Why Consultative sales coaching outperforms traditional sales management

Children observe what you do. Not what you say.

Most sales managers spend less than 10% of their time coaching their staff, and only a third of them do so on a weekly basis.

And yet, of the 4 key skills of a sales team manager, coaching, motivating, developing, recruiting (Editor's note - no, selling is not one of the key skills of a sales manager - the skill of coaching is the most critical. It's also one of the most difficult skills to learn and master).

When a team has to sell in a consultative way, the ability to coach on how to be consultative adds to the complexity of the exercise.

There's an expression when bringing up children: children observe and repeat what you DO, not what you SAY. The same applies to sales people. If a sales manager deploys consultative coaching, it will be more natural for the sales person to take a similar approach with their prospects.

Think about it: what do you expect from your salespeople in the field? If you have a product with low value and low complexity, selling consultatively is not necessary. But if you don't, most managers would answer this question by saying, "Let my team sell consultatively to upsell and build lasting relationships".

Since selling consultatively doesn't come naturally, what better approach is there for the team to acquire this expertise than to demonstrate it through consultative coaching?

What is consultative coaching?

So, consultative sales coaching is a type of training that helps sales teams to understand their customers' needs, challenges and vision, helps them to qualify prospects in or out so that they can invest the right company resources at the right time and offer them solutions at the right time, to the right people. It also helps to extract the maximum value for the selling company while reducing the risk of ending up having to negotiate.

A salesperson's ability to deploy this approach obviously depends on more than just technical skills. It also depends on their willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve their objectives. This is known as the will to sell. See also a video here on this subject.

Consider the following example:

• A poorly performing salesperson who has not developed consultative skills will present their product or solution earlier in the sales process than is prudent, before they have learned about the challenges the prospect faces, the consequences and the reasons why they are buying from them. He is likely to receive a lot of "I'll have to think about it" from his prospects after the presentation, and his pipeline will be full of unqualified leads - the "bloated pipeline" phenomenon.

• In contrast, a successful consultative salesperson will discover the compelling reasons why prospects and customers want to buy from him by using his active listening skills to ask relevant (despite the challenges of implementing active listening), difficult and timely questions. He doesn't present solutions until he has a deep understanding of the problems and knows that the prospect must and will solve them.

Let's apply this to consultative sales coaching:

• A sales coach who would be called "non-consultative" generally doesn't spend enough time, if any, reviewing key meetings with his salespeople. They don't have coaching hours in their timetable and they don't know their salespeople's personal objectives, so they don't really know what motivates them to change the way they do things. When talking to a sales person about how a meeting with a prospect or customer went, they are likely to tell them what to do instead of asking advisory questions such as, "What did they say when you asked them what their current supplier did to help them solve the problem?" or "What did they say when you asked them how long the problem had been going on?".

• Sales managers with consultative sales coaching skills ask lots of questions and help the sales person understand what they haven't yet discovered about the opportunity. They are consultative in their coaching.

26%. Or why consultative coaching matters?

Consultative sales coaching is important because it is personal, based on the salesperson's situation, motivation, hopes and dreams. Sales coaching is essential for all organisations, as salespeople who depend on a manager with strong consultative coaching skills tend to have 26% more opportunities to close at a later stage.

Unfortunately, most sales managers rise through the ranks of their company because they are good salespeople and therefore know how to sell themselves - or in the case of CEO led teams, the manager has not acquired the necessary coaching skills from previous experience and, in some cases, does not understand that a salesperson cannot sell like a founder -.

However, they are not necessarily (by any means) as competent at coaching their salespeople. Sales managers need a coaching system (process, methodology, leadership that supports the approach and sees selling as an important skill and not a burden that is useless because the only thing that matters is the product) to know when and how to intentionally and effectively coach their salespeople.

Consultative coaching: the specific skills needed.

Of the important skills needed to coach in a consultative way, we believe the following are key (see here to download examples of sales manager profile assessments):

1. Debriefs effectively after important calls

2. Is effective on joint calls

3. Asks quality questions of salespeople

4. Understands the impact of a salesperson's sales DNA

5. Can demonstrate an effective sales system (methodology and process)

6. Is effective in obtaining commitments from salespeople (based on their personal motivations)

7. Consistently trains skills and behaviours (consistency is one of the 5 pillars of Curiosity)

8. Understands the impact of a salesperson's willingness to sell

9. Is effective at integrating new sales staff

10. Has a passion for coaching