DIY Management: How to coach a sales team

Telus Corp. and the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA), headquartered in Toronto, launch a new sales training and certification program for the Vancouver-based telecom's employees this fall. CPSA president and CEO Peter Irwin, and Louis Morin, VP of sales performance culture at Telus, share a few tips

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Telus Corp. and the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA), headquartered in Toronto, launch a new sales training and certification program for the Vancouver-based telecom’s employees this fall. CPSA president and CEO Peter Irwin, and Louis Morin, VP of sales performance culture at Telus, share a few tips

 

1. Invest in your leaders

Companies have a tendency to promote their top salespeople to sales director, but they don’t spend time coaching the coach, notes Morin. “The best return on investment is to make sure that first of all you invest in your leaders, because they have to coach, and they have to help their sales team.”

2. Define what you’re coaching for

Doing a needs assessment of the person to be coached is key, Irwin advises. “Once you’ve undertaken that needs assessment, you know what the needs of that person are. Then, from a company’s perspective, one needs to develop a plan.” The plan can be something the coach does on their own or an external training program. 

3. Provide a structure

“When I was a young sales director, I thought I was a great coach because my door was always open—I was always ready to help my salespeople,” Morin says. “But if you’re not structured, what happens is that you’re only going to talk about issues and problems. You’re never going to take time to really talk about, ‘Let’s practise on the messaging or the call planning. Let’s review an opportunity together, and I’ll challenge you and try to bring you some ideas
and values.'” 

4. Reinforce the training

Many organizations undertake some type of training but fail to follow up with coaching and reinforcement, Irwin points out. “Don’t put somebody in a course for three hours and expect the problem to be solved,” he says. “That’s the start of a learning journey. As a coach and as a manager, your job is to continue to reinforce the learning and the behaviours that are expected from what was being taught in that course.”

5. Measure performance

“There’s a saying, ‘If it doesn’t get measured, it doesn’t get done,'” Irwin says. “If you’ve got something that you’re trying to train against, to coach against, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got some definable metrics which you can measure your progress against. Louis and his organization are very much focused on having things called KPIs, key performance indicators.”