Coaches - Do Your Sales Skills and Behaviors Adversely Affect Your Goal to Increase Sales?

Does your coaching practice need to increase sales?already decided to embrace an education based
Have you consider how your sales skills and themarketing approach, you give your qualified potential
respective behaviors as a coach are directly tied tocustomer a complimentary sales assessment ($750
your ability to achieve this goal? Here are two (2)value). He takes the assessment and you invest 1.5
quick case studies that demonstrate this statement.hours to debrief him.
Scenario OneThen he requests that you speak with the VP of
Imagine you are at your desk. The phone rings. You,International Sales as this person is part of the decision
as the sales coach, executive coach or businessmaking process. The two of you connect and forward
coach, decide to let voice mail take it because caller IDprogress is made once again on your way to earn the
indicates caller unknown.sale. You also need to give this person the same
What did you do? Possibly, you checked voice mailassessment.
right away (this is a behavior) and heard the followingWithin 2 hours after ending the conversation with the
message: Hi, this is Tom, give me a call, I:VP, you send off the email for this complimentary
- Read one of your articlesassessment. Then you send a quick email with your
- Came across your websiteoriginal contact updating him of what happened and
- Would like a free coaching sessionthe next steps in the process.
Your behaviors might have been toOne week later you still have not received the
1. Look at your schedule:completed assessment. Instead of sending another
2. Review your to do listemail, you call your first contact, the General Manager.
Then you made a decision this was not a urgent callHe informs you that the VP never received the email.
to return and your behavior was to place it in your NotYou promise to re-send the email and cc the general
Urgent-Important pile or even Not Urgent-Not Importantmanager on the email. The General Manager thanks
pile. You possibly think that if he was a real interestedyou for your personal follow-up and by not relying on
potential customer (a.k.a. prospect) he would have atemail. He shares with you this is the type of behavior,
least left his company's name or have asked for anvalues and sales skills he wants all his sales people to
immediate returned call.demonstrate.
Your behavior (action) of putting it in the one of your toSales Coaching Lesson Shared: Scenario One did
do files may have just doomed your goal to increasehappen to me and I did return the call within 15 minutes
sales. By making a judgment based upon a voice mailafter receiving the voice mail. I was on my cell phone
can cost you increased revenue.when the call came over my land line. The call was
If you have a values statement within your strategicfrom the General Manager cited in Scenario Two of a
action plan, you possibly just violated it. Does yourmulti-million international company who was seeking
values statement make any reference to customersales training. Had I made judgements from not
service, honesty, integrity, being responsive orreturning phone calls to relying only on technology, I
accessible, doing what is right, etc. Did you ever thinkpotentially would never had the opportunity to develop
that individual who left you a voice mail was justthese relationships and probably would have lost the
checking you out to confirm if you were a person ofopportunity to continue to earn this sale.
integrity and looking to how well you demonstratedYour judgement or decision making process is literally
excellent sales skills given that you have identifiedthe why behind the hows of your sales skills and
yourself as a sales coach?behaviors. Remember, as you judge or make
Scenario Twodecisions about others so are you judged. The bottom
You are working with someone within your salesline question is can you afford someone negatively
process with the goal to earn the sale. As you havejudging you if your goal is to increase sales?