PrivateSalesCoach

PrivateSalesCoach Enables Coaching

Obstacles to Coaching

For those organizations who value the power of coaching sales professionals, the challenges are
often as follows:

Making it Real	Getting beyond just a message or a dictum from senior management that “we will coach” or “we will develop our people.”
Finding the Time	Sales managers and executives who are the natural and the anointed sales coaches are driving around the deal-management track at 200 miles per hour with their reps. They just can’t and don’t make frequent or lengthy “coaching pit stops.”
Working a Model	When sales managers in the organization do coach, the thin thread that typically binds together their approaches is a thread pulled from the “seat of their pants.”
Executing Consistently	Because of the typical absence of a coaching model, the pressures of time, and the varying skills of managers, there is little consistency in coaching; there is a lack of consistency in both effectiveness and frequency of coaching.
Equipping Managers	For sales managers and executives to effectively coach, they need a model, tools, practical real-world-execution approaches and, perhaps most importantly, “coaching for the coach.”
Capping the Cost	There are many investment challenges to implementing sales coaching throughout an organization. The investment and cost challenges fall into three broad areas: Training costs – internal or external investments Lost management time – the typically time-intensive nature of coaching pulls management away from the day-to-day problems which they need to address Lost selling time, pit stops – pulling sales professionals out of the deal-management race to coach them

PrivateSalesCoach Solutions to Coaching Obstacles

Making it Real
The leapfrog innovation of PrivateSalesCoach pulls the “reality of coaching” within your grasp. It does so by working magic with the clock, changing the communications of managers and reps during the deal-management race and multiplying the power of every dollar, euro or pound invested in coaching.

PrivateSalesCoach makes coaching “real” because:

It is practical
It is a program, not just a tool
It requires a very modest investment

Finding the Time
“Ten minutes to take off.” This is the hallmark phrase of PrivateSalesCoach.

Ten minutes is the time it takes for a sales professional to get a “Flight Check.”

Flight Checks provide a single picture of where reps are strong and where they are vulnerable in a specific opportunity.

The Flight Check is the first of three elements of the PrivateSalesCoach advice package reps instantly receive for their less-than-ten-minute investment:

Flight Check
Strategy Summary
Next Steps

Working a Model
PrivateSalesCoach provides both a pragmatic model and a practical method for implementing coaching.

This model:

Gives sales managers a simple, repeatable coaching model: look at the Flight Check and ask three simple questions
Provides a consistent standard, a benchmark, in these five dimensions
Shortens—substantially—the data-gathering phase and time required for sales managers to get qualitative information they need about specific opportunities
Provides objective direction as a starting point, so it removes some of the dynamics of “my boss is correcting me”
Enables sales managers to take the objective advice and assess sales professionals’ openness to suggestions
Enables sales managers to take the objective advice and gauge sales professionals’ ability to determine which points are most significant and relevant
Enables sales managers to add context and specific direction to the objective advice
Softens the tone of manager/rep coaching conversations
Shortens the time of manager/rep coaching conversations

Executing Consistently
PrivateSalesCoach enables consistent coaching execution because it is both practical and programmatic.

Practical

Sales professionals – it takes ten minutes or less for the rep
Sales managers – Flight Checks provide quick ‘labs’ for opportunities and sales managers ask only three simple questions to easily and effectively coach their teams
Executive team – Flight Checks provide a simple qualitative view or benchmark of key opportunities

Programmatic

PrivateSalesCoach is implemented as a program with two critical elements:

Execution Best Practices
Set of threshold opportunities with high leverage get Flight Checks, not every opportunity
- Set a two-part cadence:
  - When Flight Checks are run (monthly?)
  - When sales managers and sales professionals together review Flight Checks and patterns (quarterly?)

Limiting the scope to high-leverage opportunities and setting a cadence yields consistent coaching.

Execution Support
In addition to an effective set of multimedia training tools and pre-developed announcement communications, clients select specific support tools from the PrivateSalesCoach support-options list. As a result, each company executes a customized implementation program leveraging best practices.

Equipping Managers
Currently, the burden for coaching sales professionals hangs on the back of sales managers and executives. It would be a serious mistake to make a binary shift and remove sales coaching from the purview of sales managers or executives. This is a mistake for two reasons:

If sales managers and executives are not engaged in coaching, their “tribal wisdom” and contextual insights are lost from the coaching equation. This would be a great loss of company knowledge.
If sales managers and executives are engaged in coaching, they will predictably marginalize the value of the coaching program’s advice because they have not been engaged with it in a first-hand fashion.

PrivateSalesCoach is an enabler for sales managers and executives in coaching:

When the sales manager has a rep run a PrivateSalesCoach Flight Check, it is like a physician running ‘labs,’ x-rays, & MRIs before the physician counsels a patient.
The Flight Check shrinks the time it takes for the sales manager to assess the situation with an opportunity.
The Flight Check provides a specific platform and approach for the sales manager to apply his experience and coach the rep through the context of the situation.

The Flight Check, Strategy Summary and Next Steps provide practical navigation tools to sales managers to which they can and should add their local wisdom and specific recommendations. This approach better equips managers to coach, rather than replacing their coaching.

As part of the implementation program of PrivateSalesCoach, sales managers are given specific tips for coaching reps based upon the profile of their Flight Checks. Regular sales manager conference calls are held to share best practices and ask questions. “Coaching for coaches” best practices are provided, as well.

Capping the Cost
PrivateSalesCoach changes the equation for both the financial return and the cost for coaching.

Financial Return

Our expectations are that clients using PrivateSalesCoach will receive a 10-to-1 return on their investment. If after you have examined the program and its potential impact and you do not envision at least this level of return, then this program is probably not a good fit for your organization. We would enjoy discussing the investment specifics with you through a brief conversation.

Time and Investment

PrivateSalesCoach executes a bit of magic when it comes to time:

The Flight Check radically shrinks the time it takes for sales managers, executives and even sales professionals to assess the company’s strengths and vulnerabilities on an opportunity.
The Strategy Summary and Next Steps radically shrink the amount of time it takes for the team to chart a plan of attack.
The real-time nature of the program provides the rep with on-demand coaching when they want it or need it. The rep does not need to work through the maze of the sales manager’s schedule to get help and direction.
The cadence established for the Flight Checks assures that coaching transpires, regardless of meetings, scheduling conflicts, time of the quarter or time of year.
The intuitive simplicity of PrivateSalesCoach enables the organization to execute from the starting gun to the race in just two weeks.
“Ten minutes to take off” protects sales professionals from being pulled from the deal-management race for coaching pit stops, while still providing them in-race coaching support.

Training and Investment

Leveraging your investments: PrivateSalesCoach is not a replacement for an existing sales process.
It leverages your company’s existing investments in the excellent sales methodologies in the market place.
Avoiding additional consulting or head-count costs: to make coaching “real” within your sales organization, a regiment of internal or external consultants is not required.