Being Right

It appears these days that the United States is at an all time low point in its standing with the international community. It seems straightforward to pin that on a particular recent period in our history, with a singularly unpopular administration, an unpopular war, and an international economic crisis which many lay at the door step of the United States. Yet the seeds of this antipathy have been there for decades, if not centuries. It may be worth considering the root causes of this lack of international alignment between the US and its international counterparts to see if there are lessons for the coaching community. Why this level of hostility? Why do other countries interpret what we Americans see as well justified confidence as arrogance? Can coaches glean any lessons that apply to their dialogues with their clients?

America is a country with a very strong self image. From our beginnings, Americans have felt a unique calling to leadership, driven by very strong beliefs in the rightness of our democratic institutions and our “manifest destiny”, first to populate our large country with a European culture and ultimately to lead the rest of the world to similar models and presumably, similar levels of “success”.

What’s wrong with being right and acting on that belief? Isn’t that the moral, courageous thing to do?

In his excellent book, Language and the Pursuit of Happiness, Chalmers Brothers makes the case that people’s view of what is “right” is strongly driven by their experiences (which over time drive their belief systems), their moods, and their physical environment. What’s “right” for me (or for my group, my company, or my country) is a function of all three, and over time, it becomes institutionalized as an absolute truth. As individuals or groups struggle with setting a direction or making a decision, it is comforting to rest on what they believe to be universal truths regarding the rightness of that path. The problem is that their very definition of rightness is a unique product of very different sets of cultures, experiences, beliefs, and the moods which surround them. So a relationship or action strategy founded on the notion of “rightness” may be in trouble from the start. Once we accept a specific definition of what is right, we are closed off from considering other realities, other stories. History is full of cases where countries or groups have committed unspeakable atrocities in full belief in the rightness of those actions in supporting a particular belief system.

So what is the implication for coaches?

Our job is to help our client use every resource at their disposal to get the full view, as full as they can possible make it. It helps to begin with the assumption that none of us have total access to “the truth”. If a client (and their coach) can accept that, then it is easier to challenge the idea that a different idea, a different story, is necessarily “not right”. The coach can explore with the client what set of experiences or observations led them to a particular belief. Instead of asking about right or wrong, they can substitute another set of questions: How is that working for you? Could it be different and still equally valid? How would that impact your beliefs, your mood, your direction, and your plan of action? Our ability as coaches to help our clients become clear about their possibilities is directly driven by our abilities to help them develop clarity about the impact of their beliefs on their perceptions of the new challenge, and the ability to envision a different reality

With a fresh way to interpret their experience, the coach can help the client write a different story that works better for them.

Your Culture is Your Best Teacher

It was the spring of 1981 and I had just joined Hewlett-Packard as a sales representative. I was drinking from the fire hose. It was my first sales job and I was learning a new career as well as a new company.

It was a heady time for HP. We were undisputed leaders in our market and were growing rapidly in the general business expansion of that time. What I observed around me was a great deal of youthful energy, and the primacy of our new products and their contribution to the markets we served. One example of that was how we interacted with our product divisions. When the divisions came to town, it was a natural rallying event for the sales force. We gathered after hours, shared drinks and refreshments with the visitors, and then grilled them mercilessly for the latest intelligence about markets, competitors, new products. They in turn grilled us for what we were seeing on the front lines. It was intense, but it happened in an atmosphere of shared commitment and collegiality. I found it wildly invigorating.

Looking back on it, I was learning powerful lessons from the corporate and local cultures within HP. As a company, our values included a commitment to technology and making a differentiated contribution to the state of the art in our markets. That had started with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in 1939 and it was a cornerstone of HP culture. The behavioral norms I observed in the Dallas sales team included:

1. The willingness to dedicate after hours time to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the visit.
2. The importance of blending professional and social interaction in building teamwork across the company.

I was also figuring out how to get things done inside HP. The factory relationships that I built over a beer and snacks would enable me later to find my way to the right product development team to get a special feature I would need to close a major sale. I didn’t learn that in a breakout session within a newcomers’ orientation course. We were living it every day, and I learned it in a way that no workshop could teach me.

As a consultant, I have seen many very promising initiatives die on the vine for lack of full adoption. I believe that there are important considerations here for leaders who are considering some form of training to drive an organizational change:

• Aggressively test the new ideas and behaviors against the prevailing cultures. Are they complementary or likely to clash?
• Where the new behaviors are not tightly linked to or supported by the culture, treat the project as a change management challenge. Acknowledge the time, effort, and money it will take to integrate them into the DNA of the organization. Does the benefit justify the investment?
• Consider the long-term impact that you are seeking. As cultures take years to form, it will likely take years for the organization to fully embrace the new ways as “just the way we do things around here”. Can you afford the time? Will the benefits endure over the time it takes to realize them?

Your culture is your best teacher. Put it to work on your most important change initiatives.

"80 Percent of Success is Showing Up" (Woody Allen)

When I joined Hewlett-Packard, my second level sales manager was a character named Bob Sandefer. Bob had already been around HP for over 25 years and was a legend with our factories. Over the next five years, I would be part of Bob’s team, both as a sales rep and later as a first level sales manager. Over those years, I had plenty of disagreements with Bob on a variety of topics. He was tough as nails. As the years passed, and I got a little smarter, two things occurred to me. First, on virtually all of the areas where we had disagreed, he was right. Much more importantly I came to really appreciate how dedicated Bob was to “showing up” for his people.

On anything to do with the business, Bob had very strong ideas on how to take care of customers and through doing so, to grow the business. He would be in your face in a heartbeat if he sensed anything less than total dedication to HP or the customer. He had high expectations, and enforced them to the last inch. On the personal side (after five, mind you), he showed a really remarkable ability to get to know everyone on his team (about fifty people), their personal strengths and shortcomings, but also their spouse, kids, and how big the new house had to be… At 5:01, he would hold court, and the office was usually full until after 7, with one person or another going in for coaching. We didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. It often involved a minute or two of those intense “feedback moments” but that didn’t seem to matter. He was like a candle to a moth. The interaction didn’t just happen in the office. If there was a wedding, a funeral, or any other kind of significant life event, he was there. Period. It didn’t matter where you were on the list of fifty. You were one of his people.

As a perspective on coaching, Bob’s strength in building productive coaching relationships was his ability to show up on a variety of levels. No one could touch his knowledge of our business. Beyond the business, he put in the time to connect with everyone on a deeply personal level. He expected you to have a plan and he had the audacity to remember it and ask you how it was going the next time he saw you. If you fell short of your plan or his expectations for you, you learned accountability in a hurry. After some of his accountability sessions, you might feel like you had been kicked around the block, but you knew that he knew you and loved you with every kick. It wasn’t just kicking. He celebrated with us, cried with us, and was very predictably there for us, 24-7.

A lot of coaching was delivered on that very firm foundation.

Making the Goal Real

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything” (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

It was one of the “big birthdays” and my adult children had just told me that my gift was a week with all of them and the grandkids in the Florida Keys. Of course, the idea of a full week time with kids and grandkids was appealing. I had a vague idea, a pleasant notion, in my head about what it would mean. Soon however, dates of arrival and departure had to be decided. Airplane tickets and rental cars had to be arranged. Which fishing rods would I need? As I began to ask and answer that next level of questions, the pleasant notion became much more specific and compelling.

I was now thinking about a specific fishing trip with my seven-year-old grandson. What would I do on a beach to entertain a three-year-old granddaughter? The sharpened focus and level of detail of the new plan charged up my excitement with the trip and my commitment to what I needed to do to make it successful. My pleasant notion now had become detailed movies playing in my head about activities, results, and how they supported the objective (a great time with my grandkids).

The goal was real for me now, because I had engaged with it as I planned.

Such it is with sales planning. Every New Year starts with a new quota (always unattainable…) and a fuzzy notion of going to President’s Club, or buying a new car with the commission accelerators. Sales managers are hammering away at the need for a new account or territory sales plan, and the sales team is figuring how to accomplish that with the smallest outlay of energy possible. Because, after all, aren’t sales plans just a necessary evil, to be dispatched as quickly as possible so that the real selling can begin?

The sales wise manager-coach knows that detailed plans drive progress. Which discrete selling actions will lead to the sales results which will retire that annual goal? The mental act of defining the steps between what the situation is now and what it will be in the future is what makes the goal real and creates the commitment to achieving it. Everyone knows they have to make quota. (pleasant notion) But how are they going to do it? What elements of the overall bag of products and solutions are going to gain traction this quarter, with this set of target customers, with their own set of business goals? (Committed business plan)

The coach frames planning as the heart of every dialogue. Where do we want to be? (Clarity around the goal) What did we learn getting to where we are now? (Greater definition around environment and obstacles encountered) What’s the plan? (Actions) When we will do it? How will we know if we’re on track? (Measurement and accountability)

Done well, planning becomes the lifeblood of the selling. It flexes as it encounters reality and the environment changes. (Competitors plan, too.) It is so tightly woven into the selling and coaching that no one can question its value. It’s not a dusty document, written once a year to an unwieldy template designed by marketing people and stuffed into a drawer. It’s the way sales professionals grow their business and it changes every day, every week. It’s the enabler that gets them to President’s Club. (And you with them…)

You Don't Have to Tell Them How

I was facilitating a workshop this week which included a significant amount of sales coaching content and practice coaching within it. At one point, I broke the participants into small groups and sent them off to coach each other on the pursuit of one of their key opportunities. When they returned, I queried each of the teams on how their sessions had gone. Two of the teams reported sharply different outcomes of their coaching process. In one group, the participant who had received the sales coaching reported back strong success from the exercise. She and her coach had creatively explored the sales situation, and she reported some significant and real insights into the best approach to winning the opportunity. She was energized by the process and ready to go try the actions they had defined together. In the other group, the result was not so positive. After a little prodding, the person receiving the coaching painted a much different picture. He reported being discouraged by the lack of accomplishment and he reported no meaningful progress. Worse yet, he said he felt disrespected by the coach, and reported going along with the heavy handed solutions doled out just to get the exercise over with. All of these participants were successful sales reps and sales managers. What happened in these two sessions and why were the results so different?

In the successful session, the coach respected the front line knowledge of the rep, and listened with an attitude of curiosity as the rep laid out the story. They did not leap to a personal agenda of what the rep should do or how the deal should play out. They used their knowledge and experience to ask open ended and powerful questions that let the rep expand the level of detail of the story. Throughout, the rep was doing most of the talking. The coach fed back what they were hearing in a way that enabled the rep to see issues and gaps in their strategy that hadn’t to that point become evident. The discussion was producing clarity and awareness for the rep which enabled them to build on their own detailed situational knowledge to building a new and powerful plan that was theirs. Together they detailed out what the rep would do to take advantage of the new clarity. The rep’s personal ownership of the plan directly drove their commitment (and excitement) to play it out in their live sales situation.

The less successful coach made it about them. They listened just long enough to trigger a memory of how they had done it in the glory days. They went into telling mode - how they would attack the opportunity. They were teaching. The more successful coach made it about the rep. They let the rep explore the landscape and the options. They let them formulate their own strategy with the knowledge and skills they already largely possessed.

In that difference is the key to successful coaching. The successful coach believes (even if the rep doesn’t quite yet) that most if not all of the ingredients for success are there before the coaching begins. They understand that the coaching agenda starts with the rep and what they want to accomplish. They understand that effective coaching is all about helping the rep learn, and not about teaching them. The trick is for the coach and sales rep to work together to release the power that is already there and put it to work in the hands of the rep to create success.

Professional coaching - a new tool for the sales manager?

In my 20 plus years of sales management, the term “coaching” is commonly used to mean that in-the-moment performance feedback that sales managers give their team members after a sales call or some other significant event in a sales cycle. It also very often has a negative connotation, as it takes on a remedial tone.

As the business world is increasingly embracing the value of professional coaching to improve individual and organizational results, it might be time to expand the coaching lexicon to include the role that professional coaches can play in developing your sales team, and especially your high performers.

What is Professional Coaching?

The international Coach Federation defines Professional Coaching as “a professional partnership between a qualified coach and an individual or team that supports the achievement of extraordinary results, based on goals set by the individual or team. Through the process of coaching, individuals focus on the skills and actions needed to successfully produce their personally relevant results.”

How does it work?

The heart of the process is a dialogue between an individual or group and a professional coach. The discussion will focus on a topic chosen by the coachee. Topics often come from their professional life: an important near term challenge to be met; a need to increase their knowledge; a need to improve their ability to perform an important task; a need to increase their overall level of job performance. Personal or life goals usually relate strongly to our performance in the business setting. In that sense, the coaching might also address some of the following goals: identification and leverage of personal strengths; improving and work or communication styles; a need to make critical life or career choices; work-life balance; personal organization and life management.

The role of the coach is to help their client achieve clarity on their goals, a plan to achieve the goals, identification of barriers and inhibitors, and a specific plan of action. Regular dialogue with the coach facilitates the formulation of the plan and helps the client make steady progress and hold themselves accountable to the action plan.

In the coaching sessions, coaches apply a range of techniques drawn from professional management practices, the behavioral sciences, and best practices drawn from their personal experience and research and the support of organizations such as the International Coach Federation.

How does it differ from what I do in the course of supervising my team?

The manager and the coach share an important goal: That the coachee become successful and make significant contributions to their company and their individual careers.

The professional coach brings a different perspective to that goal. They approach the coaching engagement as a partner rather than a supervisor. That perspective enables them to afford the coachee a level of safety and confidentiality that they may not feel with their manager. The coach, as a third party, is able to achieve a level of objectivity that may be difficult for a manager within the organization to achieve.

The coachee recognizes that the manager and the company are making a visible investment in them and their future. That can pay benefits in their personal level of motivation, and their loyalty to the company.

How can I include it in the development program for my team?

Coaching can take a number of different forms.

It can occur individually or in groups. Coaching clients can be high potential employees where the company is wanting to accelerate their personal and professional growth. On the other hand, coaching clients can be employees with job performance issues where the company is seeking to go the extra mile in affording them the opportunity to improve their performance. While those two examples hit both ends of the performance spectrum, every sales professional can benefit from assistance in clarifying their goals, and building an actionable plan to reach them.

What are the signals that indicate that professional coaching might make a real difference?

Take some time to evaluate if there is something in your sales environment that might provide the “compelling event” for putting professional coaching to work with your team:

• Is there a critical challenge at stake that will make a material impact on the success of the company?
• Is there a compelling need to address it quickly?
• Is there a visible and critical gap in some aspect of your team’s ability to be successful?
• Has the organization missed a key objective and you are looking for a way to get them back on track?
• Has one of your successful team members experienced a step function decrease in their performance?

How would I get started in putting professional coaching to work with my team?

Drop me a line and I would be happy to discuss your situation with you. I’ll take you through a sample coaching session, using your performance improvement goals as the topic of our short discussion. You’ll get a sense for the coaching dynamic, and we’ll talk about the best way to put it this powerful process to work for you.

Consultative Selling

More than half the sales managers I talk with include “consultative selling” on their short list of behavioral changes they’d like to institute with their sales teams. They believe (and I agree with them!) that this approach to selling can provide the critical differentiator you need to outrun your competitor in that race with the bear.

How do you define consultative selling? I think what makes this definition elusive is that the differences between product selling and a consultative sales process are sometimes very subtle and have a lot to do with the relationship side of the expertise – relationship continuum.

A short definition of a consultative sales person:

• A consultative salesperson is one who can resist the temptation to “pitch” their product or solution until they have laid a solid foundation for their further selling:
• They’ve built a high trust and high credibility relationship with the prospect.
• They’ve had sufficient dialogue with the prospect to understand their business environment, critical business drivers, and existing high priority business initiatives.
• They’ve thoroughly validated that their value proposition holds water in the prospect’s specific business environment.
• They’ve discovered that a compelling business case can be built for their solution.

That’s a lot of work and waiting before the “pitch”. Unfortunately, many salespeople don’t have the patience to tough it out. So they pitch ....

It’s the relationship, stupid.

With apologies to James Carville and the ’92 Clinton/Gore campaign, I think what distinguishes a consultative approach from a presentation of features, advantages and benefits is the relationship that is established between the prospect and the salesperson in the very earliest stages of the sales cycle.

Traditional product salespeople rely primarily on their product and service expertise and may not pay enough attention to the relationship side of the equation. For an effective consultative sales conversation to evolve, a prospect must believe that the consultant has useful and credible expertise and that the consultant is someone that the client wants to work with. The saleperson’s approach to asking questions and uncovering information will speak volumes to the client about the depth of their knowledge and their interest (or lack of it) in really helping the client solve their business problems.

What’s different for the client?

A consultative relationship with a salesperson can yield the following benefits to a client beyond the straightforward features, advantages and benefits of the offered solution:

• Education and access to deep subject matter expertise that doesn’t exist within th client’s organization.
• Access to an independent outside perspective and the chance to look at a business problem in a different way.
• Illumination of tough issues or realities that would be difficult or dangerous for the prospect to surface on their own.

But I really am selling a product…..

Can you really sell a packaged product or service as a consultative sale? Most salespeople selling a well defined product such as a computer system or an off the shelf software package find themselves in the dilemma that they really ARE selling a product. How do they reconcile that fact with a desire to sell consultatively?

Even the most effective consultant has narrowed their practice to a finite list of business problems where they have meaningful expertise. So the trick is to have a conversation with the customer that starts out broadly enough to get general information about the client’s business and to allow you to convey your sincere interest in helping them improve their results. The skilled consultant then begins to narrow the discussion down to address the areas that are relevant to their value proposition and where they can really help. Probing around the questions above lets the consultative sales person qualify the opportunity while still providing consulting value, regardless of the outcome of the discussion.

I think it helps to assume at the outset that the sales person will NOT be prescribing a solution on the first sales call. They will invest the entire first call building the relationship, understanding the prospect’s business, presenting their and their company’s qualifications, and earning the right to have further discussions. That’s actually a lot to accomplish in one meeting, and it gives the salesperson a credible reason for the second meeting - to dig in on the details of the business need, and earn the right to present a solution proposal.

Living to fight another day….

Let’s assume for a moment that the discussion does not indicate that the salesperson’s offering will be valuable for the prospect. It’s now the moment of truth for the aspiring consultant. It is here that they will either cement their consulting status or yield it to become a “peddler” again. Can the would-be consultant hold off the temptation to “pitch” if there’s no evidence that the solution will really help the client?

There's no shame in respectfully walking away. If the consultant has managed the discussion in a way that helps the client explore viewpoints and approaches that may not have occurred to them, they have given that prospect real consulting value. I have observed many times in my own career that prospects love the salesperson or consultant that has the patience, wisdom and honesty to acknowledge that they don’t have what the client needs, but still help the client define it and find it. Maybe today there’s no opportunity. The prospect will look for others to bring to that salesperson because they valued the interaction and they want to work with them again.