课程: Sales Coaching

Why coaching might require losing a sale

课程: Sales Coaching

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Why coaching might require losing a sale

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- Have you ever been in a situation when you were making a sales call and just before you were going to make a point, your boss jumped in and said the very thing that you were about to say? As a leader, you don't want to do that. It's demoralizing to your rep. And while taking over a call might win the deal in the short-term, it never pays off in the long-term. Sometimes being a good coach means being willing to watch your rep lose a deal. It's painful, but I learned this lesson from my first sales coach at Procter & Gamble. He was a guy named Dave and I was a 23 year old newbie trying to close a sale, but the call was going south. Now, Dave saw the call was going badly long before I did. I was just blathering on about features and benefits. And I didn't realize I had lost it until the customer actually said no. (chuckles) I was surprised, and I was embarrassed. When we got to the car afterwards, Dave said, well, "How do you think it went?" I said, "Well, obviously it didn't go very well." Dave asked, "Where do you think it started to go wrong and why?" He patiently questioned me and together we unpacked in excruciating detail what had gone wrong. The fact that I can still remember this situation so vividly 30 years later tells you what a big impact it had on me. It was horrible. It was painful. And it was not an experience I ever wanted to repeat, but I learned, and that's exactly the point. Through my own discovery, I realized what I had done wrong. And I became a much better salesperson because of my coach. But if Dave had just jumped in to save me, none of that would have happened. It can be hard not to interject or takeover when you see a call going south. Use your discretion to determine when you should become involved in saving the sale and when you shouldn't. So how do you know when to let your rep blow it? Well, first, if it's a small, low stakes situation, like my situation was with Dave, let it go. There's a cost associated with coaching, and it was a better ROI on Dave's time to help me figure out why I failed rather than him saving a small deal. Another scenario where you probably want to let your rep fail is if it wouldn't have closed anyway. Sometimes customers can be a jerk. Sometimes the customer is totally out of budget. If your gut intuition as a coach is that this sale won't close, letting your rep lose the sale early, it isn't a bad thing. Remember the primary goal of coaching is to improve your sales rep's ability to function on their own in a high stakes situation. That won't happen if you're constantly jumping in to save them.

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