a relatively small level of interest.  Mary explains the power of silence,

“Another topic for salespeople is using silence in a strategic way. We don’t often spend time in the sales conversation offering silence to allow a prospect to really think about what was shared or asked of them. People need time to respond and in the sales role, active listening is golden. Asking the right questions is vital but listening for the answer is far more important.”

The importance of a practice culture

Athletes, musicians, dancers, actors, elite military units, and first responders all improve with frequent and challenging practice. Selling is exactly the same.  Unfortunately, in many organizations, salespeople are practicing on live prospects instead of in well planned training and practice sessions every week. There is simply no way that occasional 1-2 day sales training sessions once or twice a year is going to give salespeople the practice they need to master their craft as Mary explains,

“Adult learning says that adults will learn with repetition and you must couple that with practice.”

“Don’t go into sales with one definition of what you think it can be. Keep your eyes open, learn as much as you can from others, even from people you think might not be doing a great job. There’s something to learn from them, and maybe it’s simply, ‘I won’t do it that way,’ but that all helps you carve out your sales philosophy.”

Confidence is one of the most important by-products of regular and frequent practice…

“Being able to practice is so pivotal. The best way to improve the performance of salespeople is to help them build the confidence that they can sell to several types of clients using different styles of communication and really help them practice, say the words, and make the mistakes while practicing.”

It seems so obvious that regular practice will improve sales performance just as it improves the performance of sports teams, but to get that practice culture going, it takes commitment from the top as Mary explains,

“To build a culture of practice you have to have a solid, core group, of early adopters and it needs to happen at the top of your organization. If your organization is hierarchical, you have to have the top leaders on board with the concept and excited about it. They can’t just mention it in one communication, the communication has to be consistent. Then it becomes part of the culture.”

Better Sales Meetings

We’d like to end this interview with some simple, but highly effective thoughts on how to run better sales meetings.  Most salespeople think sales meetings are of questionable value and Mary shares insights into how to change this,

“Some components of the best sales meetings start with setting a really clear agenda and expectations and always including a form of recognition which gets people excited. Salespeople enjoy recognizing their peers and getting recognized, and it does wonders for morale. Then, let the team talk. You can learn so much as a leader by just being quiet. It’s a bit like a client meeting, ask a great question and then see what comes back to you because they will have great ideas.”