What's the Difference Between a Sales Coach and Consultant?

In recent months, we’ve written about many sales topics and why it makes sense to be process-oriented, thoughtful, intentional, and employ KPIs to enhance your sales efforts and results.

Where does a sales coach come into play and where can your sales organization benefit from a sales coach?

Before we try to answer this question, it’s important to make a distinction between a coach and a consultant:

• A consultant possesses expertise and can be considered a subject matter expert (SME). They will often provide a report or recommendations that they think will lead to a desired outcome. They are often not involved in the implementation and outcome of their work.
• A coach, by definition, means to train or to teach. A good coach will understand people's strengths and weaknesses while promoting and maintaining motivation for those that they work with. Unlike a consultant, a coach will be there through thick and thin to ensure that success is realized.

A major reason for working with a coach is scotomas – blind spots. If you’ve ever experienced a blind spot, you know that it literally didn’t exist until you became aware that it did. We’ve all experienced blind spots, and coaches point out blind spots in athletes during every practice, drill, or game. This concept is just as true in sales coaching, whether it be for business development, sales force management, strategic selling, or simply about sales conversions. A coach will see and notice things others can’t see – at least until they’re pointed out. Needing a sales coach is nothing negative, in fact it’s a positive - a safety net - providing opportunities for greater success.  

Read more on our website!

Sales Management for Your Southeast Michigan Sales Team

As business and sales coaches in Southeast Michigan, we’ve helped many local businesses get their sales efforts on track. If you’re not happy with your organization’s sales results, coaching can be a great option. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, pipeline(s), language, and KPI’s you’re using. So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your entire sales function will lead to better results.

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution?

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales effectiveness and improvement analysis (SEIA) report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We’re here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.

Improving Individual Sales Performance

It’s really easy to put people on the defensive, so with leadership and management, sales team members must understand that they are important players and that asking for information about their results, their pipeline, and activity are the norm. 

The reason for gathering this information is critical to the success of the organization and so is the impact of their individual sales effort – success reaching a sales goal. Information sharing between salespeople and management/coaches should happen on a regular schedule. 

If information sharing hasn’t been a part of your sales efforts, then when it’s first introduced, it may feel foreign and awkward both at the salesperson and at the management levels. We suggest standing appointments at regular intervals – schedule the whole year in advance! Persistence in holding information sharing meetings will win out in the long run.  

For management, information sharing meetings (also known as 1-2-1’s) with salespeople can be magical and facilitate building a relationship, to probe, to support, and to learn of individual successes and challenges, and whether all salespeople have the same struggle. One such area may be talking about money, which can be a challenge for many salespeople. If all your 1-2-1’s suggest this is the case, then a team workshop on how to talk about money with prospects will be valuable. Once the workshop has been held, the learnings that came with the workshop can be reinforced through healthy dialogue during 1-2-1’s.

Learn more about improving your sales team on our website!

Sales Management and a Sales Coach for Your Southeast Michigan Sales Team

As business and sales coaches in Southeast Michigan, we’ve helped many local businesses get their sales process and efforts on track. If you’re not happy with your organization’s sales results, coaching can be a great option. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, pipeline(s), language, and KPI’s you’re using. So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your entire sales function will lead to better results. 

Are you ready to begin your journey?

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution? 

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales effectiveness and improvement analysis (SEIA) report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We’re here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.

Creating Sales Athletes and Improving Sales Performance

In recent months, we’ve written about pipeline(s), CRMs, a common language for your sales team, KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), and sales results. 

Great athletes and other performers such as actors and musicians have coaches, and often have more than one. Why not take this approach with your salespeople? Sales leadership, sales management and sales coaching all play an important role in creating sales athletes. Sales leaders and managers can set the stage for success where sales coaches can get into the nuances of sales.

Some of the approaches we discussed last month can be applied at the salesperson level with answers to the following three questions:

1. Are the results you are getting on target with your individual sales goals (YES or NO)?
2. If NO, how strong is your pipeline (with a good number of viable opportunities at all stages of the sales process)?
3. If the pipeline is weak, what regular activities is the salesperson is engaged in?

Read about how to improve your sales management strategy on our website!

Sales Management and a Sales Coach for Your Southeast Michigan Sales Team

As business and sales coaches in Southeast Michigan, we’ve helped many local businesses get their sales process and efforts on track. If you’re not happy with your organization’s sales results, coaching can be a great option. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, pipeline(s), language, and KPI’s you’re using. So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your entire sales function will lead to better results. 

Are you ready to begin your journey?

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution? 

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales effectiveness and improvement analysis (SEIA) report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We’re here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.

Improve Sales Performance at the Organizational Level

Enhancing sales performance can take place at the organizational level, the management level, the sales team level and at the salesperson level. This isn’t about placing blame; it is about accurately assessing what is and isn’t working as well as it should.

The outcome of your analysis could result in efforts that will both reveal issues and enhance performance that drives results. Some of these include:

•    Clarity around corporate goals, targets, and strategy
•    Is the focus new business or follow-on business, or both?
•    Review of or revision of your defined sales process with stepwise stages
•    Expectations around lead generation and follow-up
•    Role clarification
•    Ride along sales calls (joint/multi-person)
•    Call recordings and review
•    Team training sessions
•    Book reviews (sales methodology)
•    1-2-1 meetings and coaching
•    Role plays
•    And much more

In the final analysis, at all levels of the sales organization, performance can be adjusted for better outcomes. Enhanced performance will show up when answers to the first 3 questions above confirm that the necessary changes have been successfully implemented.

It’s as simple as that! Well, it’s not always simple and it can be a lot of hard work to transition a mediocre sales performance to a great one. Read more on our website!

Improve Sales Performance with a Sales Coach for Your Southeast Michigan Sales Team

As business and sales coaches in Southeast Michigan, we’ve helped many local businesses get their sales performance, process, and efforts on track. If you’re not happy with your organization’s sales results, coaching can be a great option. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, pipeline(s), language, and KPI’s you’re using. So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your entire sales function will lead to better results.

Are you ready to begin your journey?

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution?

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales effectiveness and improvement analysis (SEIA) report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We’re here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.

Sales Performance with Results that Matter

In recent months, we’ve written about pipeline(s), CRMs, a common language for your sales team, and KPI’s - Key Performance Indicators.

Does that cover everything your business needs to succeed? The answer is NO!

With KPI’s we may be able to detect areas that are and are not performing. We may also be able to determine whether each area is ‘systemic’ or something related to an individual salesperson. Using your sales ‘elements’ – topics that we’ve covered in recent months – we need to interpret the information/data we have.

Three questions that will set the stage for un-complicating the complicated:

1.    Are the results you wish to attain being met (YES or NO)?
2.    If NO, what is the state of your pipeline (sales team and sales individuals)?
3.    If the pipeline is weak in any way, is it at the team level or individual salesperson level?

With these 3 questions answered, you will have important information that can direct your focus on interventions. This can be transformative!

Learn more about improving sales performance on our website!

 Improve Sales Performance with a Sales Coach for Your Southeast Michigan Sales Team

As business and sales coaches in Southeast Michigan, we’ve helped many local businesses get their sales performance, process, and efforts on track. If you’re not happy with your organization’s sales results, coaching can be a great option. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, pipeline(s), language, and KPI’s you’re using. So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your entire sales function will lead to better results.

Are you ready to begin your journey?

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution?

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales effectiveness and improvement analysis (SEIA) report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We’re here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.

Sales Process and KPIs

Sales success is multi-dimensional and has many facets. A client we worked with a number of years ago was super-frustrated with the results they were achieving. Their sales had plateaued and had been stuck at the same level for about 6 months. This was not only frustrating, but unfortunate as they had a goal to increase sales by 25% and their efforts to do so were landing well short. Our early evaluation of their sales efforts indicated that the following were in place:

• Goals or targets
• A defined sales process with stepwise stages
• Contacts, leads and prospects 
• A method of tracking their efforts and results in their sales process steps 
• Data to review 

Analysis of their KPI’s affirmed the effectiveness of their marketing, including that they had a good number of inquiries, phone calls, and web-generated inquiries. 

Without these KPIs, a way to measure them, and review them, coupled with a defined sales process, it would have been much harder to detect the cause of their sales plateau and how to correct it. Are these elements in place for your sales success? What are your KPI’s, how are you using them and what is missing that making informed adjustments is a reality? Are your KPI’s specific to the needs of your sales team and its success? What adjustments could you make to enhance your sales management efforts, being able to assess what is and isn’t working, or to drive performance and results for your organization? 

Sales Management and a Sales Coach for Your Southeast Michigan Sales Team

As business and sales coaches in Southeast Michigan, we’ve helped many local businesses get their sales process and efforts on track. If you’re not happy with how your organization’s sales function is doing, coaching can be a great option. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, pipeline(s), language, and KPI’s you’re using. So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your entire sales function will lead to better results. 

Are you ready to begin your journey?

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution? 

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales effectiveness and improvement analysis (SEIA) report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We’re here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.

How KPIs Provide Feedback for Your Business

In recent months, we’ve written about pipeline(s), CRMs, and a common language for your sales team and its efforts. Let’s take a look at the importance of KPI’s – Key Performance Indicators. Which ones are you using: are they leading or lagging ones and how do they help with managing or enhancing your sales performance and efforts? 

In the most basic sense, KPI’s provide feedback:

• About results
• About results as compared to a goal
• About the strength of your pipeline
• About the level of sales activity with your sales team and its members
• About the effectiveness of your sales process
• About how well your sales process is being followed
• About where sales process elements are not being executed well
• About how well each sales team member is doing, what they are doing well and where their performance could be positively impacted 

Sales success is multi-dimensional and has many facets. A client we worked with a number of years ago was super-frustrated with the results they were achieving. Their sales had plateaued and had been stuck at the same level for about 6 months. This was not only frustrating, but unfortunate as they had a goal to increase sales by 25% and their efforts to do so were landing well short. 

See what our early evaluation of their sales efforts indicated on our website!

Sales Management and a Sales Coach for Your Southeast Michigan Sales Team

As business and sales coaches in Southeast Michigan, we’ve helped many local businesses get their sales process and efforts on track. If you’re not happy with how your organization’s sales function is doing, coaching can be a great option. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, pipeline(s), language, and KPI’s you’re using. So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your entire sales function will lead to better results. 

Are you ready to begin your journey?

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution? 

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales effectiveness and improvement analysis (SEIA) report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We’re here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.