How to SLED Through a Coaching Session
Mike Kunkle
??Improving Sales Performance: Modern Sales Foundations | Sales Coaching Excellence | The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement
Hey, Enablers, Happy Friday. Mike Kunkle here. Welcome to this week’s edition of Sales Enablement Straight Talk!
Today, I want to share some content from my Sales Coaching Excellence course. Specifically, I will share the SLED model for leading individual coaching sessions, and how it interacts with the Field Training and Sales Coaching models.
If you haven't seen an overview of the entire Sales Coaching System or models yet, these resources will provide the foundation to get the most out of this newsletter:
With that foundation, let's dig into SLED and how it interacts with the other models.
How SLED and the Training & Coaching Models Interact
The above graphic displays the SLED model with the Field Training and Sales Coaching models. Now, let’s explore how SLED and those models interact.
It helps to think of SLED as how you lead the meeting. Then, you pull the right model into your meeting, as appropriate.
SLED stands for:
Let's review all four steps in a bit more detail.
Set the Stage
In this step, you will set expectations for your time together. The most effective way to open a meeting is to share the meeting purpose – or why you’re meeting, your objectives – or what you want to accomplish, your plan to do that, and especially, the value that your employee will get out of it. Then you end with a simple check and ask if there’s anything else they hoped to accomplish. So, it’s:
Or, if it helps to remember, it's a "POP Value Check."
A Nuance to Get Started Right:
The one time that the Set the Stage step could be different, is the very first time you are meeting to implement this entire Sales Coaching Excellence methodology. If your sellers have not been coached much previously, or haven’t been coached in this way, they may be apprehensive at first, suspicious, or nervous. And if that’s the case, they may not fully engage, be authentic and transparent, or trust the process. This is normal, and it’s why it’s important as a leader to foster a sense of psychological safety and trust.
So, the first time you meet with someone and do your Set the Stage, extend it to discuss why you are starting a new approach, to better support and help them grow and reach new levels of performance and enhance their career. This should help with most employees, but be ready that with some, you will need to walk your talk and demonstrate your servant leadership and your sincere desire to help them grow and achieve more over time, before they truly engage.
Lead the Performance Analysis Discussion
In this step, you use ROAM and your available Inputs to analyze where to spend your valuable coaching time together. I recommend asking your employee to analyze their performance and come to your meeting prepared to share their analysis and identify areas where they could improve performance. At the meeting, you can have them start, then share your analysis, and discuss both, to align on where to focus. To get to a root cause, remember to use the ROAM model (Results vs. Objectives, Activities + Methodology) and explore the Activities the rep is doing and the Methodology they are using. This may require observation to complete the root cause analysis, before moving forward.
Explore Solution Options and Agree on the Best Solution
In this step, you will use The Solutions Chart and determine whether the best solution is training, coaching, counseling, feedback, or something else. You will also need to determine the solution content (best practices) for the skill being addressed. ?
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Develop and Implement an Action Plan
In this step, you’ll apply the appropriate model (Field Training or Sales Coaching) to improve the skill. After your role play/practice session is completed to your satisfaction, have your employee develop an action plan. You may guide them, but they should develop and own the plan. Before ending, remember to schedule the first review session (Rolling Review), so it gets on the calendar and won’t be missed. When you end the meeting, they need to implement their plan.
SLED with the Sales Coaching Model
Technically, Engage starts after you agree on the best solution in step 3 of SLED, Explore Solutions Options and Agree on the Best Solution. But since SLED is designed to engage your rep in the journey, in this case, you can think of Engage as stretching across all of the first three steps. After you agree on the best solution, know that it’s coaching, and know the solution content (the best practices that will help your rep do it even better), then you can Engage, Practice, Develop an Action Plan, and set your rep free to Implement it (Do). Later, you will come back together to Review. This is how the models interact.
SLED With the Field Training Model
Using the Field Training Model with SLED is similar to using the Sales Coaching Model. The one difference is that the Tell step doesn’t begin until after you agree on the best solution. This is because training is directive, and you don’t want to be directive through the first three steps of SLED. You become directive only when it’s appropriate (as you begin to train), because your employee didn’t know what, why, or how to do something (or at least not how you want it done, because you know it’s effective).
After that, it’s the same as the Sales Coaching model. You Show and role play until they can perform to your satisfaction, and then guide them to develop an Action Plan, which they Implement (Do). Later, you will meet again to Review.
Closing Thoughts
Hopefully, it is helpful to see how SLED, which is how you will lead each individual coaching session, interacts with the two models, which are pulled into SLED, as appropriate.
By the way, I recognize that many coaching programs do not include as many frameworks, models, and tools as Sales Coaching Excellence (SCE) does. Remember that SCE was not designed in a laboratory somewhere. It is based on 22 years of field observation, research, and top-performer analysis to uncover and document what the best sales managers do differently.
Something that is overly simplistic in comparison, will not produce results that are as dramatic. If you want the best results, you must do what the very best do.
RESOURCES
REMINDER:
The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience is updated, with new pricing, and some special promotions.
Visit https://GoFFWD.com/Blocks for details.
Well, that's it for this week, Enablers! Did you learn something new reading/watching this newsletter? If you did, or if it just made you think (and maybe chuckle from time to time - bonus points if you snorted), share it with your favorite enablement colleague, subscribe right here on LinkedIn, and check out The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience. For other courses and content from Mike, see: https://linktr.ee/mikekunkle
Until next time, stay the course, Enablers, and #MakeAnImpact With #Enablement!