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hello to you and thank you for landing here on well one of my favorite topics actually how to coach a sales call with a member of your team so to be really clear i'm talking about coaching a call or a sales meeting that your rep has held and you have set aside some time for a coaching session to run through the call with your rep the question is how do you do that well and so in the next 10 12 minutes i'd like to cover three things with you the goal of the sales coaching session how to run a cool coaching session with a member of your team and finally assessing your own performance as coach so let's dive in so when you're in a co-coaching session what is the goal by the end are you thinking about the areas the rep needs to improve the most maybe you're thinking about the reps path to improvement how do they get how do they get there or maybe it's as much about recognizing the sales rep for what they're great at as it is about what they need to strengthen and those things are great all those things they matter however from this video onwards i'd like you to think about one word that would summarize your goal of a call coaching session with a member of your team which is ownership i believe the most important thing we do when we coach is develop our sales reps sense of ownership let's just spend a couple of minutes on this when we feel a strong sense of ownership you know two things happen firstly we have higher level of self-motivation and just think how important that is in sales that drive we need to succeed to find the strength to pick ourselves up to put ourselves in vulnerable situations and the second thing that happens when we feel strong sense of ownership is that so does our attachment to our outcomes we feel intimately attached to the outcome to the result we care about where we end up i don't think any of us would argue with the fact that we would like highly self-motivated reps attached to their outcomes and those two things are the benefits of having a strong sense of ownership the question is how do we develop it and there's research that suggests that there's two things that raise our sense of ownership the first thing is decision making are our reps responsible for the important decisions related to their performance and the second is self-investment our reps allocating time each week to training and to developing their skills those are two simple things let's just reflect on each of them for a moment when it comes to decision making just think how many important decisions are served up for your team this is the target this is the target you'll hit this is the territory this is the area you'll go after this is the process these are the steps you'll follow and these are the tools you'll need to do your job for all really good practical reasons there is a ton of critical decisions made for our reps on their behalf and when it comes to self-investment just think how much of your week how much of your team's week are they spending investing in themselves versus on the sales process treadmill repeating one activity after another just consider how a nudge more time invested improving their skill could positively impact their sense of ownership and so here's an opportunity as leaders to use our call coaching sessions to really develop that sense of ownership using decision-making and self-investment to guide our framework but before we dive into the framework we should touch on the negative side of ownership an increased sense of ownership can have its negative side effects because that feeling of ownership that weight of responsibility we feel it can lead to us doing two things it can lead to us failing to delegate and it could lead to territorial behaviour so how can that interfere with your coaching session with a member of your team well this is not actually about the sales rep this is actually about you as the sales leader and that strong sense of ownership that you're likely to feel you're used to making good decisions you're used to feeling the weight of the revenue target on your shoulder and you are certainly heavily invested in the outcome produced this can lead us to us making decisions for our reps and it can easily slip us out of coach mode so we need to watch out for the following watch out for sentences that sound like i think it would be helpful if don't railroad the coaching session by dictating your own agenda this is about the rep their development their goals watch out for sentences that start with in my experience i think be careful not to replace coaching questions with problem solving for the rep because that will immediately diminish any sense of ownership watch out for sentences that sound like i really think you should have coaching sessions are not about judgement well out for sentences that include i'd expect you should be encouraging the rep to set their path forward to meet their expectations that is a really important part of ownership and finally watch out for the biggest error maybe the most frequent error focusing on the deal instead of the person be careful not to turn this into a pipeline review that's where deal planning and progression should sit this is about developing the person's ability so stay true to that so in the next few minutes i'm going to walk you through a really simple framework which you can also download after if that's useful my goal here is to make it simple so that you can just pick it up and start using it today in your coaching sessions so there's three areas there's the introduction very simple this is just where we're going to set some expectations there's explore this is the real bulk of the coaching session this is where you're going to spend time listening to the reps feedback on the sales call and then there's the last section the path where we're really going to look forward and look at gaining commitment on the change the rep is looking to see and understand how they're going to make it happen what i'd like to do now is to share with you a handful of questions that i find useful in coaching that will put your coaching sessions on the right path forward so let's start right at the beginning with the introduction there's three layers to each part and the first is discovery i open every sales coaching session with the same question what would you like from this coaching session that question does three things firstly it signals to the rep this time is dedicated to you and your development you're setting the objective secondly it signals to you as the leader it's about your sales reps journey it's not about yours and finally it provides clarity on what the sales rep would like to achieve by the end of the session so you really know what your job is and how you can be a great coach to your rep during that time then you want to start to narrow the focus which really means just dive in a bit deeper as a sales coach i want to really understand what about the call was so special that it deserves our joint attention in a coaching session if you don't know why prior to the session then certainly start by asking what made you select this call there's an accountability thing for me here people who take their development seriously and really want value from their coaching sessions will carefully think about the calls they choose and you should give your sales rep a chance to voice that and understand it and then once they've explained why the call was selected simply ask the rep to share more the example question on the screen is so you selected this call to look at how you handled the competitor conversation can you tell me more about that can you share more about that at this point the rep will give you some headlines of why the call was different why they might have found it uniquely challenging maybe they tried something new they were proud of but maybe looking for some reassurance and then to finish off the introduction session you're simply going to repeat the reps goals of the session so you've headlined your focus together and you've really shown that you've listened and that you really care before you dive into more depth so let's explore phase two which is the explore phase funnily enough there's two parts in the explore phase there's the strengths and the areas to improve and i love to start talking about the strengths in the call and asking the rep what they thought they did well i've been coaching for many years and it appears we're really well conditioned to look for the negative things and actually we need to work hard to train our minds to look for the strengths because those things they're important for other reps to recognize in themselves it it really builds confidence and it helps us as leaders to congratulate the rep on those areas so it's a great place to start once your rep has explained what they did well in the call you can start to narrow their focus by understanding what was so great that they want to repeat it what was so great that they want to build it into their personal playbook or maybe even share it with their teammates to learn from as well and then before you move on to part two you're going to recognize what you thought they did really well in the call because you'll probably have picked up on some things that are different so this is your opportunity to share them and then repeat back what the rep would like to add to their playbook then you move on to part two what would you like to strengthen and you know there is one important goal with this question which is to make sure that the rep identifies the area they need to work on that will be most impactful on his or her performance you will know what that is going into the coaching session but you're looking to see if you and your rep are both aligned here it doesn't matter if the rep lists lots of things at this point that's quite normal but pay attention do they list what i call the game changing area and so one of two things is now going to happen you're either going to have an aware rep meaning they've discovered their game changing area that they really need to focus on or you're going to have an unaware rep meaning they've not picked up on it so in scenario one let's imagine the rep is aware of the area they need to strengthen you're going to get your rep to explore that area further by asking something like what other approach could you have tried it's a great question to start the conversation around what the rep could have done differently and it can be used multiple times if it needs a few attempts to get to the best solution in scenario two the rep hasn't shown any any awareness of the key area they really need to work on my favorite question to ask is how did the customer react when i love asking the question in a way that gets the rep to relive the moment through the eyes of the customer to see if it helps them spot what you can already see and if that question doesn't work so well then you can try asking can you share your thoughts on what happened here to begin the conversation and focus their attention on the area of the call where they need to develop the key thing in all this in all situations is that you're using questions to guide the reps decision making and help them discover their opportunities rather than telling them and so to finish off this section you're going to repeat back the two things firstly you're going to recognize the rep what they did well and finally you're going to confirm what their key area to focus is on working on the final section is path which is now moving your rep's thoughts into what happens now zone and getting them to think about how do they do something constructive to learn and grow from the coaching session and a great way to open up the discussion is by asking what ideas have they got and how they can work on their game changer i like this question because it encourages an open mind and it encourages your work to share whatever's going through their head whatever they have flowing through their mind but as you narrow the focus on this area you're going to help the rep identify if their plan is achievable and how they can make sure it happens so start by asking what they're going to commit to doing to improve and then you need to make sure that there's no blockers what could get in the way is a great tester question to make sure the rep hasn't set themselves up for failure before they've even started i love to ask how can i help you be accountable because the answer gives you permission to encourage offer help and inspect how things are going without it coming across like you're an interfering old boss but here's the best bit about the path forward section the path forward will involve your sales rep investing in their own development and that commitment to investing in themselves will fulfill part two of the equation self-investment helping to increase his or her sense of ownership so by the end of your coaching session you've asked the questions that have taken your sales rep on a journey through their call allowing them to make some really great decisions about where what they're going to repeat what they're going to work on and most importantly how they're going to do it and so to end your call coaching session you're going to wrap up with the third and final section and there's three key parts again you're going to reinforce where they're shown make them feel great about their strengths in the call you're going to repeat back their plan on what they're going to work on so you're both really clear and you're going to get confirmation about how you can best support as they develop in their role and focus the energy on that game-changing area and there you have it three areas divided into three parts that you can use during your next coaching session to help your sales rep ownership develop whilst giving them the freedom to make decisions about the call and putting a pan in place to improve actually improvement is a really good place to end this on how you know you've done a good job as the coach because we're forever assessing our sales reps against metrics what metrics determine whether you've retained your coach position throughout the meeting the first indicator is the listening v talking ratio you should be listening way more than you're talking aiming for that 80 to 20 split the second indicator are you asking questions or are you giving answers because you should be doing far more asking than directing in your coaching session especially if we're going to meet the goal of developing ownership let's aim for a 10 90 10 split and then my favorite indicator the one that will most likely forgive other sins is if we show up fully present if we show up we showing we care with 100 of our energy and zero distractions just quality time invested in listening to your rep and displaying your commitment to their investment their development as your leader 100 energy zero distractions so thanks very much for watching remember that the framework for what we've covered today is in the comments under this video i hope it's helped thanks for listening enjoy