Daily Archives: February 8, 2012

Are You Leading Your Sales Team to Excellence?  A former CEO and President wrote me recently commenting on my newsletter article on how difficult it is for sales leaders to teach/coach others.  He wrote, “When it comes to teaching selling to others – great salesmen easily take for granted what they do so well, even effortlessly, and cannot easily pass it on to others, because they never had to struggle to learn/master it themselves. And for that reason, they often struggle as teachers, and cannot understand why others have a hard time doing what came relatively easy to them. They think and say “do what I do”, which of course is very difficult for someone with lesser talent.”

He went on to compare coaching sales people to being an NBA coach. “You see the exact same phenomenon with coaches in sports – where the greatest players frequently fail as coaches – and the greatest coaches were almost always marginal players…NBA legends like Bill Russell, Jerry West, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and other hall of fame caliber players, had short and mostly failed coaching careers. In contrast, nearly all the NBA’s most successful/winningest coaches – Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, Don Nelson, Jerry Sloan, Larry Brown, George Karl, and many others were all marginal players. What made them great coaches is they had to learn how to succeed as players despite limited God-given talent. They overcame their limitations with hard work, self-evaluation, determination, endless practice, etc., which are hard earned lessons that can be mastered and taught to others.”

Do you know how to coach your sales people to achieve their personal best?  In 6 small group teleclasses you can learn a coaching model that will sharpen your ability to lead and teach your team.  Many of us are taught to manage to the numbers and when we become sales managers we focus on quotas, forecasting, and quarterly results.  But managing the team is only half of the job. Improving the skills and the performance of your people is the rest.

Join the Sales Leaders Group beginning March 1, 2012, for 6 sessions and learn a coaching model that works.  For more information, contact Sharon@sparkercoaching.com.