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Managers: Are You a Wonder Leader?

Take the "Wonder Leader" test!

When it comes to direct reports, many managers are constantly trying to figure things out. They question employee performance asking, “Why won’t my employees do what I tell them?” or “Why won’t they do what it takes to be successful?” Managers may also wonder, “Are my employees happy? What is going on in their heads right now?”

This purpose of this article is to help you identify if you are a Wonder Leader. A Wonder Leader is a manager who spends more time wondering about, than learning employees, mindsets, challenges, and opportunities that could help you better understand and improve your team.

Take the Wonder Leader Test below. Answer “True” to any of these questions if you catch yourself saying or thinking the statements that follow:

I am often frustrated my employees don’t do what I ask. “I wonder why they won’t…”

I don’t understand why we can’t achieve our goals: “I think my employees should work harder…”

I claim my employees are lazy, stupid, or insubordinate: “I think they are just…”

Employees quit and I don’t know the reason: “I wonder why they left…”

Employees quit and I assume I know the reason: “I think they quit because…”

I feel like my employees talk about me behind my back: “I wonder what they say after meetings when they huddle at the water cooler…”

Answer “Yes” to at least 3 of the questions above, and you could be a Wonder Leader.

Being a Wonder Leader is very frustrating and even dangerous to your career. Never really knowing what is going on can take its toll on you as a manager. In fact, some managers even quit, step down, or get fired due to the problems that arise from being a Wonder Leader.

This happens for three reasons:

1.       You Make Costly Assumptions.  

You should not act on an assumption. If you do the results could be devastating. You may be deciding that the worst-case scenario is happening. HINT: It’s probably not the case. You can’t treat the disease without knowing the illness. Making the wrong decision due to a false reality probably isn’t a good career move.

2.       You Damage Your Brand.

Making a data-driven decision is critical in many areas and management is not exempt in this instance.  Telling people what they’re thinking or presenting assumptions as facts lessens your credibility as a leader.  When you don’t have the answers because you are wondering, you can appear incompetent or naive.

3.       You Can’t Improve.

Growth occurs when you bring knowledge to the table.  The Johari Window model states that bringing information into the arena makes something common knowledge for all involved parties to understand, and this is the point in which growth occurs.  . When you withhold “facades,”pretending you know the answer, assuming you know, or not knowing and being ok with that, you never get the opportunity to improve, nor do other parties involved.

Now that we’ve helped you understand how to determine if you, or a colleague, is a Wonder Leader, and the dangers involved, I will let you in on the good news:There is a cure!

Stop Wondering and Assuming and START ASKING!

When coaching a Wonder Leader, I openly ask, “Why won’t you ask?” There are usually three reasons this doesn’t happen:

1.       They fear a negative response.

2.       They don’t believe it will make a difference.

3.       They don’t know how to ask.

Here are a few tips for overcoming these three, growth hindering obstacles. First, let’s address number one.  If you approach someone in the right way, recruit them to the cause by ensuring they know the benefit that can come out of a coaching conversation, they probably won’t respond negatively. Ensure they know the goal of the conversation up front, prior to laying the questions on them. You could recruit them by saying something like, “I want to ensure you are growing in your career, and as my direct report I feel it’s my responsibility to find ways to help you improve… Is now a good time to have a conversation about (insert what you are wondering about here)?”

Some people are too busy to slow down and try to explain something to someone, meaning you don’t believe you have the time to help. Other leaders  may think that even if I tell them, they won’t change. Here’s the bottom line, and I quote Wayne Gretsky, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

You owe it to your direct reports to discover the problem through questioning. You took the job as their leader: No one put a gun to your head. You also owe it to your employees to help solve the problem after you understand the situation. Seek to understand, and help your direct reports create an action plans that will solve the issues. You won’t have to wonder anymore and things will improve. If they don’t improve, at a minimum, you’re now able to decide next steps with a clean conscious

Finally, to address the last reason, and in my opinion the easiest to address. Ask your employees how you should ask! When you address them from a place of care, with their improvement in mind and recruit them from that place, you can get them to tell you everything.  You don’t even need to think of the question!

For Example: If you’re thinking,  “I wonder why they left?” You could call your former employee and ask, “I want to improve the workplace and prevent losing more good employees like yourself. How could I ask you what happened in a way that you would be willing to help me understand what happened?”

When you stop wondering, stop assuming, and take the time to ask why in an open and respectful way, you can get to the bottom of almost any challenge. Only after deeper questioning can you really understand their mindset and help them overcome it.

This blog is an excerpt from Sean Kelley's upcoming book on sales management.

About Sean Kelley

Sean works with managers to achieve great results through their people. Sean has extensive diversity in leadership ranging from Special Ops combat veteran, company owner, general sales manager of top auto dealers, and a software company executive. Sean will help your managers find purpose, create a growth mindset, create more self-accountability and effectively develop your teams through his unique, customized approach to coaching. If you are interested in exceeding your goals and building an inspirational leadership team, email Sean directly: Sean@KelleyCoaching.com or visit www.KelleyCoaching.com.

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INCREASE SALES COMISSION WITH ONE REALIZATION

Years ago I came to one realization, that altered my behavior and activities which ultimately impacted my sales and commission checks. I want for you as a sales professional to come to this same realization so that you may earn a greater living as I did. REALIZE WHO PAYS YOU Depending on your place of employment you may get a check, weekly, bi-weekly, or sometimes monthly. Direct deposit or check in hand, most sales people receive their pay directly from their companies account. As such, many sales people believe it is their employer that pays them. On the other end of the spectrum you have the sales people that believe they are paid by themselves. "I am my own business.", is a catch phrase often used by company salespeople. Hard work, dedication, and the daily grind creates a façade where, "I pay myself through my closing skills." If you really want to know who writes your checks, simply follow the money. Your bank > Your Employers Bank > Your Buyers Bank As sales people, we must adopt the mentality that our pay check comes from our buyer NOT from our self, or from our employer. The value, urgency, relationship, and enthusiasm that we transfer to the client is directly related to the paycheck we earn, from our buyer! SALES PEOPLE CAN MAKE LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE Even top earning sales people earn less than minimum wage when we fail! We must understand that the buyer has the right to pay us zero dollars. That’s right, your buyer doesn’t have to follow federal or state minimum wage regulations. If you spent the day with a prospect, and don’t earn the business, you didn’t even earn minimum wage that day. Truly do an amazing job with that customer and earn yourself much more than minimum wage! DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU Most sales people won't ignore their managers calls or emails. The vast majority of sales people would follow up with their company owner after an important meeting. Most sales people are extremely respectful to the leaders of their company, even when they don’t get what they want. Since we are now of the understanding who really feeds us, technically not the people above us in our company... Can we now begin to treat our customers with the same respect? Can we follow up better, interact better, and react better to what they do? Start treating every customer like they are your boss. Realize the customer gets to decide if you get fired right now (no purchase), or give you a massive raise today (big purchase and referrals)! SHIFT YOUR MINDSET AND INCREASE YOUR COMISSION Make this shift in mindset right now, and watch your paychecks skyrocket. This works every single time. Remember: The money you make is a biproduct of how you treat your buyers. How you treat your buyers is directly related to your perception of their value to you. The value your customers see in you and your wares are directly related to how you treat them! Realize that your buyer is writing your paycheck and increase your commission immediately.

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Myth: The Key to Employee Growth is Through a Promotion

Employees all over America feel they have hit a ceiling at their current employer. Once this feeling has set in, unless turned around, these employees often find themselves in search of a new job. A job where they may move up in their career. As a result, human resource people or managers find themselves looking for a new employee, to replace the skilled professional that left.   Whether the ceiling they feel they've hit is perceived or real, this poses a challenge for employers who depend on tenure and experience as a building block to company success.  

As a manager, when faced with the question, "Why don’t you do something to prevent this tenured employee from leaving?" Most employers reply, "We simply can't "promote" everyone!" They use this as an excuse to live with the problem. Instead of living with this problem, knowing full well we can't promote everyone, let's talk about 5 ways to solve this challenge. The key objective being to give your employees the feeling that they are moving up regardless of their duration in their current job role. In doing this, you will help your team improve and stay engaged, even if they are locked in their current role for the time being.

1. Questioning what strengths your employees are not utilizing in their current role. This will shed light on what potential responsibilities you could give a particular employee to help them feel they are growing in their career. Allowing them to start unlocking their strengths to help impact your organization positively and will help meet this crucial growth need.

2. Create an Opportunity: After discovering which employees feel they are not moving upward you can further discover ways you could better utilize their skills. Is there potential to give them more responsibility or more duties that would allow them to showcase their talents and also help your organization? Can you work out a win/win/win where the employee, the business and the customer all benefit from the move?

3. Set realistic expectations with them on what the new role entails. Often people want to move up but aren't capable of taking on a new role. The disconnect stems from blind spots or being unaware of exactly what the new role entails. Sitting down and reviewing what skills are necessary, what the expectations would be to move up, and what it takes to succeed in that next role are extremely important. Many times you can set them on the right path to reach their goal. Or, they may decide moving up doesn’t seem as appealing anymore. Either way, once they understand the real responsibilities they will have to face down you will discover if you are grooming the right person for the next level in your organization. The key is the employee knowing they are moving towards their goal, even if the position is not available yet.

4. Show them another way to measure career improvement by proving to them they are moving in the right direction! Again, since career improvement is not always measured by promotions or pay raises: we can capitalize with other means. What areas of development could you track to help the employee grow that could ultimately impact their pay, their skills and the success of the company? The key being regular ongoing aspiration coaching, proving to them regularly that they are moving forward by uncovering, acknowledging, and celebrating their wins.

5. Ensure other employee engagement needs are met or exceeded! Have you ever heard an employee say, "You know, even though I don’t get X or Y at my employer... I stay because of Z!" I'm not giving you a license to ignore the lack of development and career growth problem. I'm just adding that there are many other needs employees have to feel engaged. If you are able to meet those needs, you can keep employees engaged and essentially create an environment that is "good enough" which could prevent much of the unnecessary turnover. A great book on this topic that outlines employee engagement needs is "Nine Minutes on Monday", by James Robbins.

These 5 key tactics can certainly help meet the employee career advancement need without actually needing to promote someone. This will help you lower turn over, increase tenure, create employees that will do what it takes to succeed, and make you a hero of a leader for your organization!

There are many other ways to accomplish this that are not posted in this blog. How do you, as a leader, fill this important need, even when the structure of the organization doesn’t allow for a promotion? What tactics, skills, or means do you use to keep employees engaged who may otherwise feel frozen in their current roles?

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Failure Is an Option!

In 2003, I was sent to the Middle East as an Assistant Team Chief on a Special Operations team. I found myself living on an oil refinery in the sweltering desert just outside Mosul, Iraq. In an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, we would run missions at all hours of the day and night. One of our missions was to learn about our target audience, then create and deliver information to that audience. Through leaflets, newsletters, radio, and loudspeaker we kept citizens of various cities informed of progress and plans toward rebuilding a better government and infrastructure.

While waiting to kick off a mission, it was not uncommon to wind up sitting in a Hummer for hours with a salty Sergeant First Class, Vietnam veteran type named SFC Willard. He had been a teacher in his civilian life and he quit due to disagreements in the curriculum. One day he was telling me about the lies public schools were telling our children. In his opinion, the biggest lie of all was, “It’s OK to fail, as long as you try”. I remember him passionately spouting off, “Failure is not OK, failure is NOT an option, and effort is irrelevant!”

Though I admired Willard's conviction and drive to succeed; when I really thought about it, I realized I had failed multiple times in my life. A lot of my failures were in my control, but some circumstances of the failures were totally out of my control! Out of fascination around his beliefs and sheer boredom, I decided to make a list of my failures. The list was quite large, the volume immense, yet still I was moving forward towards my goals. This fact contracted the statement, "Failure is NOT an option." Why?

When I started my executive coaching, employee development, and consulting business, I found it shocking how many professionals had some degree of atychiphobia, or fear of failure. If I had experienced that fear myself, it may not have been such a mystery to me. Since I possess the team building leadership strength, “positivity,” I often see the silver lining, and potential negative outcomes are not my focus. In addition, having inventoried the failures of my past while sitting in the desert, I had learned how great it actually is to fail.

Quite simply, I had to help people overcome the paralysis that the fear of failure causes. I started looking back through all my coaching files, trying to discover the reasoning behind the fear of failure, and discover a solution anyone could apply. The answer came to me after finding my old list of “failures and lessons learned” in a box of things I brought back from Iraq. The solution was also there in all the action plans my clients had used to conquer this challenge. There are three things we need to understand about failure to make it a viable option.

Before we cover those three realizations, let's take a trip down memory lane and do a little exercise. First, inventorying the failures and even reliving the worst failure accomplished was a necessary first step. Yes, I said accomplished! Write down every failure, screw up, mishap, mistake, goal you missed, and challenge you did not rise to meet. Sounds depressing, right? Don't worry, it gets better! Now, reflect on what you have learned from each of these mistakes and write that down. Finally, take the biggest failure with the biggest lesson you learned and move it to the top of the list.

Each individual I’ve coached that has been plagued by the fear of failure had several things in common. First, when they relived the greatest failure in their lives, they had all gotten over it! Each of them had also learned a valuable lesson from the failure. When asked, every one of these people felt they are better off today for having learned from that failure. In fact, the bigger the mess up, the bigger the knowledge gained, and the more passionate they were around the change was result! This passion makes it easier for them to communicate this solution to others if willing to share the experience. Essentially, bigger failure means better ability to communicate and lead others to avoid these specific circumstances.

Finally, they almost always acknowledge that upon reflection, the worst failure on their list wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things.  that big failure, their other, lesser screw ups and lessons learned, they wouldn't be the person they are today.

Let’s recap how failure helps you improve in everything, especially your career!

1. Failure is the only option, sometimes!

Everyone makes mistakes and everyone fails at some point. If you lie to yourself by saying failure is not an option, get ready for a never ending string of let downs. There is no hiding or running from the fact that you will fail at something. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can give yourself a little grace and forgiveness, which helps you move on faster! Don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re probably beating yourself up worse than your, boss, coworkers, or family members. Remember, it’s almost never as bad as you think it is at the time. Since we can’t stop it -  roll with it or better, anticipate it with a well thought out contingency plan.

2. You can utilize your newfound knowledge, bestowed by failing, to create new positive outcomes!

Ensure that you leverage failure to teach yourself a valuable lesson that you’ll never forget! Write down the failure. Then, next write down what you have learned from it. When faced with the same challenge next time, decide what you will you do differently. When you see someone else facing the same challenge, share that lesson that you have learned with others to help them succeed.

3. Failure has helped shape who you are today!

List your top five personality traits. Are you friendly and outgoing? Are you hardworking and dedicated? Are you organized and punctual? Believe it or not, your failures and your observation of the mistakes of others, have helped you strengthen these attributes. If you list the things you've been a part of or witnessed which have caused your personal beliefs to be what they are today, many of those things will be failures. Once you realize failure has molded and shaped some of your greatest characteristics, the sooner you can break the chains of, atychiphobia.

The chains of atychiphobia are:

Hesitation to try new activities or ideas

Refusal to step out of one's comfort zone and grow

Never setting challenging goals or reaching for new heights

Expecting too little of ourselves

Expecting too much of our coworkers, companies, and family members

Don’t take this article as a license to not prepare, execute, or give something your all. I simply want for you to embrace your failures; because to be candid, failure is bound to occur at some point. Use this information to improve yourself, share those lessons with others, and look forward to your next failure! You're going to adapt and overcome challenges because of all the screw ups you have made. Look forward to everything you will accomplish from your next failure!

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Best Source for Career Advice

Within the sphere of influence that revolves around your career, there are many resources you may leverage for improvement. Among these resources are the people you interact with. Gathering and leveraging their input in order to find ways to improve your skills, capabilities, mindsets and attitudes, is critical to reaching your full potential.

Today, Kelley Coaching and Consulting interviews Nick Horvat, National Retail Account Executive of Sprint. Our goal: To help you determine your best resource for career development, and personal improvement.  

Is a Supervisor Your Best Source?  

While you should tap into your leader’s experience and knowledge to grow, surprisingly, your best performance coach may not your supervisor. It's true they were able to work their way up and someone believed them good enough for the next level. Certainly, they should help to guide you and offer ways to improve.

Nick Horvat says, "When asking for feedback from your manager, be open to what you hear. You may not always get the feedback you want or expect."

There are a few reasons why you should not put all your professional development eggs in the basket of your supervisor:

They could have an agenda. Your success it their success as well. As a result, your direct supervisor generally pushes you to do what they want in order to create their version of success. Are they really seeking to understand what you want to improve?

There may be communication barriers. Are you able to openly discuss things with them? According to a survey by Staffbay, out of 15,000 employees polled, 87% did not fully trust their boss. Without trust, true growth through coaching may be hindered. Along with lack of trust, other barriers may include; time constraints, company policies and process around training, or past negative experiences.

They may be assuming what you need to work on. Where are they gathering data to help you improve? Are they looking at metrics that could be skewed or not based on reality? Information from your supervisor, along with solid coaching around improvement areas can certainly help. Yet again, most supervisors will tell you what to fix and how they think you should best fix it. Without regular observation and targeted development around specific areas of improvement, assumption based training may not generate the desired results.

Is a Third Party Coach Your Best Source?

You will gain a lot from a third party coach. I, myself am a business coach and help company leaders from many different businesses reach their objectives. I also hire my own coach and have seen much of my success through this type of development. With a third party coach, the agenda of the supervisor doesn’t exist. In this case, the coach is generally more effective at seeking to understand and help. You should certainly have a third party coach help provide that necessary outside perspective.

Horvat says, "A third party mentor has always been a best practice I use. Someone outside your company allows for unbiased opinions which potentially brings new ideas or skills to the table."

Thus, third parties are excellent resources for performance increases in any aspect of business.  However, there are several obstacles around use of a third party coach that may hinder improvement if not addressed up front. Be mindful of these two potential roadblocks:  

They may not understand your job role or businesses IQ. A great coach will learn a lot about you, what your trying to accomplish. Together you will co-create a plan to help you get there, and even hold you accountable in your plan! The part they may lack, is their ability to know the true ins-and-outs of your job role. Over time, a coach will learn this, but initially they may not be able to make suggestions that are directly related to specifics on your job. They must be skilled at facilitating your ideas into actionable plans to improve.

They may not have seen you in action. A coach will listen to things from your perspective and generally see things through your lens. This  means they also potentially share your blind spots. If this is the case, potential solutions could be missed. Role-playing with your coach may help, but overall, real world observation and participation makes a difference.

Are Coworkers Your Best Source of Advice?

Your coworkers may offer great insight into what your doing well and what you can improve upon. After all, they get to see you in action and are often either in direct competition with you, or are part of your team. You can also observe and imitate the top performers among your peers to help yourself better succeed.

When it comes to seeking assistance from coworkers, Horvat says, "As a manager, I suggest writing down three to five people you trust and respect in your business and seek out their input on a regular basis. You will gain insight on what works for them and bounce ideas off of them before introducing change to your team."  

Though your coworkers can definitely help you, there are still a few reasons your peers might not be the best performance coaches for your career development and improvement:

They may be biased. Are they concerned you're trying to outshine them? Sometimes, coworkers can put up a guard when they fear you could outperform them. In this case, you may not receive the best advice.  

They won't hold you accountable. A supervisor or third party coach will usually help hold you accountable for your action plans and career development. Your peers are usually worried about ensuring they get their job done, and will not necessarily follow up or help hold you to your commitments for improvement.

Is it Your Clients, and People You Serve?

This, often neglected, resource is a never ending well of information, ideas, suggestions, and accountability. The people you sell to, service or serve can be your best performance coach.

Horvat tells us, "If I had to pick one of the four choices to receive feedback from to grow my career, I would choose the customer... I know that if I'm taking what my customers tell me and applying it to my day-to-day role, I can build a business because I'm listening to what drives my business."

The people we serve are extremely important coaches for several reasons:

Your improvement is in their best interest. As selfish as this sounds, everything people do is based on receiving a payoff. So what’s in it for them in helping you improve? If you’re in sales, the transaction will better for your buyer if you improve in your role. Thus they are willing to help you improve, (especially after the transaction). If you’re a leader, your team will  be better off if you improve in your role, thus they are usually willing to help you improve. If you’re in the service industry, your growth will directly improve the services you provide for your clients, thus they are probably willing to help you.

They have seen you in action, and have directly engaged with you. When you want to help your child work on a baseball swing, you get in the batter box with them. Review the basics, then watch them swing. As they do they swing, you point out ways for them to improve.

Observation in this way is the best way to point out areas for improvement. In the same way your clients or staff members have worked directly with you and are well aware of what they enjoyed about you. They have also witnessed your processes and behaviors, and know what you can work on.

How to Leverage Your Best Source of Career Advice

We believe those we serve are our most abundant and impactful source of information on areas to improve. Read the surveys they complete, if there are online reviews for what you sell, read the good and the bad to learn. More importantly, start off by asking them in person, upfront, to help you improve by paying attention during the interaction:

"Customer (or team member) I am always wanting to improve in my [process, management style, sales abilities] so that I may better serve you as your [manager, leader, salesperson, customer service rep]. Throughout our time together, would you be willing to pay attention to what I do best and where I can improve? Then later on, could I ask for your opinion on this to help with my performance?”  

Here are some questions you can ask regularly, or after each engagement, or salesale, (whatever frequency makes sense for you and the people you ask), that will help you identify what you can do to grow in the most effective way:

How would you describe [me, my products, my services] to your friends and family?

What did/do you like best about my [process, sale, product, management style]?

What did/do you like the least?

What is one area I could change, add, or remove that would help make this better for you?

What did I do to meet or exceed your expectations?

Where did/do I not meet or exceed your expectations?

Do you have any other suggestions? Or Is there anything else?

We highly suggest diversifying your career performance advice input channels by seeking out great coaching from many angles. By all means, seek input from your supervisor or those above you. Ask your peers what they think you can do better. Hire a business or career coach to help you see through a different perspective, lend support, and build on self accountability.  Just remember, the people that are observing you closest and have the most to gain from your improvement are your clients, or the employees that work for you. Actively seek their input and utilize their ideas to best improve your performance.

To be included in our monthly Kelley Coaching newsletter receive support and tips on sales, management, and career development CLICK HERE.

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11 Reasons You Need to Make Time for 1 on 1 Coaching

The Problem

Admitting a vulnerability can be downright uncomfortable to do as a manager. One reason I often discuss these issues openly is to help other managers see these potential blind spots. Another is to display humility and focus on self improvement. Today's blog is no different: The goal in sharing this challenge is to help you, as a manager, realize the importance of having one-on-one coaching sessions with each member of your team. Also, to help you understand how these interactions will affect your employees, your company, and your career.

As a young sales manager I never had enough time to accomplish all the things I wanted to do on a daily basis. I wanted to sit down with each team member and allow time for feedback around their efforts. Ideally, I wanted to have time to discover their goals and focus on strategic business planning to achieve them. In my world this wasn’t possible. My intentions to do these things were there, but I had many reasons or excuses to not take action. I would run out of time because I was cleaning up after my employees, putting out fires, and solving problems for them. This was in addition to all the paperwork, reports, meetings, client interaction, tasks, and other activities that were required of anyone in an upper management role.

Eventually, my eyes were opened to the benefits of performance coaching. I realized how powerful the activity can be for both parties involved if done regularly and properly. I still had so much going on all the time, I couldn't squeeze in these intimate meetings with everyone on my team. I downplayed its importance because I just had to get everything else done first.

In my opinion, I was doing a mediocre job of holding myself, and my team, accountable to meet regularly. Though, as my coach put it, I was “successful in spite of myself", something else was missing. The missing factor was identified with a single sentence I read in a book. The name of the book was called, "The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results," by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The book asked, "What's the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"

The Solution

It didn’t take long for me to connect the two, coaching and focused intention. After some deliberation around this question I made a decision. If I make coaching one-on-one with my entire team my “one thing” , everything else would be easier or unnecessary". They would grow into the type of employees that could solve their own problems by thinking things through and taking ownership. My team would prevent fires from starting by developing their customer service and communication skills. They would develop business plans that would ensure they hit or exceed their goals. I would help them care for their plans long term, and be an accountability partner for them along the way. By making performance coaching my, one thing, I would improve my team, crush barriers to success, and help my company reach new heights. I made a decision, and committed to make the time for one-on-one development for myself and my team.

11 Positve Results from Our Time Spent Coaching

I started spending at least 15 plus hours each month coaching with my team. Here are some of the results, as stated by my employees themselves. These are just a few of the hundreds of remarks and coaching wins we have celebrated over the past couple years.

Coaching Creates Confidence: "It feels great to know that I am doing the activities that will lead to my success each week." “I love being apart of the winning team!” and “It’s amazing being able to communicate effectively with my CEO. What a relief!”

Coaching Helps Employees Grow: "I know I'm moving my career in the right direction." and “I’ve hit all my professional goals this year! I can't wait to see where I end up next year!”

Coaching Fosters Accountability: "I did say I would do that moving forward and I didn’t this time. I own my mistake." “I give myself a ten on staying accountable for my actions this month.”

Coaching Defines Purpose: "I used to sell for the money, now I realize there are so many more important things to sell for."

Coaching Initiates Autonomy: "I don’t feel I need to ask you for every answer anymore, I know how to figure things out on my own and I ask myself WWSD (What Would Sean Do?).” This one got a chuckle out of me, as I have said the same thing about my coach.

Coaching Inspires Mastery: "I am getting better at my job. The book I just read helped me improve my internet sales process. I sold 7 more units this month than my best month ever!”

Coaching Generates Accomplishment: "I've never made this much money in my life. I'll never go back to salary work again!" and “Thank you for helping me get to this point in my career. Its truly a pleasure working with you.”

Coaching Gives Fulfillment: "I sold 2 units today! I love my job." and “Only in this office could we have this kind of fun! I really love coming to work each day.”

Coaching Lowers Turnover: When I spent time with my employees in a one-on-one environment, they see I care, which helps them feel appreciated. In addition, we solve problems together and make plans that help them reach their sales quotas which in turn help them hit personal financial goals. People meeting sales quotas feel more fulfilled and accomplished; thus, tend to stay on their job longer. Having less than three sales people quit, while promoting seven and hiring six in over a year at a top producing automotive dealership is quite a success story.

Coaching Increases Sales and Profit: Our employees are stepping out of their comfort zones to do things they may have never tried alone. They know their managers are here if they need us, but they can do what they need to achieve the results they desire. All the benefits my team sees, I see. As their leader, their success is my success. I feel their victories and wins, and they are addicting!

Coaching Lowers Leadership Stress: Since understanding and knowing each member of your team is synonymous with one-on-one coaching. Knowing what makes each member tick, and how to best motivate and inspire them takes a lot of stress off your plate. You will be able to effectively generate buy in around the activities which will help each team member be successful. Less repeating yourself or forcing your hand for action lowers your blood pressure! Maintaining a pulse on your employee's satisfaction levels also comes with coaching. This awareness can prevent costly miscommunication and frustration among your team: also lowering stress.

Did regimented one-on-one coaching free up my time?

No, it sure didn’t! The ironic part of the entire shift in mindset and action, was in having regular one-on-one coaching sessions with my entire team, it didn’t free up my time at all. It did however, change the activities I was forced to partake in. I spend less time putting out fires and answering questions that someone could self discover. I don’t need to babysit simple processes as much. I don’t need to spend time replacing people that quit anymore, since very few people we coach regularly quit.

Instead of spending my time on these activities, I’ve replaced them with working out more deals for the increased sales. I spend more time chatting with the additional customers that my sales team brings in. I recruit, hire, and train new people in order to grow and keep up with the increase in sales. I enjoy spending more time cultivating leaders for my company. I spend time sourcing and managing a larger inventory for the increased sales volume.

In the end I learned a valuable lesson. No matter what, life in business and management is going to be crazy and challenging. You're always going to be busy and will eternally have a full buffet of tasks and activities to dine on from bell-to-bell. The question is: Would you rather be proactive and spend your time doing the activities that help people grow, produce results, help your company succeed, and build a culture of employees that are drawn to their goals? Or, will you forgo the coaching and spend your time living in reactive mode? As a result you will spend more time cleaning up after mistakes, putting out fires, rebuilding after employees consistently quit, repeatedly need to fire people for under performance, push people to mediocrity, and watch your employees struggle to reach objectives, if you even know what those are with this choice. Both paths are busy, and contain some degree of stress. Either choice will require intense focused effort, and actions on your part to navigate. In contrast, one feels great and helps others, while the other may feel frustrating or even tumultuous at times. It's a a choice between focused intention and growth versus random environmental reactivity.

Take a page from my book. Make the time for regular one-on-one coaching sessions with each member of your team. Learn how to do this effectively, make the appointments and stick to them. It will change your life and your team members lives. Every time you conduct this critical activity, you will learn something and grow from it. If you refuse, at the very least hire someone to coach your individual team members. In doing so, you will spend more time doing the activities that fulfill your career, create success, and energize you.

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3 Steps to I.C.E. Your Managers

Don't worry, I.C.E. is a positive thing! This month marked a huge benchmark to success for my company. For the first time in what may be our organizations history, we promoted seven people at one time, under one roof top! To see one of my core purposes fulfilled in such a way was extremely rewarding. Consistent business from great marketing, great products, customer satisfaction, and highly motivated purpose-driven employees created the perfect storm. This storm was the need for more leadership, management and sales staff. This need could only be fulfilled in one way: a massive promotion from within! A win for the company, a win for the employees and a win for our clients.

I am proud of our accomplishment, but this article is to help you with a simple process for crafting your very own, home-grown leaders. By following this simple 3 step strategy, I.C.E. we created to build and upgrade our management team, you too can discover and grow such leadership. With a large sales staff, all with their own unique abilities, individual strengths and weaknesses, how do you decide who is the right person for the job? How do you turn good followers into leaders? Follow the three steps below to answer these very critical questions and develop your company's leadership of tomorrow, in other words Identify, Cultivate and Empower your managers.

Step 1: Identify the Potential Leaders

First, you must identify who could be potential leaders. Ask yourself, what qualities are most important for a leader in your organization? Who has the majority or all of the qualities you listed? Of the qualities the candidates are missing, can they be taught, trained or coached on these missing characteristics?

For my business, we wanted the following traits:

Understanding of the Sale Process

Five Star Customer Satisfaction

Clean, Correct and Timely Paperwork

Highly Trainable and Coachable

A Good Follower, yet Confident and Autonomous

Selfless Service: Putting Coworkers and Company Needs First

Once we identified who had the traits above and who didn’t, it was easy to determine who deserved the opportunities presented.

Step 2: Cultivate their Leadership Skills

Before your home-grown leader is ready to take charge, it is important you train and coach them first. Coach your would-be leaders, one on one, knee to knee. By doing this you will determine why they do what they do, and what gets them out of bed in the morning. Once you discover this, you can recruit them by aligning both your efforts.

Let them know, "Steve, what I want for you most, is to reach your desired level of career satisfaction. Based on what you told me in our coaching session, more responsibility and growth is important to you. I want to help you get there and there are some new opportunities on the horizon that will open up soon. Are you open to discussing these new roles and responsibilities now and how you can best serve your company?" For more information on this type of enrollment statement, read “Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions” by Keith Rosen.

We decided to utilize our in-house Training Program I had created and written about in an article this past September, to give the potential leaders practice at training peers. This is a volunteer program and no one was required to train their peers. However, the people that wanted to be leaders, stepped up and acted like leaders. The people we had identified above took the initiative and with little or no resistance, began training their peers to great effect!

Next, we allow them to shadow the manager in the role above them so they can follow a crawl, walk, run process to taking over the role in the future. Don’t make the mistake of promoting someone, then throw their unprepared mind to the wolves. Set them up for success by cultivating their job and leadership skills.

Lastly, ensure they are comfortable in their new role prior to starting. No new position is ever 100% easy and I believe you have to stretch people's comfort zones to help them grow. However, ensure you build their confidence by testing their mettle, new skills and abilities. Are they proficient enough to do the job? Are they willing to do the job? Ask them how you may best support them in their new role. Ask their peers to show grace and understanding while they get their feet wet learning their new job.

Step 3: Empower Your New Leaders

Now that your budding, home-grown leader or leaders have been selected and carefully developed, it’s time to empower them. Let your staff know why they have been given this opportunity. This will create drive among your team members who did not get promoted this time. It will also let those team members know what expectations they may not have met in order to make the cut. This gives the unselected team members opportunity to improve and grow as well. Ensure everyone knows the expectations and job description of the new roles for each promoted staff member. People cannot meet expectations they do not know exist!

Let the promoted individuals speak in front of the team. Have them answer the following questions in front of everyone:

How will you try to best serve your team in your new role?

What expectations do you have of your new staff members?

What goals will you work to accomplish in your new role?

How can your team best support you in this?

How open to feedback, and constructive criticism from your team members are you?

How do you prefer to receive this feedback?

Ensure everyone knows the chain of command, pecking order and who answers to whom. Let your team know what's in it for them in these new changes. This will alleviate fear and anxiety, as well as feelings of doubt or dissatisfaction among the entire team when changes like this occur.

You too have fresh, undiscovered leadership talent starting to sprout within your organization. The next great company leader or executive could be ready for photosynthesis right under your feet. Always be looking for the traits that matter for your company's leaders in your direct reports. Once you find them, cultivate their leadership skills with training and coaching to help them grow and bud. Lastly, set them up for pure success by empowering them and enrolling your team in the changes. If you follow this three-step method, your company will be better off for it and your team will love you for it. You will make a positive change in the lives of your employees, while at the same time you will help your company grow! These are both very rewarding events for a leader, ones that you will be proud to have accomplished well into your golden years.

For FREE help on the I.C.E. (Identify, Cultivate, Empower) process, contact Sean Kelley today at KelleyCoaching.com OR via email Sean@kelleycoaching.com Click HERE to subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

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Hero to Zero

We've all heard the saying "Hero to zero" when the new month rolls around. It's often murmured when our accomplishments from last month are erased from the board, and you get the joy of starting all over again. We say, "Hero to zero!" as we brush off last months efforts and return to the grind.

I believe this phrase came about because of the all too common, "month end hangover". So many sales people leave it all on the floor, so to speak. We work so hard the last week, or last few days of the month, we wear ourselves out! It's no wonder when the first of the new month rolls around, sales often slow down for a few days. After sprinting across the finish line in a mad dash to complete the race, there isn't much energy left to stand up, and start it all over again the very next day.

As successful sales people know, every minute of every day counts. We should certainly not kick back, relax, and rest on our laurels. That’s the mentality that spawned "Hero to zero". It reminds us that we shouldn’t be tempted to pat ourselves on the back, or celebrate our success from last month. Last months completely finished after all, right? None of the success from last month carriers over into this month, correct?  

Wait a minute... What if last months success still has meaning today? What could be possible if you as a sales representative, could reinvigorate your drive to sell and your motivation to make deals? What if you could hold on to that positive attitude and confidence gained from crushing those goals? What would happen if you carried that momentum into the first week of the new month?

Before you go cracking the whip on yourself, and start minimizing, or even forgetting about your recent success with the "hero to zero" mentality. For the love of God, take a minute and reward yourself for a job well done! Buy yourself or someone in your family something nice. Do yourself a favor and buy a professional back rub at a local spa. Treat yourself to your favorite meal at your favorite restaurant. Do something you’ve always wanted to do, but never give yourself the time to enjoy. This can actually pay dividends towards hitting your next months sales targets: here is how.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary "Operant Conditioning" is when "the desired behavior or increasingly closer approximations to it are followed by a rewarding or reinforcing stimulus."  

What does this mean for you? This means if the desired behavior for a salesperson is reaching and exceeding goals through selling, then by giving yourself rewards or "reinforcing stimulus", you will actually condition yourself to succeed AGAIN! That’s right, you increase your chances of success, your confidence, and ability to reach and exceed your goals next month simply by rewarding yourself for a job well done! So make the conscious decision to not only feel GREAT about accomplishing your objectives, but purposely give yourself a reward for your efforts. YOU DESERVE IT!

So the next time you crush those goals, and on the first day of the new month someone tells you, "Forget about what you did last month, its over!" Or "Hero to Zero! Time to get back to work!" Ignore that advice, and instead ask yourself, "How should I reward myself for a job well done?" You deserve the treat, just like anyone else who makes an awesome accomplishment in their career or life!

At my car dealership we had a record November this year. We exceeded our lofty goal, and on top of that, smashed last years sales by over 20%. I'm going to go to work today, and I will begin the grind all over again. However, I will reward myself by giving my wife and children a fantastic Christmas this year! Also, I think I'll get myself a cool new winter coat to celebrate the success. I may even plan my December reward now, for when we as a team, exceed our new goal for the fresh month!

My question for you: How are you going to reward yourself or your team for a job well done last month, in order to condition yourself for success again this month?

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Managers: Stop Butting Heads With Your Staff!

At companies all over the globe you often see front-line managers butting heads with their employees. I hear leaders and managers say it all the time, "I'm tired of babysitting my staff. Why won't my team do this? I wish my employees would just (insert productive habit here)!” Or even something as harsh as, "These employees shouldn’t be making what they make for the sub par work they do!" Employees say things like, “My boss never listens to me!” and “I’m sick of working for this *&@#%!”

OUCH! I, myself used to struggle with some of these same thoughts. Until through some hard lessons, and a little coaching, I came to some realizations that have changed the way I lead forever. In this article, I would like to share these coaching insights with you to help you better lead your team! You deserve to manage stress free and enjoy the presence and support of your direct reports without the need to fight for compliance and accountability!

If you’re a manager or leader struggling with your whole team, part of your team, or perhaps you just know someone else who could use some help in this area, please read on.  Even if you are a master of self control and hold in all this anger without any sort of passive aggression, this frustration will undoubtedly cause you to reach your maximum B.S. limit and you will eventually snap!

When you unleash your frustrations on them, regardless of how you butt heads with your staff, nothing good will come of it. Your employees walk away from the conversation feeling deflated and beat down. Sure, you may feel a temporary high as you have asserted your dominance, but this buzz is quickly lost when the employee you lost your cool with continues the undesired behavior even after your argument with them! This creates a "Groundhog Day" type effect where you relive the same frustrating moments week after week. Another even more severe potential negative outcome is if one of your valued team members quits their job due to this constant demoralizing behavior.

How do we, as leaders, communicate with our team in a way that creates desired change in behavior and relieves us of all anger and frustration?

First, you must understand a few things about your employees:

They have good intentions, and want to please you.

Chances are, your employees actually care about pleasing you. If you truly believe in others good intentions, in turn, it will bring the best intentions out of them. All people want to appear confident and proficient in their work. Screwing up and being yelled at does not benefit them. When an employee makes a mistake, doesn’t follow a process, or isn't performing how you want, they are not necessarily targeting you in an attempt to be insubordinate. Before you snap, remember the saying, "You get more with honey than you do vinegar." Ask yourself, was this an honest mistake that anyone could have made? How bad is this situation? Have I ever made a mistake similar to this? How can the punishment fit the crime?

If you're a parent raising a young child, you expect that your child will mess something up. It's a given that your kid is going to color on the walls in crayon. He may find a pair of scissors and decide to give the dog a haircut. If you're really lucky, your kid even might put a wet roll of toilet paper into the microwave for 10 minutes to dry out! Regardless of these childhood atrocities, you still love your kid unconditionally, right? You don't assume they are evil and out to get you, then send them away to boarding school! Perhaps they were trying to draw a pretty picture on the wall just for you. Just maybe your child thought the dog looked hot because he was panting and needed a haircut to cool off. Did you consider he felt bad for dropping the T.P. in the toilet bowl, and he wanted to dry it off so you wouldn't need to buy more? (You can tell my parents had a rough time raising me!) That being said, the intentions were good and the motives were pure. Love your employees like you love your kids, with unconditional care and love, and expect mistakes. Truly believe that they have the best of intentions and mean well. You will harbor a lot less anger this way. Just be there to guide them and help them learn from the errors so they don't keep “shaving the dog” their entire career.

Something is preventing them from behaving how you want.

If you’re butting heads with team members because they just won't do what you want them to do, many managers take the "they are lazy" stance. This is a costly assumption. In order to positively alter an employee's behavior the leader must uncover exactly WHAT limiting belief or "SCAM" is preventing them from acting. In the book, "Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions,"Keith Rosen, Master Certified Coach (MCC), describes a "SCAM" as a Story, Con, Assumption, or Mindset, that employees create that prevent them from taking action in a way that will better their situation. The only way to help your stray staff members is to coach them around their "SCAM" to uncover these crippling mental barriers.  In a non biased, or confrontational way ask "Why?” "What's getting in the way?" "What's preventing you from...?". These discovery questions will show you that "laziness" or "insubordination" are NOT the real problem. Once you unearth the real limiting belief you must help them see what might be possible if they changed their way of thinking or try a new approach to the situation.

For years I stood on my soapbox and preached, “Call your past customers and ask for referrals to sell more and hit your objectives!” Yet, no matter the intensity or frequency of my commands I would see very limited action taken by the sales team. Enter one-on-one coaching.

First, knowing Susan likes customers that are fun and easy to work with, enroll her in the behavioral change, “Susan, what I want for you is to bring in as many referrals in as possible, that way you need not rely on the market, economy and floor traffic your entire career. Wouldn't it be great and rewarding if you could hang out with buyers that already like you and trust you?”

“So, Susan, what's keeping you from calling your sold customers for referrals?”

Susan replied, “Well, I don't have that many to call and when I do call them, I'm scared they will be mad that I'm bothering them. I don't want to annoy my customers.”

The SCAM’s Mary had created around prospecting to her customers were that she had no one to call, a story she made up, because in reality she had over 300 customers in her sold database. The assumption she had convinced herself of, was that they would be annoyed if she called them.

“I've seen your great online reviews from your clients Susan.”, I replied, “Of your 300+ customers, how many of them really enjoyed working with you?”

“Probably at least 250 of them,” she said.

“Do you mind receiving a call from someone you really enjoy working with?” I asked.

“I suppose not, no, I don't mind.” Susan said.

I probed deeper, “How many of your customers have asked you not to call them because you were annoying them?”

She thought for a few seconds, “Well no one's really told me they were annoyed…” I could see Susan was starting to realize she hadn't really TRIED to call them yet, and her assumption was unraveling.

“So what specifically would you be comfortable saying to your most satisfied group of 250 clients, that wouldn't annoy them or bother them when you call?”

From there, Susan and I crafted a wonderful message that she could deliver to her most satisfied customer base and ask for referrals. Which she has since been doing to great effect. Susan was not lazy or insubordinate, nor was she trying to avoid selling and making money, she just needed her SCAM uncovered and addressed in a supportive way. Don’t ASSUME people are lazy or insubordinate, seek to understand the real barriers to behavior and your life as a leader will be a lot less frustrating, and extremely fulfilling.

They may not understand your expectations.

Many times you're not seeing eye to eye with members of your team, it’s a simple situation of lack of clear expectations. I recommend you review expectations with any applicant before you hire them, again after you hire them, and then quarterly. You should also update your expectations as things change, because they always will. If your team member doesn’t know what you expect of them, or what you want them to do as your direct report, whose fault is it if they don’t act accordingly? It's been said many different ways by many different leaders, "People cannot live up to expectations they do not know exist."

While coaching with one of my fellow managers, “John” we came to the root of some deep-seated frustration he held with a  sales representative, “Bob”. It all boiled down to expectations. John felt his expectations were continually not being met by Bob.  After we both sat with Bob, clearly reviewed John’s expectations in detail, it became clear that we had a disconnect. We expected to see that Bob didn’t care, or had no concern that he had not met his objectives.  However, instead, Bob clearly felt guilty once realization set in that he had let us down. Bob needed his manager's expectations refreshed because too much time had gone by since these had been covered. Bob then put together a plan to remedy his shortcomings, and has since worked hard to fix the issues. There was a weight lifted off my frustrated manager and team member’s shoulders that day. Communicating expectations makes everyone’s job easier, and will help you avoid butting heads.

Their proficiency may not have been tested after training.

It's easy to assume someone knows what they should be doing once they complete a training course. We provide training classes, watch our employees go through these, and just because they didn’t fall asleep during the class, we believe they must know exactly what's going on... If ONLY it were that easy! Have you ever failed to absorb something from training or do you pick up everything the first time, every time? We must test proficiency prior to turning our employees loose on the job. Simply put, if we don’t find out the training wasn’t absorbed early, we will find out the hard way later. Would you want a pilot that had not been tested for proficiency to fly you and your family across the country? Would you want a heart surgeon to operate on you after one class but without passing a test? You bet not! Test your team AFTER the training to ensure they have absorbed it or blame yourself when they falter.

One sales representative “Steve” worked at another one of our dealer groups lots for nearly a year before transferring to our store. Since he had been in the car business before, and at one of our stores, we assumed he knew how to do the proper paperwork when delivering a vehicle. After a very frustrating first month of constant paperwork mishaps costing himself, the company and his customers time and money, we decided to “test” Steve on his competence regarding delivery paperwork. We discovered that at the store where he worked before the finance department did most of the paperwork, so he didn't really understand it. Even though he had a basic knowledge of what was needed, enough to be dangerous, Steve needed training and testing prior to turning him loose. Had we tested his proficiency initially, we would have saved more than a few headaches! Was he tested at all? Sure he was, he had to “Sell his boss a car” but he sure wasn't tested on paperwork. Test your staff members on all aspects of their job, if you want to ensure they are proficient at all aspects of their job.

How to avoid your initial angry reaction and make positive lasting change.

Now let's get something straight here, I am not saying we are always going to get along with our staff. Also, no one can keep their cool 100 percent of the time. Nor am I saying to let them get away with murder. There must be a hierarchy and someone to answer to for any organization to be successful. I just want you to understand some of the problem could be on us as leaders. After all, it's our job, as the people leading the charge, to use coaching to help them correct the situation in a way that fosters a supportive, positive environment. The alternative isn't pretty, it’s a passive aggressive, cancerous environment where repeated unfavorable actions cause a boss to snap, over and over, and over and over again! This can't be good for your blood pressure, let alone career satisfaction for you and your employees.

If you’ve been managing in this manner, let me ask you a few loaded questions: Has holding in your frustration, or yelling at your team repeatedly changed anything in a positive way? What favorable results have you seen from this? Does this build trust or degrade it? Do you want sustainable growth for your team members, or a never ending cycle of new hires as you replace the people that leave you? Are you sick and tired of butting heads with your employees?

Before you start ranting and raving at your team member, or say something snide and hostile, there is a very powerful question you should ask yourself.  In the book, "Triggers" by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, he asks, "Am I willing, at this time, to make the investment required, to make a positive difference on this topic?" Prior to reacting to an unfavorable situation in your environment in an unfavorable way, asking this question will allow you to slow down. Now you may cool off, and contribute to the situation as opposed to make a bad situation worse. Being willing to invest the energy to contribute to the conversation in a positive way, will be the first key in creating positive change. If you can't invest the energy at the time, then just stay quiet and cool off.

Hold your team members accountable in a supportive, positive way.

Let’s revisit our coachee’s stories.  Now that we’ve clearly discussed our expectations, and have a new starting point. In the end, if Bob doesn’t follow the newly communicated expectations, then leadership follows the, "Am I willing..." question, mentioned above, before freaking out, then there will be consequences. If Susan doesn’t follow the prospecting plan we created, we will not be passive aggressive toward her. Holding in our frustration and allowing her to get away without the follow up calls will only create the problem we're trying to avoid. We now sit her down and ask again, “Now what’s preventing you from calling your customers?”. If one of our employees makes a mistake that a bit of common sense should have prevented, they will be held accountable. However, we will know they did not foster any ill will in their mistake, so there is no need to become angry with them or mistrust their intentions. If Steve continues to screw up his paperwork after his training and measurement of his competence has been completed, we will address the issue.

In each case we will follow the advice of Theodore Roosevelt when he said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."  Meaning, we will be polite and respectful, will not snap to anger and stress, but there will be consequences in order to hold our team members accountable. Being a manager who has the "stick", or method of accountability, prevents you from flipping out. Now as you may have inferred, using consequencesdoes not give you permission to regress back to yelling.  Instead, it should be a series of clear, direct feedback that escalate to more, depending on the severity.  In Bob’s particular case, both parties agreed to consequences that begin with extra hours until set guidelines are met. Further offenses or failure to meet commitments would lead to monetary punishment and documented reprimand. In Susan’s case, if she doesn't want to service her existing customers, they will be distributed among other sales associates who are willing and able to call on them.

It can be as simple as a clear message to an employee that they’ve not met your expectations.  This message should be delivered in person if minor, or in writing if more serious.  It can be direct such as, “Bob, you agreed last month to deliver your paperwork by the 30th of each month.  It is now the 5th and I still do not have your paperwork. When can I expect to have it? What got in the way? Do you need my assistance in revising your plan?”  This type of feedback is still calm, collected, respectful but clearly conveys the expectation was not met.

If an offense occurs again, or the severity of the missed expectation is more grave, you should escalate the message to call for either a clear corrective action within a specific timeframe, or even a warning for termination (or termination in some instances).  Just remember, this consequence should still always clearly convey the expectation, the miss of the expectation and be calm, collected and respectful.

Your employees will be better off for it, and their behavior will be conducive to your aligned efforts. Stop butting heads with your team.  Put away the boxing gloves. Lead your team in the way they deserve. Believe in their best intentions, lead with a calm, collected head and coaching mentality. Create a plan for holding them accountable to your clear-cut, well communicated expectations. As a result your work environment will improve for you and your team. Your employees will gain trust in you and your turnover will drop! Best of luck to you and your team!

Click HERE to Subscribe to Sean Kelley's regular Sales and Management Blog @ KelleyCoaching.com

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Enthusiasm Sells!

Whatever you sell, you probably already know that the more enthusiastic your prospective buyer is about your product or service, the better chance they will pull the trigger immediately. You may also know, the enthusiastic customer may also pay more than their less than excited counterpart. With enthusiasm being such a key component in a buying decision, as a sales person, you probably want more enthusiastic buyers, right? So the question then becomes, how can you as a sales professional inject enthusiasm into a clients emotions during their shopping experience?

The first thing you must understand about creating enthusiasm in your customer, is that enthusiasm must be transferred from you to them! That’s right, for a customer to become excited about making a purchase, you as their sales associate have to be excited about selling to them. This means in reality, enthusiasm generation is much more about how you approach your sales process, and behave during customer interaction than it is about your customers behavior. Allow me to walk you through a surefire way of creating an excited buyer, who is ready to pull the trigger, molded from a seemingly emotionless client.

Start at their level, and bring them up with you.

If you subscribe to mirroring and reflecting while selling, then you understand that you should mimic the customers body language, expressions, tone of voice, tempo of speech and any other attribute you are able to. This is a great way to allow your customer to feel comfortable around you. This phenomenon occurs because we are naturally drawn to people that are similar to ourselves. When first meeting most prospects, their guard is up, and they are on the defensive. Thus, you must come in at their level of enthusiasm. However, if you match that attitude and mentality throughout the entire sale, you will not generate the enthusiasm needed to create a buyer. Your mission is to slowly raise their level of excitement by slowly raising yours. If their level of excitement when they meet you is a 3, you don’t want to start off at a 10. If they are really excited to meet you, then you will need to start off where they are. Get that enthusiasm up quickly to match theirs. Regardless, after you greet your customer, bring your enthusiasm level theirs, mirror and match, but begin raising the energy as soon as you are able. You aren't able until you find out more about the clients needs.

Discover their wants and needs to build excitement.

You can be excited about your product or service, but to express your excitement about the wrong feature or benefit is a waste of enthusiasm, and will have little effect on your customers level of interest. Since you want your enthusiasm to rub off on your would be buyer, it is important you get excited about the correct features. What are the correct features you ask? Quite simply, only the ones that matter to your customer! In order to find this out, it is imperative that you ask many open ended questions. Fact finding, investigation, and discovery will allow you to find out what is important to them. Once you have found out all the important hot buttons and uncover the true buying motive, this is when you may begin slowly turning up the enthusiasm. Here is a practical example of this enthusiasm generation method. You asked, "What is most important to you in a business partner?" Your customer responds with, "The most important thing were looking for is a company's ability to work around our schedule." Later on, during your presentation, you smile, raise your tone of voice and begin using gestures, "Remember when you said you wanted a company to work around YOUR schedule? Get excited, because I'm about to show you how well we do that!" You as the salesperson should be excited, because you are expressing your ability to give your customer exactly what they want! So get pumped up about fulfilling your customers needs and you will get THEM pumped up about buying from you! Enthusiasm sells.  

What is their version of enthusiasm?

Try to build excitement in the way that is comfortable for them. There is a simple and subtle method for discovering this. During your rapport building, this is when you pay close attention to their reply, actions, and tone. Ask a few rapport building questions that allow someone to open up a bit about their personal or professional lives. While they are doing so, you are observing. Watch for their level of excitement, watch what kind of body movements they make. How much do they smile? How fast are they talking? What happens to the tone of their voice? This is their version of enthusiasm. Later on, when you are presenting and you want to get them excited, you can begin raising their enthusiasm level in the same way they got excited during rapport building conversation. Here is an example of such an activity. You ask, "How did you end up in this line of work?" They reply, "Oh man, let me tell you, it was a long road, I had to try 4 different companies to figure it out!" Lets say they don’t crack a smile but they pace around a bit and make big arm movements, their voice also gets louder. When presenting the features and benefits, you wouldn’t smile to much but pace around a bit and make those similar arm movements and raise the volume of your voice while pointing out the features and benefits that matter to them. Even say "Oh man, let me tell you, your going to love this!" Give them THEIR version of enthusiasm to allow them the ability to get excited and remain comfortable while you crank it up a notch!

Be confident in your presentation, why is it PERFECT for them?

Now that you know exactly what they are looking for, and how they like to get excited, you have the responsibility and the RIGHT to get excited during your presentation. Anyone can do a mundane demo of their product or service, with no pizazz. However, it takes a special kind of sales person to ramp up the excitement and have your customer on the edge of their seat by the end of your sale process. Now is your chance to begin transferring excitement from yourself to your customer and begin turning things up a little bit at a time. When you say things like, "Remember how you said, X feature was important to you? Here is WHY I am showing you this product, these benefits are exactly what your looking for!" You have to be energetic about what your showing them, because they ARE going to buy from you. They are going to buy from you because you are solving their problem, tailoring your presentation to their needs and wants, and expressing these things in a way that makes sense to them. Your confidence in this allows you to be excited, and them to soak it all in.

Get yourself excited! Body language, behavior, and attitude.

There are many ways to crank up the enthusiasm. Body language is huge. Standing there with your hands in your pockets while you talk, or just as bad, stiff at your sides, creates no energy. However, when you flail about like a wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man, people can't help but become wrapped up in your presentation. When you look at your customer in the eye, point directly at them and say, "You need this because..." With certainty, that’s the body language that shows pure confidence. From a customers perspective, anyone with that much conviction must know what they are talking about. Asking what many people in sales call "Yes questions" while nodding your head, will also get the customer on your side and generate enthusiasm. A yes question is something like, "You can see the value in that, am I right Mrs. Customer?" While nodding your head with eye contact and extending a hand. You will have them nodding right back with you in agreement. This body language shows confidence, and enthusiasm. When someone feels that all their needs are met when making a purchase, they are often willing to pay more if they are excited about the buy. Big enthusiasm, big profit!

Use tone of voice and speak in a positive, helpful, contributive way.

Speech is another way to increase enthusiasm. Speak a little faster, and a little louder, as well as raising the tone of your voice as your presentation goes along. I'm not saying sound like a chipmunk on crack by the end of your presentation. I just want you to understand, using varying tones and volume to have different effects at various points in your presentation can make a massive impact in a clients buying decision. If you want to makes someone feel special, like they are getting "inside information" then move in and speak in more of a whisper. If you want the entire group hear and feel your message, back up, turn up the volume and spread your eye contact amongst the group your presenting. Don’t disparage your competitors products. Doing so actually makes your customers level of enthusiasm drop, because negative speech actually transfers negative thoughts towards you and your product! So instead of telling your client, "That product down the street is a P.O.S. its not half as reliable as what im selling." Try saying it like this, "We want our customers to have worry free ownership, so we have made a product that is two times more reliable than the competition!" Can you actually FEEL the difference in the two messages? One creates excitement, one makes you enthusiastic, the other makes you sound negative, grumpy, and even jealous of your competition!

Enthusiasm is the least talked about, but one of the most important parts of a sale.

Overall, enthusiasm generation is reliant on your behavior, attitude, client awareness and mentality. You don’t want to start off with over the top excitement, and pour it on the entire time. Instead you want it to start off like a small snowball at the top of a mountain. Rolling that little snowball down the slope until it creates a big ball of excitement by the close of the sale. Discover the best method for enthusiasm generation that applies to your customer. Next find out the best way you, your product, and service can help them or solve their problems. Get excited about presenting the right things in the right way. Start raising the bar on the excitement by using the right speech, body movements, actions and words. Stay positive and confident throughout the entire sale. When it comes time for the customer to make a decision, the excitement that you have transferred to them will no doubt have a large impact on their decision! You will have had more fun because getting yourself amped up can be quite entertaining! Not to mention, enthusiastic people are generally passionate about what they do. Show me a sales person who is passionate about selling their wares, and I will show you a highly successful sales professional. When its all said and done, using enthusiasm to sell, you will have more buyers, more commission, and more fun while working. Always remember my friends, enthusiasm sells!

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Escape the Fall Sales Slump

What a great time of year fall is! The time of year when parents are knee deep in their children's school activities, and their kids 1st quarter grades. Sports fans are focused on baseball playoffs, and the football season is starting to heat up. The weather starts shifting from hot and dry to cool, windy and dreary. Night starts coming earlier and earlier causing people to hunker down in their homes a little sooner each day. On top of all that, lets throw in some show stopping elections to really enamor people. All of this adds up to a fairly large probability, you could be in a slight fall sales slump. After this year, some sales people are even thinking "Fall" is named after falling sales!

Even though misery loves company, this article isn't about giving you excuses to be in your slump. My goal is to help you and any fellow sales compadres, break free of the ill fated downturn, early and often, this fall or the next, whenever or wherever one may occur. So let's get your mind out of the gutter and refocus your intentions on sales success!

As mentioned above a "slump" is merely a state of mind. Before we spring into action we have to change your mindset. One great way to do this is to REMEMBER WHERE YOU COME FROM. You are undoubtably more successful now than you were years ago, at the start of your career, or at the beginning of your college years...etc. When my Army enlistment ended, I had just came home from Operation Iraqi Freedom 1. I used all the money I had saved while overseas to put down on a house I couldn’t afford on an ARM Mortgage (you have got to love the housing bubble of the early 2000's). I had a part time job at Best Buy selling TV's. My brother that was supposed to be helping me pay half my bills decided to party like a rock star and ended up moving out to pursue other things. I was engaged to my lovely fiance and accidentally knocked her up. To put the cherry on top, on my way to work one day I wrecked my car. As you can tell, things were going just great for me back in 2004 – 2005. I was broke, behind on my bills, and going through a lot of problems!  

Looking back on this struggle, makes me realize how strong I am, and that no temporary little drop in sales for a few days can stop me! Wherever you are in your journey through life and career fulfillment, if you remember where you came from. You will be able to tap into that same inner strength that helped you get through those very difficult times in your life. Remembering where you came from will help you realize this little "slump" your in now, is simply an ant hill to stomp on, laugh at, and continue on your journey to success. Don’t stay messed up in the head over a little sales slump. If large mountains couldn’t stop you before, why would a small downturn stop you now?

The next thing to do in order to get your mind right, is to count your blessings and BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE NOW. After wrecking my car on the way to work at Best Buy, the dealership I stopped at to buy a new car from, ended up hiring me as a used car salesman. Within months I was the top salesperson, and a year their first internet manager. Within a few years I was in finance, and soon after I was assistant sales manager. I worked my way up from there and eventually moved on to even bigger and better things. Now I get a rush out of running an entire new and used sales department at one of the top Hyundai dealers in the midwest. I dabble in rental and investment properties on the side and I am also enjoying my own private coaching practice where I love helping managers learn how to be true leaders for their team! I am happily married to the same amazing woman I accidentally knocked up back in 2004. She has the choice to work or to be a homemaker. We have three wonderful children that I couldn’t be more proud of. I have an amazing team of sales professionals that work with me at my dealership and great dealer owners that look at us as partners more than employees. Along with the best client base a dealership could ever want. When I look at everything I have to be grateful for, I realize how important everyone in my life is. I want for you to do the same thing, count all your blessings both BIG and SMALL Then you will have the fuel that you need and the positive attitude it takes to liberate yourself from the mental bonds of the sales slump.

Another great way to shed the frustration of temporary under achievement is to TAKE OUT YOUR FRUSTRATIONS in a healthy way. Every fall or winter, as soon as things start to cool off, I remember my favorite sales meeting of all times. My sales manager handed everyone a pair of protective eyewear and said, "Follow me were going on a field trip!" We walked out back behind our car lot to find a red Eagle Talon sitting behind the building with a sledge hammer next to it. The next 30 minutes was spent taking turns smashing it to pieces. Let me tell you something, we sold more cars that week than we had in the last 3 combined! Everyone had fun and got to vent their frustrations on that poor little car. We got to remember how fun a sales career can be. To vent their frustration some people lift weights, hit a punching bag, go for a run, or even sip a glass of expensive scotch! The bottom line is, doing something to relieve the pent up stress and frustration is not only healthy but may reinvigorate your motivation to sell your product or service.

Fear or anxiety can be one of the biggest obstacles to a healthy selling mentally. Sometimes one tough customer, or one bad day, is all a salesperson needs to send them into a negative feedback loop that halts all productivity in its tracks. You’ve been there, you have seen the salesperson that returns to that mindset month after month. If they spent as much time trying to acquire their next customer as they do telling everyone how worried they are about being able to make a commission check, they would probably make more now than when things were swamped a couple months ago! We've all heard the saying, "When times get tough, the tough get going." Not to say we don’t work hard when things are going well. This phrase just points out that, instead of sitting around and being paralyzed by fear and anxiety created by slower more challenging times, tenacious people do something about the situation. It's ok to feel the fear and experience the anxiety, but USE FEAR AND ANXIETY AS A WHISTLE, A STARTING LINE GUN SHOT, THE CRACK OF A WHIP, TO CAUSE YOU TO SPRING INTO ACTION! When you treat these feelings as your mental barometer, telling you it's time to get to work, the increased activity will soon create business. The business will create income, and the income will cause these feelings to subside. It's time to turn it up a notch my friends and get to work!

UNDERSTAND THE LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS. The law of large numbers describes the result of performing the same action a large number of times. "According to the law, the average results from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and the more times a trial is completed, the closer to the expected value it becomes." -(Paraphrased from Wikipedia). How does this translate to crawling out of a sales hole? I'm glad you asked! If you know you close 20% of any client you end up in front of, and you wait on 10 people in a week, and no one buys from you, then you may have just had a string of bad luck. However, take 8 weeks, 6 months, or even a year worth of your closing statistics, you will find that you still close at that 20%! What this means is, just because you’ve had a few people in a row that haven't purchased at your normal closing rate, doesn’t mean that it will continue forever. Stick to the process that you know works, wait on more clients, call on more clients, and the sales will eventually happen at your normal closing rate. It is that simple. You may sell your product or service to the next 4 clients in a row! Don’t get discouraged by a few people that walk!  

Along with the law of large numbers, a great thing to understand is your ability to CONTROL THE CONTROLLABLES. So many sales people spend so much time worrying and stressing about things that are out of their control. I have news for you, worrying, stressing and discussing things you can't control is an absolute waste of time, and energy and only feeds into the negative feedback loop that is a sales slump. Feeding something WILL cause it to grow! So let's talk about things you can control and things you can't. You can control your attitude. You can control your activities and actions. You can control your thoughts and emotions. If all this is true, which I'm sure you agree it is, then that means, you can have a positive attitude, and spend your limited time getting after it, follow up, prospecting, and doing the other activities you know you need to do to sell something! You can't control the weather. You cant control the market. You can't control the election. If all this is true, and no matter what we do, these things will just happen in the way they will, then WHY spend time worrying about them? Instead ask yourself, "How can I use the current situation to find a customer or make a deal?" Control what you can control and focus on only that to break through that sales lull like a real champion!

Falling behind where you want to be for the month can be very frustrating. Trying to sell anything while frustrated can be very challenging! It's almost as if frustration is a cheap cologne or perfume that clients smell a mile away and avoid it at all costs. I recommend washing that frustration off with a fire hose. No seriously, though, freshen yourself up to remove your frustration. FRESHEN YOURSELF UP to get back on the sales bandwagon! Go get a new hair cut, buy a new suit or dress, iron those clothes, shave that beard, get a mani pedi, trim the nose hairs: Sorry if I grossed you out! Just do something to make yourself look sharp and feel better! Grooming yourself will make you feel like a million bucks and will reinstate that confidence you used to have back when selling was as easy as A B C. Now that you have freshened yourself up, time to act confident! SMILE, even if your not that happy! Simply walking around with a grin will cheer you up, as well as those around you. Walk briskly like your busy, even if your not. When moving from your parking lot to your desk, move with a purpose to get the blood flowing. When you do get to sit down with someone focus on making great eye contact. I'm not much of a cook but here is a recipe for a sale: a newly freshened up you, mixed with some strong energy, add a large friendly smile, stir in a large cup of confidence and a dash of eye contact. No sales slump stands a chance against this delicious selling cookbook!

When your down, it seems like nothing will go your way. The appointments aren't showing, the deals are backing out, the sales pipeline seems empty. It seems that the chips are down and the cards are stacked against you. You may ask yourself, "What have I done to deserve this?" Well Captain negative pants, instead of asking that question, why not ask this, "What could I do right now, to deserve better?" I'm not one of those superstitious people who believes in "Karma". I do; however, know for sure, that when you DO SOMETHING POSITIVE TO HELP OTHERS, it creates a feeling of well being and confidence unlike anything else. This confidence and feeling of self fulfillment will transform the negative state you are in, into that of an uplifting, caring and compassionate one. This is a new and positive state that others, especially your potential prospects, clients and co workers will take notice of. The sooner you create this internal growth and cultivate the feeling that you get from helping others, the sooner you will be able to move on from your temporary sales meltdown! Some ideas to create some positive "Karma", help a new person in your office with their paperwork without asking for something in return. Buy someone you don’t know lunch. Wash your parents car for them. Buy an elderly person or single parent in your neighborhood a bag of groceries. Help the author of this article aerate and seed his lawn... You get the picture, just do SOMETHING positive without expecting anything in return, and you will get a lot more than you bargained for in return!

Everyone knows the definition of insanity right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. When your in a sales slump, you must GET OUT OF THE SAME OLD ROUTINE AND STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE! That means it's time to try something NEW to create a sale! If you're like most of us, you have an idea that’s been sitting on the back of your brain collecting dust. Its easy to put good ideas on the shelf when business is good. Why wouldn’t you, "Don’t fix it if it aint broke." They say! Well, I'm here to tell you, if your in a sales slump its broke, so what better time to try out that idea that’s been sitting on the back burner. In an enlightening one on one coaching session, one of my up and coming sales people was trying to get his sales and revenue up to where he wanted it. I asked him, what new tactic had he wanted to try out, but had not yet tried. He told me about his own website where he could generate subprime leads. He even told me that he had started creating the site, but didn’t ever publish it. He was waiting for it to be "perfected". Together we broke through the barriers holding him at bay, paralyzing his growth, freezing his idea, and he let her rip! He is sure glad he did, and so am I! His site is growing his business and its gaining more momentum each day. Giving him sales he would have never gotten simply by doing what he had always done. What do YOU think you should try but haven't? What do you KNOW could help you sell, but are too fearful, uncomfortable, or nervous to do? What's the worst thing that could happen if you try it? What is the BEST thing that could happen if it works? I believe you know what you need to do...

You know what the most successful people in the world have in common? They have "Habits" that make them extremely successful. Don’t get me wrong, EVERYONE has habits, the thing is, not every habit helps you become successful. So what ARE the habits of a highly successful sales person? I guess that depends on what you sell. That being said, here are just a few examples of habits a highly successful car salesperson does on a daily basis. They show up to work on time, dressed professionally. They listen to all their voice mails, and respond to emails asap. They watch the lot for floor traffic while simultaneously prospecting on their phone or computer. They post cars on various social media sites and other sites. They grab any incoming sales call they can as soon as they hear the phone. They follow up with unsold prospects regularly and often. They ask permission to be pushy and close a deal. They talk to customers in the service drive every day, and attempt to create business. They call all their old sold customers, make sure they are happy and find out who's next in the family to get a new or used car. They help their sales manager when he needs it, because the know he will have a "cheese deal" for the useful sales person over the one that avoids helping around the lot. They block time each day for prospecting or cold calling. These are just some of the habits that make a car sales person successful. Doing any of these things once in a blue moon will not generate the results you want. A habit is something you do every day, or regularly, regardless of external conditions. So now I must ask you, what habits are you currently doing that are NOT generating sales or results you want? What habit could you begin doing today, that could have a profound impact on your career or sales numbers RIGHT NOW? DEVELOP A NEW HABIT TODAY THAT WILL HELP YOU SUCCEED!

Why does a new sales rep that just completed sales process training land a deal, when a veteran in a slump can't close a paperback book? Is the veteran weaker than circus lemonade? NO silly! The green pea is just following the basics, simply because they don’t know any better and the basics work! Getting back to the basics is one of those things that, if you’ve ever played baseball, they teach you. Especially when you go through a streak of at bats that end up in a bunch of strikeouts! One thing that’s easy to lose sight of in sales is the sales process. Isn't that ironic? That’s because, while law of large numbers can be our friend, it can also be our enemy. If you get a bunch of easy customers in a row, or "lay downs" as some like to call them. You can short cut your way through the sale, skipping half of the steps and still make a deal. This is all fine and dandy when the market is up, businesses are busy, and the law of large numbers is working for you. However, as soon as things slow down OR your lucky "lay down" streak ends, you WILL find yourself in the slump of all slumps! You have to GET BACK TO THE BASICS OF THE SALES PROCESS, and that means understanding that the only short cut is that there are NO shortcuts! Review the sales process with your manager. Make a little index card to check off the steps as you work with your next client. Write down which steps you short changed or skipped out on entirely on your last 3 customers. Just get back to the basics, in order to get back to selling!

I know being in a sales slump can be very mentally taxing and make you wonder why you ever got into sales in the first place. However, following the steps above will get you through no problem! If you need help, please don’t hesitate to email or call me anytime, I am here for you and I absolutely love helping fellow sales people get back on track and put those rough times behind them! Remember, you’ve been through worse and came out ahead before! Remember all the blessings and great things going on in your life! Use the fear and anxiety to spring into action. Take out those frustrations in a healthy way. Freshen yourself up and present yourself with the utmost confidence. Do something good and positive and good things and positivity will come back to you. Change your routine and pick up a new habit that will help you sell, and step out of your comfort zone to do it! Control that which you can control and do not worry about the things you can't. Get back to the basics and sell like a green pea. ALWAYS REMEMBER WHY YOU DO WHAT YOU DO, it's not just for the money. Is it for your family, your kids, to help others, to be successful and fulfilled in your career? No little slump is going to stand in your way, not today, not this month, not ever... NOW GO SELL SOMETHING!

[seankelleycoaching]

A Better More Effective Way of Training Your Staff

A Better More Effective Way of Training Your Staff

Remember all the way back to high school or college. If you were like the vast majority of students, you excelled in the subjects that interested you the most. These are probably also the same subjects that you could answer questions from other students in. You may have been so good at said subject, you could even tutor someone who wasn't as good. When you really enjoy a topic, you will utilize it more, study it more, and even be able to teach it. With this fact in mind, you can help all your employees grow faster, and become more skilled and knowledgeable than you ever thought was possible. In this article we will cover an effective way to leverage your employees best "subjects" to better train, support, and grow your staffs skills. If you follow the ideas outlined below, you as a leader, will be able to do this, with minimal time investment at no cost to your company.

Today's company leaders and managers are faced with many obstacles that may prevent training. When asked, "Why don't you conduct more training?" The same answers almost always pop up. "Not enough time!" How could you possibly dedicate 3, 5 or even 10 hours per week to training your employees? After all, you probably already work more hours than you had agreed to when you were hired. You couldn't possibly stop what your doing for that many hours a week to train your staff. I know how many directions a manager is pulled in throughout the day.  

Another common problem is, "My staff won't listen, half of them are seasoned veterans who know it all!" This is a common issue, trying to get the veteran who has seen and been through it all to pay attention in training is impossible. My top performers are always to "busy" to sit through a training class. These top performers consistently meet their quotas WITHOUT training, so why would they want to pay attention in a class? The one thing any manager will agree upon is; however, that even a top performing veteran can improve and grow if they choose. Thus, if they were "open" to training, they could hypothetically sell even more, and get even better at what they do.  

Money can also be a hurdle for some companies. Many fortune 500 companies will invest millions in training and coaching their executives, managers, and employees, because they know how important training and coaching programs are. However, most companies are on a tight budget and don't have these kind of financial options. Some managers want to train their staff but have NO budget, so hiring an outside company is not even an option.

Yet another challenge to regimented training that a manager may not admit too, or even be aware of, is that the sales people have heard the managers training spiel on each subject already. How many times do you read the same book? How many times do you watch the same movie? Probably not that many times, unless you really like it! I have news, they may not really like your training that much to do it over and over! (Sorry friends) Thus, to expect your employees who have been trained by you once, or twice on each topic already, to learn anything else from your repetitious training doesn't make sense. In fact, if you did any training when they were on boarded, and now expect them to sit through regimented training from you over again, learn more, enjoy it and pay attention, your being unrealistic. Some employees may even be insulted that you would ask them to sit through training on something they feel they have already been taught, or mastered, or that they have learned early in their career. Imagine forcing Bill Gates to do a Windows PC 101 class?

This article is not to say that you shouldn't train your staff due to the aforementioned hurdles that can prevent quality training. On the contrary, you should find ways to overcome these obstacles, and that's just what this article is about. Companies with ongoing regimented training see massive results, and huge gains in profit. Client satisfaction, market share, and all the other goodies that come from this type of internal growth are abundant with a great training program. So the question now becomes, "How can we implement a training program that is low cost, low time investment, and extremely effective? How can we create training everyone from rookie to veteran can engage in and grow from. How can we stick to a training program without taking the manager or the entire staff off of their duties for long periods of time?"

It was these questions that led me to think long and hard about a way to accomplish this. After much deliberation, this is what I came up with. This is the action I took to accomplish what needed to be done to help my staff grow. The short answer to these questions is, ask your staff. That's right, ask THEM! Step one, list every skill or subject your staff should be trained in or should be proficient at. Second, disseminate this list to your staff and have your employees rate themselves in each topic. I prefer a 1 - 10 scale for this. Make sure you let them know what each # means. A 1 means they need severe training in said subject, a 5 means they are proficient but could improve, and a 10 means they could easily train other people on each subject. You will find most of your veterans will give 10's in many subjects. Guess what? You just found your company trainers!

The next step in this process is to create what I call a "Training Needs Matrix". You can use google sheets or excel for this. What I do is list the employees across the top of the columns. Each row on the left has all the potential subjects for each training session. If an employee is a 10 in a subject (and if I agree with their assessment of themselves) I will give them a green box. If they rated themselves between a 1 and a 6. I will give them a yellow mark. If they have never been trained on said subject I will give them a red box. Now I will take the green box employees (the people that fancy themselves a 10) and decide who will teach each class, this is based on who I deem is the best at each subject. I enroll them in doing this by letting them know, they are getting practice at being a manager. Also by helping out the team, there will be more company growth, which will benefit them long term.  

Note: If an employee gives themselves a rating on a subject that contradicts what you think about their skill level, they may need coaching around this. I recommend a 1 on 1 coaching session for any employee that believes they are much better at a topic than you do. Furthermore, employees that give themselves a 7, 8, or 9, are also encouraged to attend the training sessions but are not required to go. Again going back to paragraph one, why force someone to attend a training session that may not interest them, that they will not pay attention too or grow from? Everyone who rates themselves 1 - 6 should attend the training session for that subject.  

I also must mention, it is up to YOU as the manager, to ensure your "trainers" prepare for the class, and take teaching it seriously. Also you must make sure the training classes take place when they are supposed to, because your employee trainers will not force people into a classroom or office to learn from them. Holding everyone accountable to attend the classes will be your job. That being said, all you have to do is make sure all the right people show up! The training will happen, you will be able to stay focused on steering the ship while your 1st mates conduct the classes. Your employees will hear an alternative perspective to the training topic, which will reinforce the things you have taught. This training regiment will not cost your company one dollar. Your employees have decided what they WANT training in, thus their learning will be far more effective. The seasoned veterans who "know everything" will now be teaching and teaching reinforces what they already know and builds more confidence. Confidence will help them sell more in the end and give them leadership skills they will need to get to the next level in their careers. This also grows team cohesion and stickiness, since your veterans now have a vested interest in the newer employees. Since they have helped shape them, they will actually start to care about the success of their peers. You would be surprised at all the other benefits this type of in house training program has!

In the end, most executives, owners and managers agree, training is critical to an organization's success. However, few have figured out an affordable, effective way to overcome the common obstacles that prevent quality training from taking place. They either utilize old school training methods that do not work, or simply give up training all together. I highly recommend figuring out all the topics you could train your staff on. Then asking your employees where they want and need training. Lastly leveraging your best performers to teach those who want and need training, will certainly help get you, your staff, and your company to the next level!

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[seankelleycoaching]

Sales Managers: Shoot the Messenger Shoot Yourself In the Foot!

If you’re a sales manager, every day your sales staff line up to bring you news of their success, failures, conquests, and exploits. Sometimes they bring great news, excitedly proclaiming,"The clients just signed, we made a deal!" High fives, words of affirmation and celebration, everyone rejoices in the success of the moment. It is simple to react in the proper way when everything is going your way.

On the contrary, there are times when the message from your sales representative is less than favorable, "Boss I can't get them to sign, they are going to walk away from the deal." Certainly, news like this can be frustrating for a sales manager. After spending so much time helping to manage the deal, then to have your sales person lose control like this? Getting angry or frustrated with your salesperson may be your first instinct; however, you need to know that your gut reaction to say something rude, sarcastic or angry, can cost you a lot more than one lost deal. So in situations like this, what is the best thing to do? How do you work to save the deal, correct the issues at hand without brow beating your employees?

Put yourself in the shoes of your salesperson. They probably wanted the sale as much if not more than you! Even top notch sales people with the best attitudes may feel down and out when the loss of a sale occurs. Do you think your sales person wanted to let you, their sales manager, down intentionally? Did they want to look bad to their peers by losing a sale? Did they want to flush that commission down the toilet on purpose? Ask yourself this, how do you feel when you let YOUR boss down? When you make a mistake, how do you want to be treated by your boss? More on this later, for now, bite your tongue!

First things first, attempt to save the deal. You probably need time to cool off before correcting your sales person properly. Also, more importantly, you can NOT correct your staff member and coach them if you don’t know WHY the potential buyer is backing out. At this point in the deal, you may believe you know why the customer is leaving without buying. In reality, until you ask the client, your only making an assumption. Corrective action based on emotion and assumptions? Sounds like a recipe for angry sales people that don’t learn what they need to improve, as well as a loss of respect their manager to me.

Go talk to the client or customers without your sales person present, this will allow them an easier time opening up or giving you feedback on your staff member. Ask them how their experience was right off the bat. They may give you subtle clues about what went wrong, or why they are leaving. Pay close attention to their body language. Are they actually listening and providing honest feedback or are they just running out the door? Ask permission to follow up with them, find out how and when they prefer to be contacted. This will cause them to not feel as if you are holding them hostage as well as give you a time frame on their purchase. If they don’t want you to reach out to them, something may have gone seriously wrong. If they won't provide any real reasons or objections for you to work with, ask permission to probe deeper. Something along the lines of, "Mr Customer, at the risk of sounding pushy or high pressure, may I ask you a serious question?" Once they say yes, throw it out there, "What is the ONE thing keeping you from making a decision today?" In this way you may uncover the main objection without making the client angry at you for being nosy. They did after all, give you permission to ask the question! Once you have tried your best to overcome the objections, save the sale, and you have cooled off you can move forward. Now that you know the REAL reason the customer did not buy, and your customer is not present, NOW is the time to coach and train your salesperson.

Again, don’t shoot the messenger, your employee was just relaying the clients message. This message is probably an answer to your associates presentation or the manner in which you directed the sale as the manager. You must also accept some level of responsibility for the lost sale. You did train your sales person after all right? First, let your sales person know that you are on their team, that you want them to sell as many clients as possible because their success is your success. In this way they will not put up a defensive barrier which will limit their listening. This will remind them that you are on their team and not just a ridiculing micromanaging manager. Next, ask your sales person if THEY know why the customer had left. There is no point in "beating a dead horse." Your employee may already know the mistakes that were made, if they hit the nail on the head and tell you the correct reason the sale was lost, then kudos to them. Your next question should be, "What will you do next time to produce a better result?" Then hold them accountable for their commitment the next time they are in a similar situation so history does not repeat itself. If their "reason" for the lost sale is not the actual reason the customer left, now it's your turn to point out what they missed, the opportunity lost, and what it would mean for them if they correct the shortcoming moving forward. If as a sales manager you adopt this method of personnel development, your staff will respect you for such resolve. They will always seek to grow with you, and will believe that you really do have their backs.

In review, the short term damage to you, your client, and team member for "shooting the messenger." Are very serious and destructive. First and foremost you look insecure, weak and lack confidence: all poor leadership qualities. If the customer hears what's going on you may easily offend them and will have no hope of saving the deal. Second, you do not find out what the sales associate needs actual training or coaching on, so they never get better at selling. You create a fear in your employee to approach their manager in any undesirable situation, which is when they need you the most. The next time something's going south, do you think they are going to tell you about it? Even IF you know the real reason the sale was lost, your behavior will have caused your staff member to shut down and not listen to you and improvement cannot take place.

Long term damage of shooting the messenger, is high employee turnover. The only sales people that will stick around to work with you are ones that like abuse. More unnecessary lost sales will occur, due to the assumptive corrective action that isn't solving the real gap in the salespersons behaviors, attitudes or presentation. As well as you gaining a reputation for leading by irrationality and emotion, which is not a reputation you want in a leadership role. A true test of a leader is the ability to stay cool and react appropriately, especially when things don’t go your way. Stay calm, talk to the client, and lastly coach your staff member. Always remember, if you’re a shoot the messenger type of leader, your shooting yourself in the foot!

[seankelleycoaching]

Humility Sells

We all know the stereotypical top earning sales associate is a highly confident individual. He or she is capable of walking into a room and wowing their potential client with their powerful presentation and demonstration. Then like some unstoppable force, they are unable to take no for an answer. This sales professional confidently discovers and overcomes their prospective buyers objections with ease. This impressive feat to an average or new sales rep, is an every day occurrence to the superior selling guru. But where does real confidence come from? Once a sales rep is a "top earner" within their organization, can they continue to grow and improve with all that confidence? Is there a better way to sell than to be 100% confident ALL the time? I believe true confidence comes from humility. I believe there is no ceiling on what one can accomplish in sales if one is humble. I also believe selling with humility will get you further than selling with over confidence.

Humility helps top sales associates make big money for many reasons. The first of many being that a humble person is not a "know it all".  A great example is how a sales rep with humility knows that every lost sale is a chance to learn from their mistakes and become better at their job. The number of sales that are "lost", in most cases outnumber the "closed" sales. A truly humble sales associate will not dismiss a lost sale as, "The customers loss, they were idiots for not buying my product or service." or "I did everything right, they just weren't ready to buy..." nor will they create some other assumptive explanation to soften the "sting" on their ego after losing the deal. The sales pro with humility looks at each lost sale as an opportunity to ask themselves,"What went well?", "What could I have done better?", "What will I try next time to create a better outcome?". The most humble of them all, will even go as far as too seek the truth by asking the client exactly WHY they lost their business. Sure, it hurts a little bit to discover your only human and made a mistake. However, if you can be humble and learn from your mistakes, you will make them less and less, which will help you to sell more and more. Over time, the humble seller who seeks to improve from their mistakes wins over the overconfident "I can do no wrong!" sales person.

Yet another great example of selling with humility is when your able to say to a client, "Great question! I have never been asked that before, I am going to jot that question down and get back with you. When do you need that question answered by?" You appear honest and humble, vs someone who has ALL the answers ALL the time, in reality they may afraid to say "I dont know." Have you ever been tested by a customer? Where they ask you a question that you felt they already knew the answer, in order to see how you handle the situation? What if you try to "B.S." your way through one of these tests, your customer will smell that "B.S." and walk away very fast. Being humble is being able to say "I don't know." in a way that makes you sound professional, and gives you a chance to follow up in a way that satisfies the client!

Pretty much everyone agrees that today's market is changing at an unprecedented rate. Is what you are selling today, the customers you are selling too, their methods of purchasing, and the processes used to make the deals, different from 5 years ago? 1 year go? What about 6 months ago? Chances are the answer to this question is "YES, many things have changed!" If that is the case, then a little humility towards ones scope of knowledge, goes a long way in growing, honing their craft, and staying ahead of the competition. The product and service one is selling, a long with the knowledge of your clients, their needs and wants, and all the processes that come along with sales must all be mastered and remastered again when things change. Humility in this part of your life will help you keep abreast of important changes, and stay on the cutting edge of your chosen sales career. Your learning and growing, as opposed to that "know it all" who has ceased learning because, "I have seen it all." mentality has taken over. That all too common sales rep can look forward to career stagnation, lower earnings, less than satisfactory ratings from clients, client retention loss, or even being passed up by a newer, more willing to learn sales up and comer!

Humble sales professionals are not afraid to ask for help. Two heads are better than one right? Its the same reason why a computer with a "Dual core" or "Quad core" processor is better. Its because when you add more brains, you add more thinking power. No one, and I mean no one, has all the answers all the time. Through collective reasoning and brainstorming with a co worker or manager, you can solve more problems. Solving more problems in sales means one thing, selling more: selling more means making more money. So the next time you are about to lose that deal, the next time you are unable to get that prospect to respond, or the next time you catch an objection you just cant seem to overcome. Instead of trying to be that super hero, one man/woman sales army, just ask for help! If asking someone for help assists you in saving 1 extra deal per week, per month, or even per year, how much extra earnings does that make you and your company? Does making more money for your company and yourself make you look bad, or does being to cocky to ask for help and losing sales because of it? Humility Sells.

Sales people with humility are much more thankful than their less than humble counterparts. They are grateful when their manager takes the time to train, or coach them. They are extremely happy when a customer chooses to buy from them instead of the competition, and they make sure their valued client knows this. This appreciation oozes from them in a way that says to their manager, team, company and customer, "This person cares." This humility shows that you have a greater purpose for what you do, other than the self serving reason so many people say they sell for, "To make big money." Conversely, the other sales rep who in their mind believes, "I deserve this sale because I did so much for the customer." Probably doesn't value the customer or the deal. The one who feels they are owed the referrals from their clients, probably wont get any. The sales rep who thinks they are entitled to that next promotion, when they have done little or nothing to earn one in reality vs their co workers, probably wont get it. Even if this entitled sales associate did receive the deal, the referral and the promotion, they would not be grateful upon receiving any of them. If you are humble, you will be grateful for any opportunity given, any extra attention, and any referral from your customers. This gratitude will be a magnet for more sales, more positive attention from your supervisor, and more referrals from your customers.

Confidence is great and is an integral part of a strong sales career. I am not telling you to sell scared, or be meek when selling. However, knowing when to turn off that ego and be humble is equally important. Being able to look at yourself and your customers with true humility is every bit as important as sheer confidence. Always seek to improve, always ask for help when in need, always be thankful. Humility sells!

[seankelleycoaching]

Could YOU succeed in sales?

Sales is one of the most rewarding careers on the planet! Some who could be fantastic, high earning sales people never even consider it as a career. Maybe you were told by your parents, "Work for hourly income, sales commission is to irregular." so you never gave sales a second thought. Many others by happenstance, end up in a sales role, but may not cut it and end up going broke.

To help you determine if you could succeed in sales, I would like to share something powerful with you in this article. This is a list of traits that some of my colleagues and I have determined to be the true heart of a sales person. The necessary traits for true sales success. If you possess some or most of these traits, and are not in sales, I strongly urge you to do research into selling for a living. If you're currently in sales, and you're lacking any of the traits below, I have good news for you, these traits can be practiced, and trained to help you improve your income and client satisfaction!

#1 You're able to make a great first impression.

The old sales person cliché still comes to mind for many Americans as soon as the job title "Sales Associate" is mentioned. Images of shark skinned suits, slicked back hair, and fast talking car sales people are the first thing that pops up. This is not what consumers want when making a purchase, be it product or service. People make many judgements about others within the first thirty seconds of laying eyes on you. If you are able to greet a perfect stranger with total confidence, win them over fast and often with a firm hand shake, a friendly greeting, and warm smile. Next, if you can break down any barriers they may have in opening up a dialog with you, then you are able to make a great first impression. Sales might be for you.

#2 You desire to make money and work on commission.

This trait doesn't necessarily mean your greedy, but working for salary or an hourly wage is a turn off to those who could really succeed working for commission. This desire is inherent in those people who laugh at a yearly salary and think, "I can make so much more than that with my work ethic, dedication, and skill set." If the thought of punching a clock is dreadful to you because you think you are worth more than that, then commissioned sales could help you achieve your financial goals.

#3 You enjoy dealing with the public.

Being a people person really helps. A true sales person authentically enjoys listening to people, asking questions, solving others problems and helping people feel happy. Not to say an introvert can't succeed in sales, but the fact is, if you truly enjoy being around people, you have a key trait it takes to succeed in sales.

#4 You are highly trainable and coachable.

Have you been on a sports team in high school or college and just loved the heck out of your coach? Were you able to reach new physical heights because your coach was able to teach you and inspire you to succeed? Did you have a teacher or professor who worked with you to accomplish what you thought was impossible? Do you love asking for and receiving advice from others? Do you enjoy reading self help books or even searching the internet for answers to questions? If a pattern of things like this occurs in your life, then you are probably highly trainable and coachable. If you have this trait, and you find the right sales manager to work for, who is also a great trainer and coach, you could be propelled into the stratosphere of sales success, which by the way, could easily mean six figure earnings!

#5 You are process driven.

Most companies that have an entire team selling their product or service, also have a tried and true sales process, a roadmap so to speak, for each member of the sales team to follow. If you are process driven then you do not like to start a task without instructions on how to complete it. If you are process driven then you like to follow a recipe when cooking instead of just winging it. A process driven sales professional will learn and stick to the sales process of the company, instead of trying to freelance and reinvent the wheel.

#6 You are proficient with technology.

Todays market is full of social networking programs, sites and apps. In addition to this companies have complex CRM (customer relationship management) software used to track sales and follow up with clients. Being able to manipulate this technology in order to connect with potential prospects, and cultivate your business gives any sales person a huge advantage.

#7 You have a good attitude and sense of humor.

Unless your selling something that is very highly desirable, and practically free (think canned Soda),  and most of us aren't, then you will probably lose far more sales than you close. Some products or services even have a less than 3% close rate! That means a lot of rejection, and a ton of potential negativity. If you have the heart of a sales person, then no amount of lost deals will really trouble you for long. Negativity and setbacks roll off people with this wonderful sales trait like water off a ducks back. If you can laugh off a tough situation with ease and come out the other side better for it, then the sales challenges you could face probably wont bother you either. Having a perpetual truly positive attitude is a very strong benefit when in a sales role. On the other hand, if you dwell on negative situations for long periods of time, if it takes you long periods of time to recover mentally when things don't go your way, selling could be a rocky road for you.

#8 You are empathetic.

Have you always been able to tell when something is bothering your parents or siblings? Do you take notice when a friend or even a total stranger appears happy, or depressed? If you have the ability to feel what others are feeling and sense what they are thinking by the tone in their voice, facial expressions and body movement, then you are highly empathetic. When working with people, and attempting to get them to buy your goods, its not about you its about them. So being able to take notice in how someone feels, when they aren't in agreement with what your presenting, or when they are truly excited about what your demonstrating is a critical sales ability that many people in the career field would kill to have. If you can do this, and haven't thought about selling, shame on you! Strong sales reps must pick up on these signals and ask what the customer is thinking to bring fourth any objections. Which brings us to our next trait.

#9 You think quick on your feet.

Throughout most any sale, customers will present objections. There are hundreds of possible objections, depending on what you sell, and the ones your clients have must be acknowledged and overcome. The ability to think quick on your feet means you are able to listen to these potential hurtles, quickly figure out a good solution for your client and continue on the selling cycle. If you are a quick thinker, or a fast and effective problem solver, your skills could be utilized to help someone with a purchase!

#10 Flexible schedule.

One potential turn off for many who wish to enjoy a lucrative sales career may be the hours. To truly reach your maximum income level a flexible schedule is fairly important. You must be available when your clients can come purchase. I've seen many sales people refuse to stop in on their day off when a high value client of theirs is wanting to make a big purchase. Being there for your customers when THEY are available can make the difference in your paycheck, or even your entire career. For me having a stay at home wife has greatly helped my career, because when I need to go to work to meet with sales reps or customers, I have that ability rain sleet or snow, day or night, 7 days a week! I'm not saying you will work 7 days a week if your in sales. I just want you to know that being able to close a deal at almost at any time, can be very beneficial to a sales professional. If you have lots of free time and want to get into a high income, high payoff, fast paced but sometimes demanding career, sales may be for you!

After reading this, if you have the traits above and haven't thought about a career in sales, you probably need too right away. You might be, selling yourself short! (See what I did there?) If your in a selling role already, then I challenge you to rate yourself on the skillset above. Figure out opportunities for improvement and work on those traits that did not come inherent to you. Doing so could help you could reach new heights in your selling career!