Whether you’re dealing with producers or athletes, helping players develop will win the game.
In this cynical age, it’s hard not to be suspicious of the establishment. When something goes wrong, it’s easy to blame the government, your parents, or society — but a bit harder to find the flaws in yourself.
The same is true for producers of all types. Whether young or old, polished or rough, successful or struggling, few people really take responsibility for their own development. That’s why they need coaches.
Coaching/Mentoring
The purpose of a coach/mentor is to help producers take responsibility for their own development. There’s a proverb: “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” This philosophy holds true for coaching and mentoring. As a manager or principal, your goal is to help your producers learn methods to solve their own problems, take ownership of the solution, and stop waiting for the establishment (read: the agency) to fix it for them.
This approach reduces producers’ dependence on the sales manager and enables them to be much more proactive in achieving positive results.
If your producers are in the middle of some activity, have a problem, and need an objective third party to help them think through their options, a good coaching session might last only two to five minutes. In another situation, it could take the form of a scheduled session with a defined objective, and last 30 minutes.
Expert
The opposite of coaching is to be the expert: That is, to tell people what to do to overcome their problems. This is efficient in the short term, but very inefficient in the long run. Instead of challenging people and helping them solve their own problems and gain confidence, the expert underdevelops the person, who will then continue to leech answers (and time) away from him in small increments.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, “Man most appreciates and takes action on the things that he himself discovers.” In other words, an idea is effective to the extent that the producer makes it their own. Being a coach is a tough and challenging job. The hard part is to withhold your opinion and advice long enough to ask questions and give examples that help producers develop their own ideas.
Manager vs. Coach
How do you distinguish coaches from managers? A manager generally listens to a problem, understands it, evaluates it, and offers “the” solution. A coach listens to the problem with the intention of understanding its context, and then helps the producer by asking questions that focus more clearly on the real problem (that is, its source) and the resources that the producer needs to remove or transform it.
A major change must occur for a great manager to evolve to a great coach — a change in attitude. You must believe that people are capable of solving their own problems and removing their own obstacles. All that producers generally need is someone to help them think it through.
Example: A producer just came back from a new business sales call and told his manager that he couldn’t get the prospect to give him a copy of the policies. A manager (the expert) would probably zone right in on the problem and typically say, “Tell your prospect to white out the price and make a copy because you can’t quote if you don’t get the policies.” Not bad advice. But a coach would dig deeper into the deal:
Coach: Tell me exactly what happened that led up to your prospect telling you that he won’t give you a copy of the policies.
Producer: I did the usual. I built some rapport and asked if he had any problems with claims or service. He said no. I told him I’d like to get a copy of his policies to see if I could improve on his program and save him some money. He then said he wouldn’t give a copy of the policies.
Coach: Why do you think he was concerned about giving you the policies?
Producer: I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want me to see the price.
Coach: Could there be any other reasons?
Producer: Maybe he wasn’t a serious buyer.
Coach: What makes you think he might not be serious?
Producer: Because he didn’t have any problems he was aware of, I suppose.
Coach: Probably right. What do you know about him and his business? Where might he have some problems that he’s not yet aware of?
Producer: He has a relatively new building, and it looks as if he’s growing a lot. Maybe his Business Interruption figures are off, or maybe his payrolls could be growing at a rate that could cause a big audit.
This conversation could go on much further. The key point is that a coach would help the producer develop his knowledge and thinking skills.
Boss vs. Colleague
Managers are like bosses: Their role is to supervise the producer. A coach is more like a colleague, a teammate, and a partner.
Why should you coach? In today’s fast-paced world, your people won’t change fast enough without coaching. Everyone has blind spots: areas that are too close to perceive completely or clearly. For a full, sharp picture, every individual needs an outside view — which coaching supplies.
Managers don’t coach for several reasons. Often they don’t know how and never learned. They’ve always been managed and have survived; and if it worked for them, it should work for others. Sometimes they’re concerned about the confrontation that comes from holding people really accountable; it could damage old relationships. And frequently, they don’t have time. They themselves are players, and they enjoy and derive most of their income from playing.
Several factors lead to successful coaching. You must have the respect of your people, and you must respect them. You must have earned their trust so you can have honest conversation without the fear of information leaks or retribution. You must be an excellent communicator —great at asking questions and listening. You must have relevant experience that allows you to add value to the process. And you must be good at recognizing opportunities to deliver positive feedback.
Feedback
A coach provides two types of feedback. One comes in the form of evaluating the past and developing a score based on the critical factors that the two of you have decided upon. The other type is about now and the future — a developmental process that leads to discussion and plans of action.
To prepare for your coaching session, establish your objective for the meeting. What are you going to focus on: Activity, behavior, skills, or results? What has happened since your last meeting that will allow you to offer genuine, positive feedback? What are the specific areas in which you believe there’s room for improvement? How do you expect the producer will respond to your suggestion?
Begin by establishing rapport, and then state your purpose for the meeting. Next, encourage your producer to start off with their perceptions, and follow with yours. Discuss what you feel has been done well and what areas need improvement. Ask the producer what they would like to happen in that area, what the obstacles are, and how the producer expects to overcome them. Have the producer lay out steps toward the solution. Agree on a plan of action that is concise and measurable. Finally, set up a specific time to carry out the activity and a date for follow-up.
As a coach, it’s tremendously important to follow up when and how you said you would. Your follow-up is the most effective communicator of your sincerity, trustworthiness, and respect for the producer. Failing to show up for your meeting or making several changes in your schedule sends the producer a covert message that the matter is not very important.
One of the benefits of being a great coach/mentor is that you’re modeling a method for problem solving and personal growth, which others will then use themselves and pass on to others. Seen from a distance, business is just a constant series of problems generated and problems solved. Once you train your producers to become real problem solvers, you develop an outstanding growth organization that’s not totally reliant on you for its progress.
Coaching Isn’t For Wimps!
Whether coaching sales producers or a bunch of players on the hardwood, a good coach knows that developing players leads to a winning bottom line. A coach can be soft on people and still hard on accountability. In other words, tough consequences need only kick in if people don’t do what they say they’re going to do.
Just as a football player is trained in various activities — lifting weights, to running sprints, memorizing the playbook, and so on — sales producers must be developed in several areas: relationship building, communications, prospecting, persuasion, and closing. A good coach helps producers identify the specific areas in most need of development, and then holds them accountable for allocating the time and energy to achieve set goals. Only if the goals remain unmet does the coach need to get tough and consider hiring a different player for the team.