What I learned from coaching an "A Level" Spanish student.

It's time for another edition of the?"Winning Sales Mindset" newsletter. This newsletter is specifically for individuals who want to get better at selling. Each week, I will be sharing hints and tips that apply if you are a business owner, CEO, sales leader, sales manager, or salesperson.?These hints and tips are all designed to help you create a winning mindset for improving sales.

Many of you will not be aware, but my degree is in Spanish and despite the advancing years, I am still a fluent Spanish speaker. During the last four and a half months, I have been coaching a friend's son to help support him with his Spanish oral exam. Yesterday, the coaching finished as my student took his "A level" Spanish oral exam. As I completed this very different coaching engagement, I reflected on the lessons learned and how coaching a student toward exam success has many similarities with coaching high-performing sales teams.

So what are the lessons learned:-

• for improvement to occur, the person being coached needs to be committed to taking action after every coaching session. This means that the coachee needs to be coachable and more importantly growth-minded. After each coaching session, the student I was coaching took responsibility for the actions that they had committed to.
• the Spanish oral exam is a performance, just like a sales meeting. We knew the structure of the exam, how long it would last, and what questions could be asked. We focused lots of time on role-playing and practicing each part of the exam. As the coach, I made sure that the questions I asked were even more difficult than the examiner would ask.
• we recorded all the coaching sessions and used Read.ai to do the transcriptions. The student was able to review his performance and also make additional comments after each coaching session.
• at the start of the coaching engagement, we defined what success looked like for the student, what were his objectives, and also his key goals. One of the key goals was to obtain the highest mark possible in the oral exam. Having a clear goal gave the student a clear focus.
• reviewing progress regularly against the overall goals and targets. This was achieved through the student having 2 mock Spanish oral exams during the coaching period. This was an opportunity for the student to obtain feedback directly from his teacher about his performance. It also provided us both with some real nuggets to work on during each session and what we needed to focus on to drive improvement.
• having an individual who is open to feedback about what needs to be improved. This is essential. Often people are not open to feedback. Sometimes to help ourselves improve, we have to be open to some tough love.
• success is not a straight-line journey. There will be times during the journey when the going gets a bit tough and I know that there were times when the student felt like he wasn't making as much progress as they would have liked. This is all part of learning. Setbacks are inevitable and they are a key part of learning.
• celebrate successes and small wins along the way. We did this regularly during each session. Positive feedback is essential and empowers the student to take further action.

So if you are a sales leader, business owner, sales manager, or a salesperson, you may wonder what is the relevance to your own sales excellence performance. It is completely relevant. Here are some questions for you to consider:-

• how coachable are you and your salespeople?
• how receptive are you and your team to receiving feedback?
• how often and how consistently do you undertake role practice?
• how effective is your coaching?
• how much time do you invest in coaching your salespeople?
• how committed are your salespeople and your sales managers to getting better?

Finally, I would like to finish this with feedback from the student whom I coached after the exam. He called to tell me that the exam had gone so well. I have also put below a copy of a WhatsApp message which the student sent the day before the exam:-

"It's ironic - my Spanish teacher in my first ever speaking lesson told me that by the time of my speaking exam, I would be on my way to fluency - I didn't believe her of course. And now I somewhat actually am and that is in no small part down to you!

Whatever happens on Tuesday, you should know that you have made an incredibly positive contribution to my life."

This just shows how powerful coaching can be.

Hope this newsletter has provided value and inspires you to think about the power of coaching.