Coaching Results Speak Louder Than Words

By ForceLogix CEO Patrick Stakenas

Behavioral research suggests that the most effective salespeople are those who understand their actions and understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Companies that understand this are typically the companies that have winning sales organizations. It is these same companies that understand the value of measurement of leading indicators and coaching to greater success.

Increasing awareness of the significant impact of sales performance management as a set of processes and information technology is leading organizations to focus on methods to coach sales talent to generate optimal performance. Winning sales organizations are providing a methodical approach to defining, analyzing and managing sales performance indicators.

The coaching of sales individuals and leveraging the experiences of existing talent to improve the performance of the entire sales organization has become a requirement.

As a result, management can examine the required skills that need to be sharpened to deliver the results rather than just focusing on the state of the pipeline or the end of the month’s results.

Using technology to manage the coaching process saves companies weeks and months of time as each coaching session and the score associated with the session can roll up to monthly, quarterly and annual reviews. When done, the chance of sales improving is dramatically increased.

Overall, any company can benefit from having a consistent process for understanding qualitative and quantitative metrics. Once understood and technology is put in place, coaching becomes a daily occurrence rather than an annual event. Improvement on leading indicators can now be tracked and coached on and a resulting increase in revenue is naturally evident.

Patrick Stakenas is president and CEO ForceLogix, which is a Chicago-based company that builds on-demand sales performance management solutions.

Comments

[Gary V Carter]

Wow! All meat and potatoes here. How about adding some human touch and care. More relaxed and supported sales people close more sales. The best way to get more productivity is to care about the complete life balance. That, of course, is part of the meaning of understanding strengths and weaknesses.