Why Everybody Needs a Sales Coach
Everybody needs a sales coach, even the most experienced deal maker. A second opinion about strategy and tactics always adds value, even if it’s just cause to check any assumptions.But that’s not the point of this particular article. The sales coach we’re talking about here is the internal coach – somebody on the inside who wants to buy and will help the sales person know what’s being said inside the prospective customer, and how to respond.
We explain this in some detail in the Principles of Professional Selling describing the three emotional phases the buyer goes through during the sales process. At first the prospect is quite open, ready to talk about requirements, and selection process, and influences. In the second phase the prospect becomes more guarded, offering less information about how colleagues are thinking. Provided the progress of the buy/sell process builds confidence the buyer will move into the third phase – coaching the sale.
In the background the buyer has decided a particular vendor’s offer will meet the needs and persuaded others involved in the decision to agree. Now her job is coaching the sales guy into shaping the deal to something acceptable to all of the interested parties.
The sales representative who understands how this happens has an advantage over the competition. Recruiting the internal coach becomes a milestone in the sales plan.
This should be built in to every sales strategy. Deals in which there is no internal coach rarely result in contracts. Recruit a coach and the reverse is true.
The first question sales managers need to ask in the bid review is “who will be our coach?”.
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