Tag Archives: Coach

How Do You Make Sales “Farmers” More like “Hunters”? Three Approaches

Situation: A CEO finds that his sales team are relationship managers who are excellent at growing business in existing customers, but not as skilled at either developing new business opportunities with current customers or bringing in new customers. In sales parlance, they are more like “farmers” than “hunters”. To meet revenue goals, the company needs additional business. How do you make sales “farmers” more like “hunters”?
Advice from the CEOs:
• When working with the team be sure to considering what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you. Communicate with and coach them so that they are inspired to try and adopt new behavior that will help them in their jobs.
• Create a low pressure script for your relationship managers. Build this around easy questions that they can ask both current and prospective clients:
 How are we doing?
 What are your most pressing needs?
 What more could we do for you?
 Can you see other ways that our services could benefit you?
 We have a new offering. May I tell you about it?
 Do you know other companies that can utilize our product or service?
• For training, pair the relationship managers in teams of their choosing. Have them rehearse and coach each other. As they learn or develop new techniques, have them coach the rest of the team.

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How Do You Handle Underperforming Employees? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has several employees who report to a single manager but who are not performing to expectations. The manager is seeking the CEO’s assistance. When faced with a similar issue in the past, the CEO has turned up the pressure on an individual until he or she decided to leave on their own. Is this the best option? How can she resolve this situation and, at the same time, improve company morale? How do you handle underperforming employees?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Letting underperformers go sends a positive message to the rest of the team. It reinforces the message that a high level of performance is expected, and that a low performer won’t be allowed to penalize the overall performance of a team.
  • There is a serious downside to just turning up pressure until an individual leaves.
    • Even low performers usually have friends among the staff.
    • Turning up the pressure on an individual without telling them why creates an impression of unfairness. “Why is Joe being asked to do all of this – particularly when it doesn’t look like he can handle the work?”
    • The most serious downside is that a high performer becomes fearful that the company may have the same “unfair” expectations of him.
  • It is healthier to sit down with an underperformer and face the problem. This also reduces exposure to charges of discrimination.
    • Plan a meeting with the manager and each of the under-performing employees. In each meeting, tell the individual that specific areas of their performance are not up to company standards. Provide objective, measurable examples. Listen to the individual’s reaction.
    • Work with the manager to develop a program with each individual to assess whether they are willing to improve their performance over a specified time frame. Inform them that there will be a decision as to whether they will remain on the team at the end of the time period. Again, listen to their reaction.
    • If an individual does not respond positively and improve performance, it will be necessary to fire them. However, they have received fair warning and a fair chance to demonstrate that they can produce the expected performance.
    • If an individual isn’t interested in performing to company standards, the assessment period gives them time to look for another job.
  • Because these individuals report to their manager, coach the manager on the process outlined above and have her oversee the outcome. Help the manager to make a call after a period as determined with the manager.
    • Continue to coach and support her during this process.
    • Make it clear to the manager’s team that she is in charge of this process.

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How Do You Train Others to Do Your Old Job? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who has just been promoted to an important managerial position within the company. The task for this individual is to train others to do what he has done in the past. However. this individual feels uncomfortable training others to do what he was able to do. He feels like he is obsolescing himself. How do you coach this individual to let go of past responsibilities? How do you train others to do your old job?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This individual was promoted because he excelled in his former job. His mastery of these skills, plus his past management background, prompted the CEO to offer him a managerial position. It is critical to understand that his job and responsibilities are no longer what they used to be.
  • As a manager, an individual is no longer expected to be a “doer”. The primary responsibility is now to select, manage, train, and promote others whose primary responsibility is “doing.”
  • As this individual is coached, encourage him to step back and look at the big picture of his new role.
    • The CEO does not expect perfection from the start. He understands from his own experience that learning management takes time.
    • However, he also knows that to become a new manager requires giving up many of the hands-on activities that one used to perform. The job is no longer to do these yourself, but to coach others to be able to perform these tasks to the standards of the firm.
    • Initially, this takes more time than “doing it yourself.” However, this individual now has talented people reporting to him and they will learn quickly. In a short while, it will take less time to delegate than to do it himself.
    • From a big picture standpoint, a manager justifies the higher salary and greater prospects that come with a new position by training his or her team to do what used to be “their job” at a lower salary than the manager’s current salary.
  • In short, in the role of manager, the better one is at developing others who can take on the skills that they used to demonstrate, the more successful that individual will be as a manager, and the more value they will bring to the Company.

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How Do You Develop an Employee to the Next Level? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who wants a higher level of responsibility. Currently this employee is primarily focused on business development. He’s good at this but wants a higher level of experience. The CEO agrees. How do you develop an employee to the next level?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you ask this individual what needs to be done, what happens?
    • Revenue is number one. This is where he is focused, but he wants more than this from his role.
    • If this is also the CEO’s primary objective then the CEO needs to back off and direct him to split his time between closing high level opportunities and training his direct reports to be able to close lower-level opportunities on their own.
  • To the CEO – thinking about your own experience, how did you mature to a higher level when you had primary responsibility for business development?
    • Answer: I built and trained staff to do this and delegated these responsibilities to them.
    • Allow this individual and other key managers within the company to do the same thing, and coach them along the way.
    • Empower this individual to build his staff and enable them to take on more of the functions that he no longer wants to handle himself. Allow him to prioritize his time to focus on: hiring and training of his key staff and coaching and supervision as they grow into their new roles.
  • Consider this solution as a larger project manager role. Take a key product and empower this individual to design, build and manage the organization to deliver this product.
  • To frame this solution short-term, start with a 1-on-1. Ask about his vision – what he wants as his role and how he sees building this.
    • Follow by laying this out in terms of the company’s objectives – be specific as to what this looks like.
    • Look for a win / win reconciliation between the CEO’s and the employee’s visions that meet both of their objectives. Get on the same page with this individual, so that this fulfills both of your needs.

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How Do You Improve Sales Skills? Four Points

Situation: A company is staffed by a team that is not made up of salespeople, per se, but individuals who have grown with the business and who understand the customer. The staff is divided into teams who serve the company’s customers but with differences in effectiveness. The CEO seeks advice as to how they can best increase their selling level. How do you improve sales skills?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Comparing the teams, what are the differences in effectiveness in sales?
    • The individual with the most classic “sales” personality struggles with sales.
    • An individual with an HR background who knows the customer well is more comfortable with sales and is the highest producer.
    • There are instances of hoarding of information which could improve sales, but this is more frequent within teams than between the teams.
  • Dale Carnegie Sales Courses are a wonderful resource that can improve the skills of individuals both with and without a formal background in sales.
  • Engage in customer research to understand and know the customer.
    • Ask the sales leads in each team head up this research.
    • Their task will be to share their observations about customers and develop new strategies for approaching and meeting the needs of different customers.
    • This sharing should be both within the teams and between the teams.
  • Consider a sales coach.
    • Ask colleagues and search the Internet for a local resource.
    • Look for a consultant who specializes in working with individuals to overcome sales blocks, as well as to develop individualized sales styles that are effective for each person.

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How Do You Create an Effective Staff Back-up System? Three Recommendations

Situation: A CEO has a staffing issue. The company has four product areas but only three strong leads. There are no back-ups for these leads. The CEO feels that the company can’t afford full-time back-ups and is concerned that the presence of back-ups may threaten the leads. How do you create an effective staff back-up system?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • There are two problems, not one.
    • The leads may not be great managers and may not even like managerial responsibility.
    • The company has one administrator with support from the leads.
    • The company’s vulnerability is having an effective lead leave and taking their key core team members with them. This would create a significant hole in the company’s offering.
    • Change the structure – put manager administrators at top and let the leads do what they love to do. Fit the jobs of the leads to their skills and talents.
  • Hire the best #2s that can be found to back up the effective leads. Replace the less effective lead with a new lead.
    • Replace current team members who aren’t as good with new staff. This will provide the funding for the new people.
    • Then separate managers from architects in terms of role. This does not mean a change of compensation, or necessarily even titles. It means aligning roles with talents. It will also mean that individuals will be happier in their roles and will be less likely to leave.
    • Don’t do this all at once, but in gradual stages to avoid panic and allow individuals the time to adapt to their new roles. Act as a coach adjusting the whole team to a new playbook.
  • Consider adjusting the compensation structure to retain the key leads.

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What is the CEO’s Job? Is It for Me? Four Recommendations

Situation: A CEO wants to significantly grow his company, either to prepare for an IPO or to become an interesting takeover target. However, he struggles with delegation. When responsibilities are delegated, the job isn’t done to the CEO’s satisfaction and he ends up doing the work himself. He asks: what is the CEO’s job? Is it for me?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • In order to grow the company to the desired level, it is necessary to hire competent people and delegate. The most important position will be a COO with deep experience organizing people and functions.
    • The CEO’s role is to provide the vision and strategic objectives for the company. The COO’s role is to assure that the right people are in place or hired to do the work necessary to realize the vision and operational objectives.
    • The CEO-COO relationship will be pivotal. If there are specific ways that the CEO wants to see things done, these must be clearly delineated in discussions with the COO.
    • The role of the COO will be to organize the company to reach the growth objective.
  • Hire a competent, talented HR person to plan the organizational development road map, and the positions that must be filled in stages to reach the goal.
    • The growth plans of the company are ambitious. Absent significant change, growth will be limited to a fraction of the current objective.
    • Working with the COO and HR person, build the organizational chart for the size company that the vision imagines. Fill the chart with current personnel where the fit is appropriate. Determine where the gaps exist and build a plan to hire these people in stages.
    • The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber provides an exercise to accomplish this.
  • Hire a high-level assistant to help in areas where the CEO finds it difficult to let go. This will be another key relationship and will be important to learning how to let go.
  • Hire a CEO coach.
    • This will likely be an individual with significant experience who has achieved the growth envisioned by the strategic plan.
    • The CEO Coach will help to draw lines between delegating and micromanaging and will help the CEO to learn to effectively delegate to qualified people.

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Can You Effectively Manage Your Team’s Emotions? Six Ideas

Situation: A CEO recently attended a workshop on awareness of employees’ emotions. The message was that to effectively lead, the leader must be aware of both their own and their team’s emotions, and effectively address these in all communications. How have others acknowledged employee emotions? Can you effectively manage your team’s emotions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • All companies have both cultures and ways in which employees and managers interact. These are either intentional or accidental.
  • It is important to develop a competency model for any company – skills and behaviors that reinforce company culture and guide both hiring decisions and personnel evaluations. Behaviors should be defined by competencies, including both technical and soft competencies.
  • Once a company competency model is established, position descriptions will be variations of the company competency model.
  • A competency model will help you to script candidate interviews. This works whether you use a panel or individual interview format. Questions should address past behavior in specific situations that the individual has experienced. Provide each interviewer with a set of questions that will help the interviewer understand how the candidate expresses soft competencies. Post-interview, get together and discuss how each candidate’s responses compare with the company model.
  • Supplement your interview results with a psychometric test which scores and effectively measure the key soft competencies expressed in your culture. Pair the psychometric test with cognitive testing to assess a candidate’s technical competency.
  • Use similar questions for employee evaluations or coaching situations. The difference will be that in the case of current employees, you will want to have the employee refer to situations and behaviors experienced at work or working with customers or company partners.

Special thanks to Maynard Brusman of Working Resources for leading this discussion.

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How Do You Deal with Management Infighting? Five Points

Situation: A company has two key managers who battle constantly. Recently these battles have escalated. Both people are valuable, but this has become a significant distraction. What’s the best way to handle this situation? How do you deal with management infighting?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Talk to the two people individually. Acknowledge company awareness of the situation and ask what’s going on.
    • Listen – make sure you understand what’s going on.
    • After you listen, coach. The message: I need you to step up. The company counts on you.
  • Both parties must feel empowered by the conversation.
    • Focus on behavior only, not the person.
    • Make sure that each feels validated but with clear direction to change behavior.
      • Acknowledge each individual’s value. Point out the problem, but make it clear that nobody is indispensable.
      • At the same time, be firm as to what is expected of individual behavior as well as individual performance. Set the expectation: either you act in a way which does not harm the company environment, or I will take your notice in 30 days.
      • If either individual can’t agree to this, then that individual is the problem.
    • Revert to guiding principles and values of the company. Raise the conversation to a higher level.
    • Establish what the individual wants from the company. Are their needs currently being met? What can be changed to better meet their needs?
    • An important end point of the conversation – because both are key players – is for each of them to value the other.
    • If, after providing time for the two to resolve their difference, they still can’t make peace with each other, you may have to make a hard decision.
  • Be careful – it may be necessary to take a different approach with each individual.
  • It may turn out that one individual is the instigator and the other is simply reacting to the first’s provocation. In this case, get a 3rd party to coach each of them.
  • Another company recently had this same problem.
    • The CEO sat each person down – talked about impact, big picture and what this does to their image in company.
    • This worked!

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How Do You Recruit a VP of Sales & Marketing? Seven Thoughts

Situation: A company has grown to five times the size that that were when they hired their last Vice President of Sales & Marketing, and are looking for a new VP of Sales & Marketing. What is your advice as they embark on this search? How do you recruit a VP of Sales & Marketing?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Think coach as opposed to star player. You are a much larger company, and at this phase of growth you need an individual with good marketing skills combined with sales management skills. You need a brand builder.
  • Recently, another CEO went through a similar process. His mistake was hiring a person with deep domain experience, when what they really needed was a person with process/methodology experience in complex sales. In your case, consider an individual from a larger company in your industry, or an allied industry. Somebody with knowledge of similar technical sales processes to your company with similar complexity and similar lead flows.
  • Skip head hunters. Based on your knowledge of good companies in your industry use LinkedIn to find who’s who. You can look at three pools of candidates – those that you can hire away from these companies, those who have worked there but are out of work, and early retirees who have found that they now need to go back to work.
  • Research current salary ranges in your industry and plan to be competitive, both base and bonus target.
    • As this individual will be a doer-manager make bonus qualification a combination of personal quota and team performance (overall new sales growth vs. existing projects).
  • While another CEO agrees that you don’t need a head hunter, find someone who can organize the process – review resumes, perform screening interviews, schedule higher level interviews, follow-ups, etc. – and who will work on an hourly basis.
  • Have a job application and be sure to ask for the following:
    • Criminal records,
    • Copies of last W-2s.
    • State on the application: falsehood is grounds for immediate termination.
    • Do or outsource formal background checks including verification of education and degrees.
  • Personally call references for your finalists. Ask these references who else knows this person and speak to them, as well.

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