During this fourth reading circle session, we read all the same book it was Scientific Selling: Creating High Performance Sales Teams through Applied Psychology and Testing by Geoffrey James , and Nancy Martini. We had all one chapter to read, mine was the chapter 6 about The Science of Sales Coaching.

I did  a synthesis of this chapter. 

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First, we have to explain what is the coaching :

The coaching is really different to the assessment and the training but they work together 

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Assessment seeks to evaluate existing skills. Training seeks to improve skills at a specific point in time. Coaching seeks to improve the skills on an ongoing basis. The three work in tandem.

You have to know that the Coaching has a distinct advantage in addressing performance on an individual level.

The objective of coaching is not to motivate but to develop the skills needed to improve performance. This is important so as not to demotivate the employee. 

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How can science improve coaching? 

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With regard to the potential of science to improve coaching, the author identifies two general areas : 

 

1. Assessment tools provide objective insight into the personality of the trainee, enabling the manager to choose the most effective method of communicating with members of his staff (rather than going with his own default preferences) 

2. Skills assessment enables the manager to understand exactly what skill areas need improvement and coach to improve skills that will have a measurable impact on performance.

 

Coaching Problems

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This chapter explain what are the different type of coaching problem :

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Helping employees to improve performance is one of the most difficult and one of the most important tasks of a manager. 

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Problem 1:  Those managers who recognize the need to provide more specific guidance are still poorly equipped - they do not know the reason for any performance deficiency, and must guess what it might be, and they often guess wrong. Very often, the focus is on what was done in the past, with a focus on what was done wrong, rather than focusing on what might be done better in future.

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Problem 2 : Yet another issue is egocentricity: the manager has an idea of how all people learn based on the way that he learns 

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Solution : In order for coaching to be effective, a manager must understand the present skills of the employee and the degree to which they match or fail to match the skills necessary for success.

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A parallel with sport: the mental is very important 

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Indeed, for sport it is said that 90% of the result in a competition is related to the mind, the sportsman can very well know how to win and be trained for it, if he doesn't have the mind to do it. So in professional life it's the same thing. So the coach has to work on the skills, yes, but also on the mind. 

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With that in mind, the focus on skills training should not be exclusive: it is not guaranteed that a person who knows what they ought to do will actually put it into practice. Under pressure to make quota, salesmen will quickly abandon the training they have received and fall into more familiar and comfortable patterns of behavior, in spite of the fact that they are less likely to help them achieve success.

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Sales Coaching and Skills Assessment: skills are important 

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It's been established that attitudes and behaviors can facilitate or prevent skills from being applied in action and that skills training without behavioral coaching has limited effectiveness. At the same time, attitude alone will not result in success - the skills must be taught in order to be applied.

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Unfortunately, skills are often neglected - hiring managers seem to believe that a qualified candidate comes loaded with skills and personnel managers believe that skills develop on their own through work experience. Neither seems to consider that skills are learned and in order to be learned, they must be taught.

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It is up to the coach to develop their skills, a salesman cannot know how to sell well without being explained to him, there is no good natural salesman, the author made the link with a surgeon, who has to do an operation that can be learned. 

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The author explains 4 scenarios of sales coaching here: 

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1: The author describes "the scenario in which a low-skilled salesperson achieves high results - which is actually typical of salespeople who have poor skills in many areas, but take advantage of the few areas in which they are competent to compensate for their weaknesses.

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2: Another scenario involves an individual who scores very high on assessment tests but still has lackluster sales results. Such an individual suffers from a "knowing-doing gap" in which they know what to do but does not execute on that knowledge. This may come from a lack of confidence, inexperience, or bad habits - or they may be following coaching that leads them in the wrong direction. "Sadly, there are many bright people in this world who understand sales but do not have the fortitude to put the skills into action. »

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3: Another example is one in which an individuals scores and performance are both low. This clearly points to a situation in which training and coaching can teach them the skills and behaviors to get better sales results. Provided that their morale has not been devastated, this scenario is the easies to solve, as it's a simple matter of providing them the knowledge and skills.

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4: The last scenario is that of a person who performs well and is performing well - people in this category have reached a plateau and don't know how to improve - or they may be reluctant to try new things because it may be detrimental to their already outstanding performance.

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Cross-Cultural Aspects of Sales Coaching

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The author indicates that selling and sales coaching differ among industries and locations. He offers a number of insights about India, which focuses more on long-term customer relationships than most US firms, and which focuses heavily on coaching and developing their sales reps.