30 Ways to Grow Your Business. Lesson #7: Sales Coaching and Other Resources

Can Sales Coaching Help You Grow Your Business?

Sales Coaching or Sales Training? Which Is Most Effective?

In my best-selling book, Game Changers The World’s Leading Entrepreneurs, How They’re Changing the Game and You Can Too!, one of the most essential elements I write about is the importance of selling to impact the growth of any business.

My main point in this regard is growing a business is all about sales. No sales, no business.

I have coached hundreds of business owners, entrepreneurs and sales people in the art of selling. Not selling in the traditional, pit bull kind of way. I look at selling more in terms of enrollment. Building rapport and trust by asking intelligent questions. Discovering what the issues, goals and problems are for every prospect. Establishing value and framing this in the context of making a problem go away.  Helping the prospect to see you as a solution provider. Little stuff like this instead of what we experience at most car dealerships on the planet Earth.

Back to today’s lesson within the framework of 30 Ways to Grow Your Business. If you are a business owner or sales manager the question you need to ask yourself is, “Am I providing and implementing the essential resources my team needs to be successful?”

Here are several essential resources I have found to be lacking in many small businesses and more evolved sales organizations.

1. A clearly defined sales process. Every business should have a clearly defined sales process. Without it you are doomed to failure. Having a clearly defined sales process leads to a more disciplined and systematic sales organization. It gives owners and management a context within which to provide sales coaching and training to the team. It also enables management to better forecast sales results as prospects and your team move through the sales funnel; awareness, interest, education, shopping, and decision making for purchase.

2. Sales coaching. Is sales coaching better than sales training? If I had to suggest one over the other I would take sales coaching. However, sales training can and should play a role for new talent to acquaint them with your company culture, sales process and systems. One of my favorite books on sales is, “You Can’t Teach A Kid to Ride a Bike In a Seminar” by David Sandler. The title says it all. Sales coaching is ongoing and real time. It’s spaced and repetitious learning. You can conduct pre-sales call coaching and post-sales call debriefing. In essence it’s real-time and help for any sales people to learn and apply knowledge to improve results.

3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. If you’re still managing relationships on spreadsheets please get a grip. There is absolutely no excuse for any business to not use a CRM system. (Yet, I see it way too often.) Systems allow you to scale and grow. CRM software enables you to be much better organized for the purposes of holding your team accountable for activities, documenting critical communications with clients and prospects and managing your pipeline for better sales forecasting. There are many systems on the market. Some are free. So please don’t use the lame excuse that you can’t afford a CRM system.

4. Quality lead generation. I used to sell and manage within large, international sales organizations. The fools (yes, I am still bitter) in top management who invested gazillions in “branding” had no clue about the importance of quality lead generation. They basically left it up to us on the front line to generate our own leads. The good news is it forced us to do so with cold calls, networking, seminars and trade shows. The bad news is that if management and the sales organization could have been on the same page with regard to investing in quality lead generation the impact would have been huge. But those in the Ivory Tower with their big, fat salaries couldn’t have cared less. The marketing department was clueless.  And the advertising agency was working on it’s stupid industry awards for design and creativity. Too bad. You need to develop a system, we call it quality lead generation, to generate enough high quality leads for your sales organization.

So there you have it. My four thoughts of the day regarding the essential resources you need to provide for yourself (solopreneurs) and for your sales organization (owners and sales managers) who care about impacting better sales results.

Surely this list in not all inclusive. However, integrating these four resources can make a dramatic impact on your sales results.

What are your thoughts on this subject? What’s working best for you in any of these areas? What’s not working?

We always appreciate your comments and suggestions here on the WealthNet Partners blog.

Remember, defining your sales process, providing sales coaching, implementing a CRM system and generating high quality lead generation will have a huge impact on your sales results.