Sales Leadership and Coaching

One of our focus areas at Precedo Consulting is to create a successful model for managing sales.

In a top performing sales organization there is a good balance between four elements: sales strategy, sales process, sales skills and sales metrics. Important task for the sales management is to ensure that these elements are clearly defined and well in balance.

The difference between the best performing sales directors and the average performers can often be explained by the ability to lead and coach the sales teams. The high performing sales directors are typically recognized for their excellent sales coaching skills.

What does sales coaching mean in practice?

The purpose of the sales coaching is to help sales people to win their sales projects. In the longer run the successful coaching will develop the selling skills of the sales people closer to the level of the high performers. The majority of the sales directors recognize the importance of this, but the reality is that most managers don't do enough well enough.

Sales coaching can be divided in two different parts: strategic and skills coaching. In complex b-to-b sales, where the quality of the sales work is important, both coaching areas are equally important, but yet quite different by nature.

The quality of the feedback has a big role in successful sales coaching. According to our experience there are three elements behind the effective sales coaching culture in high performing sales organizations:

1. Both the sales director and the sales person have a shared understanding of a good sales performance
2. The sales director must have the skills to objectively measure and analyze the sales skills of the sales person
3. The sales director has the ability to give feedback to the different sales people in a way which is easy to receive and accept

Precedo Consulting has supported the establishment of sales coaching culture and process in number of customer cases that have led into excellent results in improving the sales performance.