Professional Sales Coaching

Corporate and performance coaching with Phil Allison and Ian Segail

2009-05-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ian recently interview Phil Allison - here's the transcript of the interview.

You know, my view is quite clear on this, in fact, that it’s not our job to tell people what to do; it’s our job to question people in what they’re doing. And the change in the response you get is remarkable in that you actually have people that have to start to think.

Welcome to another www.Salestutor.com.au podcast, which supports business owners and sales leaders with ideas and tactical insights to accelerate their sales revenue.

Hi. I’m Ian Segail, author of Bulletproof Your Sales Team. I’m really thrilled today to
bring you an interview with the gentleman who is one of Australia’s premier executive
coaches, Mr. Phil Allison. Phil is the managing director and the founder of a company
called Corporate Edge, which is a corporate coaching company. Originally Phil started
the organization back in ’99 and it started as a consulting company. However, that
quickly transformed into a corporate coaching company dedicated to assisting both
individuals as well as companies to achieve their potential. Corporate Edge actually
operates in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Southeast Asia.

Phil himself, coaches clients at the very senior levels of organizations with a distinct
focus on managing directors, CEOs, general managers, national managers. Phil also runs
a successful suite of coaching and leadership development workshops both for senior
management as well as middle management. He also facilitates a strategic planning
program, which helps organizations establish their direction, the objectives, vision,
values, as well as cultural alignment. And I’m so privileged to have invested the time
with Phil today and have him share with us from both his wisdom and absolute huge
breadth of knowledge and experience when it comes to coaching people for performance.
So without any more fanfare, let’s get straight into it.

IAN SEGAIL: Welcome Phil.

PHIL ALLISON: Thanks Ian. It’s great to be here.

IAN SEGAIL: It’s wonderful. Beautiful offices, lovely overlooking the water. Hopefully
we can get some work done this afternoon.

PHIL ALLISON: It is very nice here, I’ve got to admit.

IAN SEGAIL: I suppose just for the benefit of those listening, maybe you can give us a
brief overview of what qualified you to be at this table today.

PHIL ALLISON: Okay. I think it’s something that actually started some 14 years
ago when I was working in Singapore as the operations director of Cold Storage there. I
was in the middle of my time in supermarkets, nearing the end, and I started to realize
there was something else I needed to do with my life. Basically it’s the Stephen Covey
quote of where you’re climbing the ladder of success only to find later on that the ladder
was on the wrong wall.

IAN SEGAIL: It’s interesting. So often I talk to people, in fact, I’ve done a podcast a few
months ago and the gentleman I was interviewing said the exact, same thing.

PHIL ALLISON: Yup.

IAN SEGAIL: Even quoting…

PHIL ALLISON: The exact same quote.

IAN SEGAIL: Exact same quote.

PHIL ALLISON: I think it’s perfect. That’s a great quote and it just makes it easier.
And when you actually talk to people about that, it’s amazing how many people you can
see start to reflect on their own lives and thinking about, “You know what? There’s a
part of my life where I just don’t feel like I’m actually achieving what I should be
achieving.” And that was what was happening to me. At that point, I made a decision – I
went into a lot of self reflection about what it is I felt I wanted to do with my life. And
that was also the point where I created a life purpose and that life purpose was to achieve
my potential in life through helping others to achieve theirs.
So it was one of those things where I didn’t want to have regrets. I didn’t want to get to
the end of it and look back and think….

IAN SEGAIL: I would have or I could have or I should have, yeah.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. But then the other side of it was what was I going to do?
How was I going to prevent that from happening? And what I realized what I was really
good at, what I love to do, what I was passionate about was working with other people
either individually or in groups to get them to be the best they can be. And that was
where, you know, basically I got to where I am today.

IAN SEGAIL: Right. And so tell us more about the work that you do today.

PHIL ALLISON: I started off with Corporate – this is our tenth year now. And
originally started off doing consulting. I actually didn’t know exactly what it is that I
wanted to do or what I was going to do.

IAN SEGAIL: It takes a while to kind of figure out what the right thing is.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. And it was right at the beginning – I want to say the
beginning, obviously coaching I’d been going overseas for a while and then a bit of
coaching happening in Australia, but it wasn’t mainstream and it wasn’t known. And I
had actually not heart of coaching at that point. I knew that I wanted to run workshops
and I’d been writing a few and you know, studying to get the criteria and the material to
write a few.

IAN SEGAIL: What were you studying?

PHIL ALLISON: Well, just I want to say studying – did a number of courses, uh,
and read many many books.

IAN SEGAIL: On coaching specifically?

PHIL ALLISON: Well, I didn’t know coaching existed. Now I actually uh, a guy by
the name of Ian Segail gave me my first coaching book. You probably won’t remember
that. A book from John Whitmore.

IAN SEGAIL: Way back then.

PHIL ALLISON: Way back then.

IAN SEGAIL: (laughing)

PHIL ALLISON: So…it and he’s probably forgotten that. So that was my first
coaching book. That’s when I actually understood that coaching sort of really existed.
That was back in our rebel days when we first met.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: And really it was then that I knew what I was going to do. Up
until then I knew it was going to be developing people. I knew it was going to be
possibly training people and challenging people. I just didn’t know it was called
coaching.

IAN SEGAIL: So this was the tool or vehicle that you chose to…

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. So I went out and did some coaching training, uh, some
basic coaching training which gave me structure, how to hold a coaching meeting and gave me some valuable tools on how a coach should operate. It gave me the criteria I
suppose and probably the ethical side of it as well.
And uh, basically got out there and coached.

IAN SEGAIL: So and you’ve been doing that now for ten years?

PHIL ALLISON: Ten years, yeah.

IAN SEGAIL: So, you would have made some interesting distinctions along the way as
to what works and what doesn’t.

PHIL ALLISON: Absolutely.

IAN SEGAIL: So maybe you can share some insight. What are you doing differently
now than what you were doing when you first started?

PHIL ALLISON: If I was going to compare the early days, the early days I was
probably the typical coach that goes out and gets trained even today I would imagine. A
person who uses a structure. It’s all about the questions and it’s all about trying to really
just end up with an action plan of what the person’s going to do.
Coaching to me is about creating awareness and responsibility and that was one of the
things that I learned in the coaching course. And I still agree with that today. You know,
how do you make a person aware? And how do you make them responsible for the
actions that they need to take to accept that responsibility? There’s so much more to it
now and I’ve learned that. And although I probably started quite early understanding that
there was a distinction between coaching and mentoring, and a distinction between
coaching and managing and a distinction between coaching and leadership – and later on,
a distinction between coaching and being an entrepreneur.

And when I made those distinctions, when I understood what those five roles actually
were, it allowed me to broaden the way I coach to actually take in all five roles.

IAN SEGAIL: Are you saying to tailor your coaching to suit the entrepreneur, the
manager, the …. Is that what you’re saying?

PHIL ALLISON: No. I’m actually saying I think a coach, the good coaches these
days are all five of those things. So the distinction, just to clarify it so you know what the
distinction is – a manager to me is a person who understands process, structure, you
know, if we get into the real sense of it, does planning, gets compliance, all those sorts of
things, the typical management things. That’s what a manager does.

A leader is a person who inspires, a person who has a vision, who sets the direction,
makes tough decisions.

A coach is a person who trains and develops people, but the main part of the development
is through challenging. They’re the person who gets people out of their comfort zones,
really sparks them to do something they normally wouldn’t do.
The mentor is a person who gives advice when asked on areas of expertise that they have.
And the entrepreneur is a person who grows a business. And having all five caps as I call
them, that’s a model I created about 7 or 8 years ago, having all five caps in your armory
and understanding the distinction between the five, is critical in a coaching exercise.
Because I’m starting with a person who is struggling to achieve something within their
business, the first thing I’ll look at is their structure. So I’ve really got my management
hat on and not my coaching hat.

IAN SEGAIL: And the reason you look at structure is because…

PHIL ALLISON: It’s the foundation for everything in a business.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: It is amazing how um, I have worked with people for only one or
two meetings because we dealt with structure on the very first meeting, and that fixed all
the issues that the person had. So the second meeting was just really a wrap up of why
this has all worked.

IAN SEGAIL: So that’s interesting, because companies get set up and they’ve been
operating for years and even different divisions have been operating for years and their
structure is dysfunctional. So can you maybe share how do you find that out? If you find
it out, what do you do about it?

PHIL ALLISON: I find it really simple. The easiest way I find to just sort of get a
person to draw their structure…

IAN SEGAIL: The org structure.

PHIL ALLISON: Right, the org structure – it’s a simple org structure. And then
question it. You challenge it. And once you’ve got the structure out, you become the
coach again and challenge, “Okay, what does this person do and why do they report to
you? What does this person do and why do they report to you?” And then when you go
down another line, so you start to see whether the structure is functional or dysfunctional.

One of the common mistakes is that people still believe and in the 21st century, you can
have 12 or 13 direct reports. There are companies out there where managing directors
will have 20 people on their senior team.

IAN SEGAIL: It’s unbelievable, yeah.

PHIL ALLISON: And because there’s so many people involved, it all becomes
dysfunctional. And when you look at why there are so many people reporting to them
directly, it stems to another issue, which is their need to control all parts of the business.
So if I have a person reporting directly to me, I can then control that person, therefore
that department. So instead of maybe having IT report to finance, I’ll have IT report to
me.

IAN SEGAIL: Right, so that’s not in the structure, it’s more control.

PHIL ALLISON: But it comes out in the structure, it comes out in the structure.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: So when you start to question the structure, when you start to
review the structure, when you start to question why that person reports to you, what you
discover are control issues.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: So then you start to challenge the control issues, challenge the
person’s time, how much time they spend with those people, how much they’re actually
able to influence all of the decisions being made in that area. You start to create the
awareness around that, then you get them to accept responsibility of the fact that you
know, if I believe the person, the CFO is capable, then they should be able to run that
department, for example, like IT.

IAN SEGAIL: Right. So when you talk about challenging and creating awareness, what
– how do you challenge that and how do you create awareness in somebody?

PHIL ALLISON: So if we look at coaching, there are three critical things you need
to be able to do to be a coach. Absolutely critical – you can’t do these three, it’s actually
I’ll go back as four things. The single most important thing for a coach to be successful
is a coach has to genuinely care about the growth and the development and the success of
the person they’re coaching.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: If there’s any other motive for you being there, you will not be
successful in my book.

IAN SEGAIL: Okay, so let me ask you – so if I’m a manager, I’ve got an agenda, so how
do I become a manager/coach? Because I’ve got an agenda.

PHIL ALLISON: No, you can have an agenda. Everyone’s got an agenda. What I’m
saying is if you want to be successful as a coach, you want your managers to be
successful as a coach and this is an issue that happens in businesses all the time. They go
out and train their team on how to coach and one or two people go out and successfully
do it, and the other eight or nine or ten don’t. Why? Because one or two people
genuinely care about the growth and development of the team, the other eight or nine
simply don’t.

IAN SEGAIL: Okay, so separating the agenda from the caring. Gotcha.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. So just going out and training your team how to coach,
won’t create a coaching culture.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: You want a coaching culture, you actually have to surround
yourself with people who care about the development of their team. It starts with the way
you see your team. So we would, in workshops, work on that before we’d work on
training a person how to coach. Because if we can’t conceptually and then behaviorally
get a person to care about others within the business, then teaching them how to coach is
just a waste of time, it’s irrelevant.

IAN SEGAIL: Okay.

PHIL ALLISON: So that’s the first thing about being a great coach. The second thing is you’ve got to be able to ask outstanding questions. And it’s just a skill. I know when I coach people and when I do development workshops with people and we talk about questions and how to question and show them how to coach, I can see that some people are intimidated because they come up and they’ll ask you, “How do you know what questions to ask? You seem to know all the right questions.” And I’ve got to remind them that when I did my very first coaching session, I actually started with a list of questions on a piece of paper.

IAN SEGAIL: Oh really?

PHIL ALLISON: Yeah. It’s a true story. And I had them all written out, all typed out, and when I hit a wall, I would go back to my list. But I only ever used the list twice.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: I never had to use it again. And every time I coached, I got better.
Your ability to ask a great question is just a skill. Like every skill, you’ve got to practice
it. If you don’t do it, you’ll never get good at it.

IAN SEGAIL: And so what’s the essence of a good – what should a good question do?

PHIL ALLISON: A good question should be able to create awareness or
responsibility or both. So what does that mean? It means that you need to be able to
understand what you’re actually looking for – what is it you need to delve into. And it
leads into the third thing, so the first thing was you gotta care, the second thing you gotta
be able to ask great questions – the third thing is you gotta be an active listener.

IAN SEGAIL: Can I – just before we go into listening, can you maybe give us an
example of a question that you could ask which would stimulate the creation of a winner?
So if we go back to the control freak manager who’s got, you know, 20 different reports
or people reporting to, what sort of question would you ask that person?

PHIL ALLISON: I would go straight into, “Why do you have this person reporting to
you?”

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: And they would come along and say, “Well I think it’s a very
senior role and I think it’s important that I am completely over the top of that.” So, “How
much time are you actually spending with that person? You’re saying you need to be
completely over the top of it, what structure do you have in place to be completely over
the top of that?” And then as you’re asking those questions and you know, “How well is
that working for you? How much are you really over the top of that? Is there anything
that he’s waiting on right now with you that you’re holding up?”

When you start to dig in and you’re starting to ask these questions, which can be a little
confronting, what you start to do is create awareness. “You know what? I’m actually not
doing a very good job of leading this person.” And it’s that awareness which is
absolutely necessary if you’re going to change behaviour, it’s that awareness that starts to
kick in.

IAN SEGAIL: You get to that ah ha point of, “Oh, actually I’m not really doing what I think I’m doing.”

PHIL ALLISON: Absolutely correct.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.
PHIL ALLISON: “I think I’m doing the right thing by having all these people report
to me, but now I’m starting to realize that I’m not spending the quality time with them,
I’m not giving them the quality direction they need, I’m not answering or responding to
them as rapidly as they need to be responded to do what they need to do. In fact, I’m
actually holding this thing up and if we change the structure, we could probably get
around this.”

IAN SEGAIL: Have a new result. And what I’m hearing is I have to come to an
awareness myself. You can’t, as the coach, say, “Oh, by the way, here’s what I’ve
noticed.”

PHIL ALLISON: Yes.

IAN SEGAIL: “I see that you’ve got all these people reporting to you and you’re just not
on top of it.” And because you just get a straight, “Of course I am.”

PHIL ALLISON: Look, as soon as they write the structure out, as soon as you see it
diagrammatically – I’ll look at it and I think to myself, “Well, that’s wrong.” You know
what I mean?

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: But you can’t just say, “It’s wrong and these guys here, a typical
structure or more traditional structure would say that these people wouldn’t report to
you.”

IAN SEGAIL: But that’s the tendency. And that’s what you have to, I suppose in
coaching, is to actually hold back from that.

PHIL ALLISON: Absolutely correct.

IAN SEGAIL: Because that’s what a manager would do. A manager would say, “That’s
wrong and you need to do this.”

PHIL ALLISON: That’s right. When you train people how to coach, the very first
thing you notice is that people go straight into solving, they want to solve. They think,
“My job here is to solve.” You know, one of the problems Ian, is that we are
programmed or conditioned I believe from childhood that the person in charge, originally
our parent, and then the teacher, and then our first boss, is the person who has all the answers. And it’s their job to make decisions, accept responsibility, do the thinking, and
basically solve the problems.

So we’re conditioned that way. And it’s amazing how quickly that when we get our first
job as a supervisor, manager or leader, and we’re given a team to run, we can go from
being dependent and subservient, to being the boss in an instant.

IAN SEGAIL: Just because we had a change in our business card.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. Correct. Our behavior changes remarkably because we
understand what we believe to be the role of the leader or the boss, and that is to tell
people what to do.

IAN SEGAIL: Gotcha.

PHIL ALLISON: And that’s something as a coach, one of the critical things as a
coach is that we need to work with managers on to change that whole perception. You
know, my view is quite clear on this. In fact, that it’s not our job to tell people what to
do, it’s our job to question people on what they’re doing. And the change in the response
you get is remarkable in that you actually have people that have to start to think.
One of the things that we’ve been talking about in our business here at Corporate Edge is
that our job is to create thinking cultures. And to create a thinking culture within an
organization means that you’ve got to ask a lot of questions. You’ve actually got to have
a culture of asking questions. You’ve got to have a culture of what we prefer to call
challenging, challenge everything you do. Challenge what you’re doing today.
Challenge people as to where they’re at. And this isn’t a challenge in an aggressive way,
this is a challenge in an exciting way.

IAN SEGAIL: And curiosity, it’s like why do we do it that way?

PHIL ALLISON: Correct.

IAN SEGAIL: Yeah.

PHIL ALLISON: And there are no sacred cows. This is something where everything
could be challenged. This doesn’t mean you change things immediately. There’s a
process to changing, it just means that we need to question. And if we’re not questioning
enough in an organization, then to me, you’re not growing. What you’ve done is you’ve
probably settled into a comfort zone, you’ve settled into maintenance and you’ve
forgotten how to grow.

IAN SEGAIL: Well it’s interesting, with the current economic climate, it’s forcing people
to question.

PHIL ALLISON: Absolutely.

IAN SEGAIL: And so when you see people being retired and we’re not replacing those
people, someone must have asked the question, “Well do we really need to replace the
person?” “What does the person do that’s so critical that we actually have someone a
bum on their seat?”

PHIL ALLISON: Correct.

IAN SEGAIL: And so that person might have been there for fifteen years, we’ve been
paying their salary, but nobody would question it until now.

PHIL ALLISON: It’s amazing as well. There’s that and there’s the other thing
where you’ve seen a number of organizations just stop dead on projects, which
apparently three to six months ago were mission critical. And now all of a sudden you’ve
put them off for a year. So the question is, “Were they mission critical really or were
they just good things to have? Were they a project that we worked on for project’s
sake?”

So in tough times, what happens is our thinking changes and we actually question with a
lot more rigour. And really when you look at it it’s that rigour we should have every day
of the week. You know, all – all a correction in the economy does to us is brings us back
to where we should be, puts us back to a platform where we can build an even better
business.

IAN SEGAIL: Anything - correction in a relationship, correction in your health, all these
things, they’re all kind of awakened to.

PHIL ALLISON: It’s the awakening, yeah.

IAN SEGAIL: It’s the awareness.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. And one thing about coaching, you know, with a good
coach is you can actually have this awareness much sooner. You don’t have to have
something go wrong.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: Because there’s someone external to you, someone who’s
completely objective because they’re not emotionally connected to any of your decisions.

That that can come in and really just challenge you to say, “Is this the right thing to do?
Why are you doing this project? Why are you putting on this person? Why are you
heading in this direction? Why are you restructuring?”

IAN SEGAIL: The question is to stimulate the awareness of what?

PHIL ALLISON: The awareness of what is actually happening. One of the critical
things we try to get across to people is that self awareness is a bit like common sense.
There’s an old saying that common sense just isn’t very common.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: Self awareness is even less common. Most people are actually
very unaware of some of the decisions they’re making, some of the things they’re doing.
And what’s actually happening in their business – which is outside of their self
awareness, but it’s very similar. Sometimes you just need to stop and look and if you
have a challenge, you know, if you have any of the listeners here or anyone that you’ve
worked with, certainly the people I’ve worked with – one of the challenges I have is,
“Show me a diary and show me the time that you have logged into your diary for this
week for thinking time or challenging time. Where you are specifically got something
logged in there that’s going to challenge the way you currently do business.”
And in the fair majority of people’s diaries you might find what you’ll find is, in fact, a
lot of stuff.

IAN SEGAIL: All the to dos.

PHIL ALLISON: Tasks.

IAN SEGAIL: Prioritizing the crisis that’s on our plate at the moment.

PHIL ALLISON: Yeah, tons of meetings and phone calls and things you need to do,
and I think sometimes tasks get a bit of a – a bad rap. You got to do stuff, you’ve got to
do all this stuff. To me, you need to lock them into a period of time and do planning
time. Have strategy time, have what we call blue sky time. You know, what if time,
what could we do? As important as it is Ian, most people don’t do it.

IAN SEGAIL: Yeah, of course.

PHIL ALLISON: I tend to coach for two hours a month for a person. It’s once a
month for two hours. It’s not a big commitment of time and some people often thing, “Is
that enough time to get change?” It is, because two hours in a person’s month of 100 percent thinking and challenging time, is actually a lot of time. And it is amazing how
much comes out in those two hours and how quickly it goes.

Most people think they’ve been there for 15 or 20 minutes and you know, it’s two, two
and a half hours when you’re finished. If there are issue that were much more urgent you
might do a second meeting, but typically that’s enough to get a person to actually have
enough actions to implement over the next four weeks for you to then meet up again and
hold that person accountable.

IAN SEGAIL: Okay. So the questioning to create the awareness of reality.

PHIL ALLISON: Reality.

IAN SEGAIL: What a concept. Yeah.

PHIL ALLISON: Because most people – correct, because most people actually are
not aware of what the reality is.

IAN SEGAIL: Right. Okay. And then so the next step is actually listening as opposed to
hearing.

PHIL ALLISON: Yeah, we hear it all the time about being in the moment. We need
to be in the moment. And being in the moment is your ability to read a person. There is
a lot more to listening than hearing. We train this in our workshops as well, but it’s a lot
more about active listening. It’s about picking up on the voice. It’s about picking up on
the physical cues, the face, the nodding of the head or the shaking of the head. It’s just
the eyes, body language, you know whether a person’s right or not right. Whether there’s
an issue or not an issue.

If you really do listen to a person completely, you’ll know when to ask a question. So a
lot of the times you’ll be asking a question, a person will be going on about whatever –
they’ll talk about all this stuff and they’ll be right in the middle of uh, you know, a
longish diatribe if you like, and then all of a sudden I’ll say, “Hang on a sec. Just tell me
about that.” And I’ll stop them dead and they’ll say, “What do you mean?” “That bit
there that you said this happened.” And they’ll say, “That’s not a big deal.” And I’ll say,
“Yeah, but just tell me about that. I want to dig into that a little bit more.”
And what you find is that sometimes the thing you just stumbled on – not always – but
the thing you just stumbled on is actually one of the biggest issues. So if you’re not
listening for that, if you’re not actually in the moment listening to what they’re saying,
they can skim across some of the critical issue that they’re facing thinking that they are
every day issues that everyone has. But to a third party, a person listening to what you’re thinking, “It doesn’t sound right. Why would that be happening?” And so you get in and
you challenge that.

And even though it’s not even on their radar, it’s not in their self awareness, it becomes
one of the critical learnings for the coaching session.

IAN SEGAIL: It takes quite a bit of courage actually to ask some of those type of
questions.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. So the fourth thing, we said there’s four things – one is
you’ve got to care, second one is you’ve got to be able to ask the right questions, third
one is you’ve got to be able to listen – the fourth thing is you must be able to hold people
accountable.

If you are not prepared to hold people accountable, if you are not prepared to say to a
person, “Look I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s right. Or you need to listen to what you just
said.” A very common practice I will do is repeat back, word for word, and this is why
you’ve got to listen – word for word, tone for tone, body language for body language,
exactly what a person says to you. And it is amazing how people say, “Did I just say
that?” I said, you did, “Yeah, did it sound like that?” “Yup.” “I can’t believe I talk like
that. Do you think I do that in front of my team?” “So what do you think?” “I probably
do.” “What do you think they’re thinking right now when you do that?” And they are
amazed and shocked. So if you are not prepared to confront and hold people
accountable, you simply can’t be a coach.

IAN SEGAIL: So it’s one thing to confront people say in your team, it’s another thing to
confront people that sit around the executive table with you, correct? And then to
confront your boss.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct.

IAN SEGAIL: All of whom do need to be challenged.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct.

IAN SEGAIL: Do you use a different set of tools for one than the other?

PHIL ALLISON: No, it’s exactly the same. It’s exactly the same. Here’s the thing,
and we teach people how to give feedback and one of the first things we talk about is,
“What is your motive for giving feedback?” And there can only be one. If your motive
of feedback is anything other than to add value from the person you’re giving feedback
to, don’t give it. Because I can’t understand why else you would want to do it. If I wanted to give you feedback, it’s because I care about you and I want to add value to you.

IAN SEGAIL: Well I could have an ulterior motive, I could want to schmooze you, I
could pat you on the back to make you feel good.

PHIL ALLISON: Then don’t do it.

IAN SEGAIL: Right. Because?

PHIL ALLISON: Because it’s adding no value to that person.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: We talk about constructive feedback, not positive or negative, and
we’ll have (inaudible) and it’s a bit of semantics. But what we make very, very clear is
schmoozing a person or just having a person feel good, adds zero value to the person and
in fact, creates usually a false reality of where they are at. Telling a person they’re the
greatest or the best or you know, I think you’re fantastic. Unless you’re being very
specific about the thing that they are fantastic in, you add no value to them. They might
feel good for a couple of minutes, but later on they’re wondering, “What am I fantastic at?”

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: Even worse, if you tell them a lot, they start to actually believe
they are fantastic. Now, that on its own doesn’t sound too bad, but if we think that we
can’t do anything wrong, what starts to happen is that we don’t believe we have any
faults. We don’t believe we have any areas that need to be improved upon. We start to
create this persona which is greater or larger than life, and you see these people in
business all the time.

IAN SEGAIL: Oh, we see this in sales especially. I mean, we’ve got rainmaker who 80
percent of the sales are coming from his territory and his poo doesn’t smell and you
know, he can do not wrong.

PHIL ALLISON: Yup. One of my key clients, we call that person the monster. And
it’s very hard to originally get people to realize that the person who’s the greatest sales
person, the greatest profit maker in their team, is in fact, the person who’s bringing their
business down.

IAN SEGAIL: It’s very hard because we’ve got to be hooked into that person, we’ve got
a life line in there, we’ve got a hypodermic needle like a transfusion.

PHIL ALLISON: I’m not going to get my budgets, my targets, I’m not going to get
any sales without them. I need this person. But in fact, what happens when that person’s
confronted one or two things happen – they either come into the fold and actually enjoy
work more and so does everyone else, or they leave. Now and I can say with 100 percent
accuracy, every person that’s ever challenged their monster and the monster has left
every single person I’ve had feedback on, every single person who’s given me that
feedback has told me their business improved once their best salesperson left.

IAN SEGAIL: Isn’t that fascinating.

PHIL ALLISON: 100 percent accuracy. It is because the team steps up.

IAN SEGAIL: And we’re not held hijacked by one person any more.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. You’ll talk to managers, leaders about, “Why don’t you
confront the behavior?” “I don’t want to upset them.” So this person gets away with
truly with murder. They’re getting away with not doing half of the things that the rest of
the team have to do. They don’t have to do any of the leg work or the donkey work, they
just get to serve customers. They don’t have to deal with customer complains. They just
have to serve customers. Everyone else has to do that for them. And in the end, people
resent it. You know, there was some statistics I saw, it was some time ago, that said that
the climate of the organization has up to a 30 percent impact on performance. So a 30
percent positive or negative. So the climate is how does it feel today? How does it feel
right now?

So if it feels fantastic, you can get 30 percent improvement of performance. If it feels
terrible, you can get a 30 percent drop in performance. The reality is either the leader or
people are highly influential can have up to a 70 percent impact on the climate. So if you
have a person who is highly influential on the sales floor and they’re the number one
person, and they’re seen as the greatest thing since sliced bread and they’re treated
differently and they’re a protected species, this person is affecting the climate by up to 70
percent of that team. That, on its own, pulls the rest of the team up to 30 percent
negatively down, instead of 30 percent positively up.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: So once the person’s removed, the climate improves dramatically
and people perform at a whole new level. So rather than having one person performing,
you’ve got a team that performs. It’s a remarkable distinction that most people still find
very difficult to deal with in my book.

IAN SEGAIL: Okay, but that’s still challenging someone on your team, albeit he’s your life blood at this point.

PHIL ALLISON: Yup.

IAN SEGAIL: What about challenging your boss? Because that’s part of the same thing
we’re talking about here.

PHIL ALLISON: Yeah, I had a situation back in my early days where I was working
with the national sales manager of a company. And he was working through all the stuff
that he’s dealing with and it was one of those situations where I said, “Hey stop! What
did you just say?” And he told me that he had a situation, I’ll tell the story very quickly,
where a state manager had rung him up and said, “Look, I’m not going to get my budget
for the year although the business is. And what I’d like to do is to go out and just flog
some more product to my retailers” because they’re a distribution company, wholesale.
“And I’d like to put a catalogue out and I’d like to do a bit of discounting and that will
help me get my budget for the year. I think I can reach it if you let me do that.”
National sales manager who had only been in the role a month or so, had a look at his
figures and come back and said, “Listen. If I allow you to do that, I’ve calculated that
we’ll miss our gross margin budget. But we’re going to hit as a company our sales target,
given by about 1 or 2 percent, we’re right on line with gross margin dollars. We’ve been
impacted quite heavily. So if I let you do that, we will miss gross margin dollars as a
company and I can’t allow you to do that. Sorry. You’re going to have to take one for
the team.”

Anyway, a couple of days later, he gets a phone call from the same person to say, “Hey,
look, we’re going ahead with the catalogue.” And he said, “What do you mean? I told
you we can’t go ahead with the catalogue or the discount offer.” And he said, “I know. I
just happened to be speaking to the managing director and bounced it off him and he said
it’s a great idea.” So he’s telling me this in this discussion and moving on as if – and he
said to me what he said was, “Oh, there’s not much you can do about that.” And then he
said, “And the other thing we’re facing is…” and I said, “Stop. What do you mean
there’s nothing you can do about that? That needs to be confronted and it needs to be
confronted now. The managing director needs to know that those decisions are yours and
yours only. And if he wants to influence those decisions, he does that behind closed
doors with you where no one else knows about it.” “You’re going to have to confront
him.”

IAN SEGAIL: Tough one.

PHIL ALLISON: Tough one. And this managing director was a very strong,
powerful guy. And he said, “Phil, you know in the end this isn’t going to happen.” I said, “Listen. If one month into this what’s going to happen if you don’t.” I said, “Let
me ask you a question. If you don’t hit the gross margin dollars for the company or if the
company doesn’t get it, who is the MD coming after?” And he said, “Me.” “In effect,
he’s taken your ability to hit them off you and he’s going to hold you accountable. Let
me tell you, he doesn’t know about your phone call. He doesn’t know about the fact that
you’re going to miss gross profit dollars if this goes ahead. He’s been told all this other
stuff.”

IAN SEGAIL: He only has one piece of the puzzle.

PHIL ALLISON: “One piece of the puzzle. Believe me, when you confront him, he
will understand and he’ll appreciate it.” And he said, “Oh, okay, look I’ve got too much
to do in the next week or so, I’ll do it in a couple of weeks.” I said, “What are you doing
tomorrow afternoon? Let’s look at your diary.” It was a Thursday afternoon when I was
coaching him, so it was a Friday. And he showed me his diary and I said, “There’s a
gap.” And he said, “Tomorrow?” And I said, “Absolutely.”

So then we worked through a model called contact. And we went through the contact
model and we went what’s the real issues, what is the outcome you’re looking for, and
we rehearsed on how we should do it. Anyway, what happened on the Friday, I was
working with another company doing some facilitation for the day. And we went quite
late on the Friday. It was about 7 o’clock and I jumped in my car and I was taking my
messages. And I had a message from the MD at this company at 2 o’clock in the
afternoon saying, “Phil, it’s such and such, ring me.” That was the message.
I thought, and the tone was not great. I thought, “How did he get it wrong?” I was so
sure I was right.

IAN SEGAIL: What kind of a coach am I?

PHIL ALLISON: It gets worse. 6:30 message, “Hi Phil. I am now at home, haven’t
heard from you. I need to speak to you tonight. Ring me on this number. It’s my home
number.”

IAN SEGAIL: Wow.

PHIL ALLISON: So immediately of course, I stopped taking my messages, ring the
number and the wife answers, this guy’s wife answers, such and such here. And he came
to the phone and I said, “Hi, it’s Phil.” And he says, “Ah Phil. I had a meeting with the
national sales manager today.” I said, “Yeah, I’m aware of that.” And he says, “So have
you met with him recently.” I said, “Yesterday.” He said, “I thought that must have had
something to do with you, because his behavior was out of character.” I said, “So how
did the meeting go?” And he said, “Let’s put it this way Phil, if that’s an example of what coaching can do to my team, if that is the type of person you’re going to create in
my business, I’m not using you enough. And I just wanted to tell you before you went on
your weekend that thank you and you’re going to really add value to our business. I
really do appreciate it because I was wrong.”

IAN SEGAIL: That’s huge.

PHIL ALLISON: And I went from nervous thinking I’ve just lost this contract if you
like, to how good do I feel? And I still remember that phone call today. The reality is, as
tough as this MD might have been, he’s there to run a business and he wants his team to
be able to make the right decisions and stand up for themselves. No one wants weakness
within their ranks. No good MD or CEO certainly, and so you need to confront it. And it
is hard? Absolutely, it’s hard. But you know, so it getting up at 6 o’clock in the morning
to go for a run, and we know we should probably do that as well. You know, the things
we should do in life are not easy to do, Ian. And this is where I suppose a coach can
actually challenge you to do something that you wouldn’t normally do. No different than
a personal trainer, might be the thing that gets you out of bed at 6 o’clock in the morning
to go for a run.

IAN SEGAIL: Okay. So now that I’m aware, how do I go from awareness to
responsibility?

PHIL ALLISON: Well, it’s still in the questioning process. If you’re truly coaching,
you’re still in the questioning process. Because once you’re aware, the questions the
move over to, “What do you think you need to do?” “How can you approach this? How
can you do it differently?” Now, the responsibility comes from the simple fact that – and
this is what we teach typical managers of businesses – if I tell you what to do, who owns
the responsibility for the outcome?

IAN SEGAIL: I do as the manager.

PHIL ALLISON: The manager does. The person who tells owns the accountability.
The other person could say, “Listen, I did exactly what you told me to do. The fact that it
went pear shaped is not my fault.”

IAN SEGAIL: I just did what I was told.

PHIL ALLISON: “I just did what I was told.” Sure. No responsibility. But if you
ask a person a question of, “What do you think you need to do? How can you approach
this? How can you fix this? What’s the one thing you can do to make this right?” And
they said, “The thing I need to do is X or Y.” Then the responsibility shifts, because
they’re the one making the decision.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: So they’re accepting responsibility at that point. So if they’re
going to do it, they can’t say it was someone else’s idea or it went pear shaped, “Well, it
was my idea. I’m the one who came up with the idea. I have to accept that.” The
difference between responsibility and accountability is something that I think is also
needed to be understood here. Because the coach holds the person accountable. The
coachee (sic) accepts the responsibility. Accountability is something that is put on you.
Someone else will always hold you accountable.

IAN SEGAIL: So it’s externally driven?

PHIL ALLISON: It’s externally driven. The responsibility is the response to being
held accountable. It’s my response to that, I will accept responsibility. So while the
coachee (sic) will accept responsibility, it’s the coach that needs to hold them
accountable. And what a coachee (sic) will quickly learn is that if you don’t follow up in
your next meeting or with a phone call or with a discussion or give us a call tomorrow
and let me know how you go with that, if you don’t do that then the person’s not held
accountable. Then there’s a chance for that responsibility you get in the meeting to
disappear through busy-ness, because I’ll just come back and say, “Look, I meant to do it,
but I just got busy.” I don’t want to use their words, they’ll say, “This happened, that
happened, meetings happened and we had this and we had a bit of a crisis there and I still
intend to do it, but I just had to put it back a couple of weeks.” And you know what? All
they’re doing is putting it off.

IAN SEGAIL: Right because it’s a tough one.

PHIL ALLISON: Right and no one’s holding them accountable.

IAN SEGAIL: Right. So really what I’m hearing then, yes, coaching is asking the right
questions and listening to the answers, creating awareness, but a big piece of it is actually
the follow up and holding people accountable?

PHIL ALLISON: Absolutely correct.

IAN SEGAIL: Which is done pretty poorly in most situations.

PHIL ALLISON: Absolutely correct. And really, it’s the essence of coaching. I
think most people understand personal trainers. I think they’re the best examples of
coaches, because it’s one that most people get. You meet a personal trainer for the first
time, he’s going to ask you a lot of questions. What are your goals? What are your
outcomes? What are you wanting out of this? And from that, they might put together a
package on how you’re going to do that. And then they start to hold you accountable.

They’ll start to ask you questions about, what have you been eating this week? What
have you done? What runs or what activity have you had between our sessions? What
are you planning to do over the weekend? And so they’ll start to get you to think about
those things and start to plan out your activities to move you towards your goals.
But then in the actual session itself, they will push you to a limit that you would never
push yourself. They would hold you accountable to a point where you could never do it
yourself.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: They’re the ones that get the extra rep, the extra run up the stairs,
the extra this, the extra that, because it’s those little extra things that they push yourself
greater than what you would and therefore out of your comfort zone, is actually what
makes the difference. If you’re in your comfort zone, then you’ve stopped growing. If
you’re comfortable right now, you have stopped growing.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: And either coach yourself or get someone to coach you right now
because you need to get out of your comfort zone. Because why would we want to stop
growing? Why would we want to not move to another level? Why would we just
stagnate? You know, I don’t believe it’s human nature to do that, but we can get caught
up in that mainly because we get busy.

IAN SEGAIL: Well, this is more philosophical, but maybe it is human nature to, I mean,
Jim Roan (sp) always says, “How tall a tree grows is as tall as it can.” Human beings are
not trees and we have stuff that we get comfortable and we like to be comfortable and we
work hard to get to the point where we can be comfortable. So now that I’m comfortable,
why would I want to actually change?

PHIL ALLISON: You know, my philosophy’s very simple one and you know,
through the group this morning explaining this, I explain it as often as I can. Is the
moment we think we’ve made it, the moment we think we’ve made it, the moment we
think we’re there – it’s downhill from here. See what happens is we grow and we take a
long time to grow, and we continue to grow, we continue to develop, we continue to
challenge ourselves, and what we’re doing is to get to someplace. With most people,
they will believe that place might be financial security or financial stability or you know
I’ve reached an age where I can not have to worry about that any more. Or you know
what? I’m married with a couple of kids, I don’t have to worry about that any more. Or
you know, I own my house, so I don’t have to worry about that any more. Or you know,
I’ve got my dream job, I don’t have to worry about it any more. Whatever it might be,
but the fact is, if you want to get to the divorce thing, the moment you think you’ve made it, the moment you stop working on your marriage, the moment you stop working in your
job, the moment you stop trying to grow and improve and you think you’ve made it – it’s
going to go downhill from here.

IAN SEGAIL: It starts slipping.

PHIL ALLISON: Let me tell you, it might take you X amount of years to get to
where you got to in that relationship or your financial status or your business or whatever
it might be. Let me tell you, when you start sliding off the other side, it’s much more
rapid. I mean, it can happen in no time and you’ll only have to look at business is like
(inaudible), how long did it take them to become an iconic outstanding company? How
long did it take them to fall?

IAN SEGAIL: Yeah.

PHIL ALLISON: Many many years to get up there. Very short period of time to slip
off the other side. The moment we stop challenging, it’s a downhill slide and it’s very,
very, very rapid. It’s rapid with our health, it’s rapid with our relationships, it’s rapid
with our finances. The moment we take our eye off the ball and stop doing what got us
there in the first place, we slide. Now, I appreciate that most people might consider that
to be, “Well, that’s what happens in life.” I don’t agree with that. Tell that to – was that
a 98 year old woman last year who got a degree. Tell that to her that you have to, “Hey,
you can’t do that at 98.”

IAN SEGAIL: Of course.

PHIL ALLISON: Tell that to people who are in their 60s and 70s having kids.
They’re not looking at life along the point, “Hang on a minute, I’ve reached an age I
can’t do this any more. I should be settled now. I should be dealing with grandchildren.”
That’s not what it’s about. Tell that to people who are completing their first marathon in
their 70s or 80s. See, I don’t believe it’s right. I think these are people who are realizing,
“You know what? I don’t want to slide off the other side. I just want to keep growing.”
You might not have to grow as fast as you grew when you were younger….

IAN SEGAIL: Because you’re making smaller distinctions maybe.

PHIL ALLISON: Sure! But it is about challenging yourself. It is still about getting
out of your comfort zone. It’s still about feeling good about yourself. Still getting up
today, every day with a purpose, you know.

IAN SEGAIL: The fact is, when we do challenge ourselves and actually succeed at that,
that’s actually where the juice is, that’s where we do feel good about ourselves. That’s
where we continue to feel that esteem that we’ve been so long building.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. One of the questions I ask people in my workshops then
is, “What is a rut?” You know, people talk about ruts. And most people get that a rut is a
routine. You know, there’s nothing wrong with a routine, per se. A routine itself I think
makes us very efficient and effective.

IAN SEGAIL: As long as it’s effective.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct, well done. As long as it’s a good routine, it will actually
make us efficient and effective. When I talk about most people get is that everyone has a
morning routine. They know from what time they get out of bed to what time they walk
out the door they go to work. They’ve got it nailed to a minute, and for some people it
might be an hour, for some people it might be ten minutes, some people it might be thirty
minutes, but that’s their routine and it works every, single day. If they didn’t have the
routine, they would not know what time to get up in the morning because they wouldn’t
know what time they could get out. They would be late effectively.

So routines are actually good. So routines on their own are not bad. Of course, routines
are a problem because they prevent us from getting thinking time. Because if our routine
is just to do stuff, get a cup of coffee, turn on the computer, do the emails, have a couple
of meetings, then go home, and then I would argue that’s not an effective routine.
But let’s people say that people get that a rut is about a routine. It’s not the routine, a rut
is a routine without a vision or a purpose.

IAN SEGAIL: A rut is a routine without a vision or a purpose.

PHIL ALLISON: So what I’m saying is that the routine isn’t moving you anywhere.
There’s no purpose to the routine.

IAN SEGAIL: So which case why would I question the routine in the first place.

PHIL ALLISON: Yeah, I think what happens when you’re in a rut, what happens is
people start to realize I’m doing the same thing over and over again. I’m in groundhog
day – I repeated my day, I repeated my day, repeated my day, repeated my weekend,
repeated my weekdays, and it’s going to go – and sometimes they just stop and think,
“Why am I doing this? What is it all about?”

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: I don’t get it. And the fact is it’s because they haven’t got
anything to look forward, it’s not about them achieving something further down the track in their life. See, if your routine, if your life, if your day is all about moving you towards
something, and everything is exciting, but if it’s not, it’s just a routine.

IAN SEGAIL: Right. The other thing I think happens with a routine, if your routing is a,
b, c, d and e, over time you go a, b, c, d, a, b, d, a, b, d, a, b and we drop off the c somewhere.

PHIL ALLISON: And you don’t realize it.

IAN SEGAIL: Yeah.

PHIL ALLISON: And c is the – the c is a great one because the c is the challenge.
The thing that people do drop off, you did it well, is the challenge. We drop off the
challenge. We actually allow the routine to happen, because what happens is we start to
get comfortable. And being comfortable means that, “You know, maybe I don’t have to
change my self any more. Maybe I don’t have to keep – maybe I don’t have to watch
what I eat any more. You know, I’m married, I’m middle aged, you know, do I really
have to worry?”

But then when their health fails them, it’s a bit like, “When did that happen?”

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: When they stand on the scales, “When did that happen?” Or their
wife starts to say, “You know what? I don’t think this is working.” When did that
happen? And it’s because they actually drop the c. You know, in their lives. And they
thought that at some point, it’s actually okay to be different, to be actually be – to settle.
And I’m not a person that believes in settling. And some people might not agree with
that and that’s okay. I don’t mean not settling down in life, having a wife and kids, I
believe in that. That’s okay if that’s what you want to do, that’s what you do. I mean,
settling in who you are as an individual.

We’re made to grow and the moment we stop, we in fact, become dissatisfied. Most
people feel the dissatisfaction, they just don’t understand what it is, what’s creating it.

IAN SEGAIL: Absolutely. I just have one question I think needs to be asked.

PHIL ALLISON: Yeah.

IAN SEGAIL: When you’re coaching, you will typically use a process if you take the
John Whitmore process (inaudible), do you have a process that you use? Have you found
anyone that’s got a particularly wonderful process, that some processes are better than
others?

PHIL ALLISON: Ian, I supposed I was alluding to this earlier, I’ve got an intuitive
process now. I don’t – I started using the grow model. We have a model called proact –
which is effectively, essentially the same. I would rarely use it. I do for certain types of
coaching. I think there needs to be a distinction between what you’re doing when you’re
coaching. Sometimes you need to be the leader. Sometimes you need to help them see a
vision, you coach them to be a leader. Sometimes you need to be inspirational. As a
coach, they need to see your energy and that’s you being a leader. I think you need to be
a coach, you need to be able to ask the questions. Coaching’s about asking questions. If
you’re doing anything but asking questions, you’re not coaching.

IAN SEGAIL: You might move into training or something else.

PHIL ALLISON: Correct. Training is about giving them the skills and you need to
be able to train. I have that as a aspect of coaching, but that really is training rather than
questioning, which is the challenging. The other thing you’re going to need to do in a
coaching session is be a mentor. And at times, you need to be able to say to the person,
“Look, can I just give you my opinion on this for what it’s worth?” And the person will
say yeah. And you say, “Look, you know, I’ve seen this a lot. I’ve experienced this a
lot. And from what I’ve seen, I think this is an issue that you’re currently facing and
you’re not getting it. Or this is something that you need to confront, because at the
moment, to me, I’m looking at a person who is holding back, who is in fear of
confronting this issue at the moment is at the core of every – all the concerns you
currently have.”

And that’s not coaching. That’s mentoring. And there’s a distinctive difference there.
This isn’t about…

IAN SEGAIL: It’s not telling either.

PHIL ALLISON: It’s not telling, mentoring is not telling, that’s managing.

IAN SEGAIL: Absolutely.

PHIL ALLISON: Mentoring is giving advice. The mentor is saying, “Do you want
to hear it from my perspective, from what I see?” You know, a mentor is a person who
gives advice when asked. The difference here is that you didn’t necessarily ask me.
Sometimes they do, sometimes you have to say, “Look, is it okay for me to give you my
view on this or would you like to hear my opinion? Or would you like to hear some
advice based upon what you’re doing?” And they always say yes.
Now, the good thing about advice when you’re a mentor, is the person doesn’t have to
take it.

IAN SEGAIL: Right.

PHIL ALLISON: But you know what? I’ve always felt that as the coach, if I feel it,
if I see it and I know it then it’s my job to tell it. Whether they want to listen or not, is up
to them. But it would be wrong of me not to challenge the person by letting them know
what I think. And that shift with some people is exactly what they need to get the
behavioral change that’s required.
IAN SEGAIL: And if you don’t change the behavior, nothing changes.
PHIL ALLISON: Nothing changes. That’s why we say – corporate people say,
“What do you do?” We are into behavioural change, it’s all about behavioural change.
How do we do it? We challenge people. We challenge the way people think. Then we
do some training and that sort of stuff, you know, fundamentally we challenge the way
people think.

IAN SEGAIL: Well you certainly challenged my thinking today and people listening,
you’ve challenged their thinking today. So I think it’s a great place to end our time
together. I’ve certainly gotten a (inaudible) thank you.

PHIL ALLISON: Ian, it’s an absolute pleasure and I really do appreciate the fact you
asked me.

IAN SEGAIL: Thank you.

For more information on Phil Allison and the services of Corporate Edge, you can
contact Phil by his website at www.corporate-edge.com.au or you can call him here in
Sydney, Australia, area code 61 for Australia 2 for Sydney, 9566 1422. And for further
information on how salestutor can help you grow your sales revenue, feel free to contact
us here in Sydney, Australia, 61 2 9460 7022. It’s 61 2 9460 7022 and ask to speak to
Claudia.

Why you should never say "NO" to a customer!

2009-04-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

“To my customer: I may not have the answer, but I'll find it. I may not have the time, but I'll make it. I may not be the biggest, but I'll be the most committed to your success.” - Unknown

Last weekend I took my two boys out for pizza to a new gourmet takeaway pizza place that has recently opened in our neighbourhood. My youngest son does not like to have pizza sauce on his pizza. So when I ordered I asked the young lady taking the orders if she would be able to arrange a ½ and ½. Half with sauce and half without.

“No, we don’t do ½ and ½’s “ she told us. She may just as well have said, “we don’t want your business, it’s just too fussy!”

Needless to say we left and went to find another pizza place that were more than happy to take our “fussy” order.

This is an obvious situation whereby I could have been helped but wasn’t. There are times however, where the customer comes in looking for a particular item which we just don’t have. What then? What do you do when you cannot immediately satisfy the customer’s need, because perhaps your store has sold out or does not stock a particular item, or the customer needs the next size up and you don’t have it?

Lets face it, no customer ever likes to hear the word “No”! This is a word that they believe is their exclusive domain. Despite this, many ‘average’ retail sales people simply say, “no” to the customer “No, I am sorry but we don’t stock anything like that here.” Saying no to a customer means that the money invested to bring that customer in to the store has just gone to waste.

According to the late Sam Walton founder of Wal-Mart “there is only one boss - the customer - and he/she can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Would you say no to your boss? The chances are great that you wouldn’t (assuming that the request was not totally unreasonable). When you say “no” to the customer you become part of their problem and not their solution.

When I work with retail store managers, we teach them that they are the only ones that should say no to a customer if circumstance or company policy dictates. Did you know that the Norwegian word for sale is derived from the word selje, which means to serve? It is part of the sales person’s role to find a way to say YES!

Make a decision that you will never say “no” to a customer no matter what. Decide that you will always attempt to show them alternative products or help them find an alternative solution, which they may not have known even existed. When you follow this approach it saves both you and the customer time, effort and in some cases money.

Never saying no also means that you can manage to meet the customer’s requirements and can still keep them as happy customers. When you say no you risk the customer finding the item in another store and thereby losing out on a sale. Remember the maxim: “If we don't take care of the customer... somebody else will!”

Defining Sales Strategy - Understand new market space

2009-04-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

5. Understand new market space

In their Harvard Business Review paper "Creating new market space" and book "Blue Ocean Strategy", W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne present 6 strategies, for companies to develop new markets. There is a terrific summary of these 6 Strategies to help you "Create New Market Space" and it can be found by clicking the following link: http://www.unitedbit.com/creating-new-market-space-review/

Here is a cursory outline of the 6 strategies to Creating a New Market Space written up in the Harvard Business Review paper. For a deeper insight and understanding please refer to the website above.

1. Alternative Industries: a company competes not only with the other firms in its own industry but also with companies in those other industries that produce alternative products or services. Alternatives include products or services that have different functions and forms but the same purpose. Consider cinemas versus restaurants. Despite the differences in form and function, however, people go to a restaurant for the same objective that they go to the movies: to enjoy a night out. These are not substitutes, but alternatives to choose from. Therefore, to create a new market space, ask yourself:

What are the alternative industries to your industry?
Why do customers trade across them?

2. Strategic groups within industries: Strategic groups can generally be ranked in a rough hierarchical order built on two dimensions: price and performance. Each jump in price tends to bring a corresponding jump in some dimensions of performance. Most companies focus on improving their competitive position within a strategic group. Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar, for example, focus on outcompeting one another in the luxury car segment as economy car makers focus on excelling over one another in their strategic group. Neither strategic group, however, pays much heed to what the other is doing because from a supply point of view they do not seem to be competing. The key to creating a market space across existing strategic groups is to break out of this narrow tunnel vision by understanding which factors determine customers' decisions to trade up or down from one group to another. Questions to ask to create a new market space within strategic groups are:

What are the strategic groups in your industry?
Why do customers trade up for the higher group, and why do they trade down for the lower one?

3. The chain of buyers: There is a chain of "buyers" who are directly or indirectly involved in the buying decision. In most industries, competitors converge around a common definition of who the target buyer is. In reality, though, there is a chain of "buyers" who are directly or indirectly involved in the buying decision. The purchasers who pay for the product or service may differ from the actual users, and in some cases there are important influencers as well. Although these three groups may overlap, they often differ. When they do, they frequently hold different definitions of value. A corporate purchasing agent, for example, may be more concerned with costs than the corporate user, who is likely to be far more concerned with ease of use. Similarly, a retailer may value a manufacturer's just-in-time stock replenishment and innovative financing. But consumer purchasers, although strongly influenced by the channel, do not value these things. Challenging an industry's conventional wisdom about which buyer group to target can gain new insights into how to redesign their value focusing on a previously overlooked set of buyers. Therefore, to create new market space by looking across the chain of buyers, ask yourself some questions such as:

What is the chain of buyers in your industry?
Which buyer group does your industry typically focus on?
If you shifted the buyer group of your industry, how could you unlock new value?

4. Look across complementary product and service offerings: Untapped value is often hidden in complementary products and services. A simple way to do so is to think about what happens before, during, and after your product is used. Take movie theatres. The ease and cost of getting a babysitter and parking the car affect the perceived value of going to the movies. Yet these complementary services are beyond the bounds of the movie theatre industry as it has been traditionally defined. Few cinema operators worry about how hard or costly it is for people to get babysitters. But they should, because it affects demand for their business. Imagine a movie theatre with a babysitting service.

Untapped value is often hidden in complementary products and services. The key is to define the total solution buyers seek when they choose a product or service. In order to create new market space by looking across complementary product and service offerings, you should ask yourself the following questions:

What is the context in which your product or service is used?
What happens before, during, and after?
Can you identify the pain points?
How can you eliminate these pain points through a complementary product or service offering?

5. Functional or Emotional Appeal to Buyers: Over time, functionally oriented industries become more functionally oriented; emotionally oriented industries become more emotionally oriented. Some industries compete principally on price and function largely on calculations of utility; their appeal is rational. Other industries compete largely on feelings; their appeal is emotional. Yet the appeal of most products or services is rarely intrinsically one or the other. Rather it is usually a result of the way companies have competed in the past, which has unconsciously educated consumers on what to expect.

Companies' behaviour affects buyers' expectations in a reinforcing cycle. Over time, functionally oriented industries become more functionally oriented; emotionally oriented industries become more emotionally oriented. Industries have trained customers in what to expect. When surveyed, they echo back: more of the same for less. When companies are willing to challenge the functional emotional orientation of their industry, they often find new market space. We have observed two common patterns. Emotionally oriented industries offer many extras that add price without enhancing functionality. Stripping away those extras may create a fundamentally simpler, lower-priced, lower-cost business model that customers would welcome.

Conversely, functionally oriented industries can often infuse commodity products with new life by adding a dose of emotion and, in so doing, can stimulate new demand. In order to create new market space by looking across functional or emotional appeal to buyers, you should ask yourself the following questions:

Does your industry compete on functionality or emotional appeal?
If you compete on emotional appeal, what elements can you strip out to make it functional?
If you compete on functionality, what elements can be added to make it emotional?

6.Time: All industries are subject to external trends that affect their businesses over time. Think of the rapid rise of the Internet or the global movement toward protecting the environment. Most companies adapt incrementally and somewhat passively as events unfold. Whether it's the emergence of new technologies or major regulatory changes, managers tend to focus on projecting the trend itself. That is, they ask in which direction a technology will evolve, how it will be adopted, whether it will become scalable. They pace their own actions to keep up with the development of the trends they're tracking.

But key insights into creating new market space rarely come from projecting the trend itself. Instead they arise from business insights into how the trend will change value to customers and impact the company's business model. By looking across time-from the value a market delivers today to the value it might deliver tomorrow - managers can actively shape their future and lay claim to a new market space. With this approach, we're not talking about predicting the future, something that is inherently impossible. Rather, we're talking about finding insight in trends that are observable today. Looking at these trends with the right perspective can show you how to create new market opportunities. In order to create new market space, you should ask yourself the following questions:

What trends have a high probability of impacting your industry, are irreversible, and are evolving in a clear trajectory?
How will these trends impact your industry?
Given this, how can you open up unprecedented customer utility?

Where to from here?There are three ways you can get some significant value from this strategic planning process for your sales organization:

Hire an expert sales facilitator or coach to run you and some or all of your sales team through the list of questions above or have them bring in their own specific sales strategy development process. Have them fill the ideas funnel and then tease out a "where to from here" project plan. Whilst this method will be the most expensive in upfront costs, in the long run, assuming you select a good facilitator, the results you get will be far superior to the other two options proposed below. By the way the more pre work preparation you can get the participants to do prior to the session, the shorter and more valuable the time invested. Have the participants prepare for the session by reading this newsletter and pre answering the questions herein.
Have someone from another department facilitate some or all of your sales team through the list of questions above. Have the participants prepare for the session by reading this newsletter and pre answering the questions herein. Then, together with them, fill the ideas funnel and tease out a "where to from here "project plan.
Have the participants prepare for the session by reading this newsletter and pre answering the questions herein. Then, you facilitate some or all of your sales team through the list of questions above. Have them fill the ideas funnel and tease out a "where to from here "project plan.

If your sales strategy is no longer appropriate then for goodness sakes get a new one. Every day that your salespeople go out without a specific and relevant sales strategy is costing your organization sales! In our next newsletter we will look at the second key code ... Sales Process.

Defining Sales Strategy - Understand the Competition

2009-04-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

4. Understand the Competition

How significant is your unique selling proposition/value statement (Unique selling proposition (USP) defines your competitive advantage. It clearly identifies what makes you different from your competitors and emphasize these advantages in your marketing and selling efforts).
What are all the competitive influences (external/internal) you face?
Do you have a competition strategy in play that deals with ALL competitive influences?
How do you clearly differentiate from your competition?
Who are those potential competitors that "play" in the space either above our limits (our limits being determined by price and performance) or below our limits?
Is there an opportunity to compete there?

Defining Sales Strategy - Understand the Value of your Capability

2009-04-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

3. Understand the value of your capability

Specifically how do your customers and prospects benefit from the products or services that you are offering?
What are your core capabilities?
What are you really good at?
What problems do you solve?
What are the needs, pains, and desires of your target market?
Are the above needs still relevant?
Who else has those or similar problems?
What if any modifications are required to make both your product and marketing collateral relevant to current market conditions?

Find out more about sales strategy and performance planning at www.salestutor.com.au

Defining Sales Strategy - Understand Your Customer

2009-04-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

2. Understand your customer

Do you have a "profile "of what an ideal customer looks like?
Who is actually buying the product/service?
Who could potentially buy our product/service? - Why?
Why will they want to purchase from you?
Are your key customers shrinking or growing?
How much of their wallet share do you currently have?
Is your key customer wallet- share shrinking or growing?

Find out more about sales strategy and coaching at www.salestutor.com.au

Defining Sales Strategy - Understand your market

2009-04-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

So What Exactly is a Sales Strategy?

Whilst there are a number of well documented methodologies for developing a sales strategy, simply stated, a sales strategy answers the question, "How do you attract new customers to your business?" and "How do retain and grow your existing customer revenues?" Depending on how complex you want to make the sales strategy planning process there are a number of well documented models and approaches one can use towards developing a targeted and relevant sales strategy. However to keep the process simple, here are five sales strategy boxes that make up the selling strategy puzzle which you need to examine. To really get the most from this article, you will need to turn your thoughts into action. So as we review each of these strategy boxes in detail, I will be posing some key questions to prompt you to consider how each of these strategies impacts your business. As you ponder these questions, your thinking will be provoked and insights and ideas for action will form. Jot down these inspirations and actions for execution later. The five sales strategy boxes that make up the selling strategy puzzle are:

market
customer
capability
competition
new market space

Reviewing each of these in depth you need to:

1. Understand your market

Is your current market still appropriate?
Is demand for your product or service growing or shrinking? How do you know?
Which of the market segments you currently serve are growing or shrinking?
What's the most effective method of reaching your market? How do you know?

Why Sales Training Doesn't Work - Part 3

2009-04-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

3. Event Engagement

The sales training event itself is where most sales training organisations expend most their time and energy.

A training event will have most impact when:

• The topic is relevant to the learner's needs and builds on their previous experience

• The training offers a new perspective that expands the learner's concept of what is possible

• Participants can easily see how mastering the content will improve their workplace performance

• Participants are able to experiment and practice new behaviours in a safe environment

• Participants expand their network and develop learning relationships with other attendees

• Participants are inspired and motivated to change their behaviour

• Participants develop an action plan moving forward to begin to change their below par behaviours

On its own, the sales training event will not increase performance, but a powerful "learning event" can be the catalyst for organisational learning where individuals are inspired to share their knowledge and teach others.

4. Post-sales training execution

Organisations that are serious about achieving a return on their sales training investment make sure that the training content is integrated into the workplace. To help do that they make sure they provide individual follow-up and support.

This phase ensures that measurable results can be achieved. By providing follow up coaching and support to assist individual salespeople to implement and apply their new knowledge and skills, Sales Managers ensure that the time, effort and resources invested in the development and running of the sales training bears measurable" fruit".

Post-sales training execution and follow-up tools may include:

• High-Performance Coaching

• Post-Sales training Execution Plan & Learning agreements follow up

• Post-Sales training accreditation, assessment and/or diagnostics

• Follow up, self-paced learning modules

• Follow up workshops • Mentoring program

• "Teach others" program

• "Buddy-coaching" Program

High-Performance Coaching

Studies by Neil Rackham, the renowned sales effectiveness researcher and author of SPIN Selling, show that 87% of the learning from a workshop will be lost within thirty days if there isn't a coaching intervention by the participants' Sales Manager or workplace coach.

High Performance Coaching is one of the most significant post-sales training interventions supporting the learner to integrate their learning into the workplace.

A High Performance Coach works with the learner to provide them with instruction, guidance, positive reinforcement, and accountability in the achievement of their sales goals. Typically the coach is the learner's supervisor or Sales Manager.

High Performance Coaching is an important business skill for those in sales leadership roles, with responsibility for writing top line revenue.

High Performance Coaching helps the newly trained salespeople to "buy into" the change effort and to develop the skills to effect meaningful workplace change.

What are learning agreements?

Learning Agreements are essential to achieve a return on sales training investment and to ensure that learning is integrated into the workplace

A Learning Agreement clarifies work performance expectations and spells out how learning will be integrated on the job. A Learning Agreement will list the following:

* Competency Expectations * Results and Accountabilities * Resource Requirements * Signposts/milestones * Consequences (e.g. sales training payback)

Prior to attending the sales training event, the participant meets with their Sales Manager or trainer to document the desired results from the learning experience. They will also discuss consequences for successful or unsuccessful implementation of the learning.

The actual sales training event becomes more meaningful because the participant is being directed by the Learning Agreement and is focused on attaining the knowledge and skills required to fulfil it

Having attended the sales training, the learner meets again with their Sales Manager or coach to review the Learning Agreement in light of the information, skills and knowledge gained from the training.

The coach then reviews and redefines the post-sales training action plan with the learner in order to make sure the Sales Person will accomplish the desired performance objective/s

For an example of a Learning Agreement, please download this article from our website

5. Accountability and Measurement

There is a saying in management that "what gets measured gets done; what gets recognised gets done even better."

The primary purpose of sales training is to improve an individual's sales performance and ultimately the performance of the organisation. Therefore, sales training and development efforts must be tracked, measured and rewarded to ensure a positive impact.

To achieve ROI on sales training, we must first measure an individual's competencies for their sales role and determine the gaps. Following the sales training we conduct a further "on the job" sales performance assessment following the sales training event.

Specific individual performance measures (KPIs) should be written into the Learning Agreement. For example, increased sales production, a reduction in time waste, improved customer retention, increased sales margin, improved teamwork or motivation etc.

The Learning Agreement then maps the competency improvement required to achieve a specific KPI, for example:

KPI = Improved sales conversion rate from 1 in 7 to 1 in 4 Competency required = Customer needs diagnosis (listening and questioning) Training requirement = Focus on customer needs diagnosis

Conclusion

It is an unfortunate fact that the majority of sales training conducted fails to deliver the expected increase in productivity or performance. Very few sales training programs actually change behaviour. Many sales programs are run as an exercise in "ticking the box" - Yes, I have officially trained my salespeople!

The simple truth is that if you are going to end your salespeople to a sales training event you are only likely to see a measurable return on your investment if you ensure that the material is:

• relevant and customised to suit your sales operation and market; and

• each individual has been well primed and prepared prior to their attendance;

• the sales training event engages and inspires;

• you are prepared to follow up and coach the salesperson to ensure integration;

• keep holding them accountable, measuring and tracking their behavioural changes as a result of the sales training.

Why Sales Training Doesn't Work - Part 2

2009-03-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

Historically, very little thought or effort was made in terms of preparing the participant to get ready to learn prior to the training event taking place. In most cases, when the participant returned to work, only "lip service" was given to the follow up process to make sure they integrated the things they learned during the training.

Generally, most of the learning is expected to occur during the sales training event itself. This is where the participant is exposed to new information, tools and tactics. Most Sales Managers live in the hopes that the sales training event will be engaging; the participant will emerge with a new vision of what is possible and pick up a few key tools that they will make a part of their sales routine.

Through its many studies and reports, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) has shown that after a typical training event, the participant's performance actually tends to drop as they attempt to apply and integrate their new knowledge and behaviours back in their work environment.

The problem is that most sales environments are not set up to support the participant and it isn't long before workplace pressure, and the individual's natural resistance to change, pulls them back into familiar territory and habitual ways of working and selling. The new knowledge is quickly forgotten and it is not long before performance returns to former levels.

Is it possible to actually guarantee a return on investment from training?

For sales training to deliver on its promises, the "sales training event" must be seen as only one element of the learning process.

Here are the elements of a proven and results-oriented sales training system that guarantees ROI from sales training by blending five key pieces of the learning puzzle.

1. Relevance - Prior to any training being delivered, the content, case studies and exercises need to be vetted to ensure its relevance to workplace outcomes.

2. Pre-workshop preparation - Prepare the participant prior to their attendance at the sales training event to accelerate the traction of the new tools and learning.

3. Event Engagement - The sales training event must engage the participant, delivering both insight and inspiration to transform behaviour.

4. Post-sales training execution - The individual learning outcomes must be followed up on and coached to ensure integration of desired behaviors into the workplace.

5. Accountability and measurement - Fine-tune the learning effort, tweaking until complete behavioral change has been achieved.

1. Relevance

Relevance checking is the first step.

Adult learning theory tells us that adults want reality and that adults are motivated to learn and apply only that which is relevant to them.

Malcolm Knowles, one of the most respected names in adult learning and author of The Modern Practice of Adult Education, reports "adults are most interested in subjects that have immediate relevance to their job or personal life".

Research by the Huthwaite Research Group reports that, "Learners remembered more than four times as much from sales training sessions that were perceived as highly relevant to their jobs than they did from sessions that were seen as low in relevance."

Relevance significantly accelerates learning, increases retention and makes learning more fun and interesting.

Questions to ask when investigating relevance include:

• Can the sales training be customised?

• Does it validate learners' current knowledge?

• Will it reflect learners' on-the-job experience?

• Does it include relevant case studies?

• Does it allow learners to benefit from the knowledge of other group members?

• Will it reflect and reinforce your preferred business processes?

2. Pre-Workshop Preparation

Pre-workshop preparation begins the change process by helping participants to "buy in" to the learning experience up front, before the learning event.

It sets the stage for the sales training event by creating a context for the sales training and matching it with the participant's performance objectives and selling skills gaps.

During pre-workshop preparation, the learner should be asked to gather data about their current challenges and successes, and any examples that can be used during the sales training session. When a salesperson is cognisant of their skill gaps and how those gaps impact their ability to write revenue, it helps to speed up the learning process.

Our experience shows that by completing pre-workshop preparation the learner is more likely to become an active participant in the training.

Pre-workshop activities may include:

• Research

• Reading background material

•Completing practical or written exercises

• Completing assessments, profiling or diagnostic tests

• Connecting the salesperson's learning objectives with those of the course content and their job performance

• Identifying internal support and resources

• Formal activities designed for recognition of prior learning (RPL)

• Creating a "learning agreement"

A Powerful Tactic for Rapidly Determining a Prospect's Needs

2009-03-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

Download a podcast of this newsletter

Here’s a question for you...how do you avoid a premature presentation before you’ve been able to clearly identify a prospect's needs? Three times in the last 10 days I have been asked by different clients to help them with the following dilemma. See if it resonates for you and your sales team.

Let’s say that you finally get the appointment. You finally get in to see that prospect you’ve been hunting down for months. After some friendly chit chat and rapport building it’s time to get down to business and you now move into “questioning mode” to determine how you can best help them with the products or services that you offer. Just as you attempt to open up the needs diagnosis, the prospect takes control and says something like... “Well I just wanted to find out about you and what you guys do and what you may be able to offer us?”

What do the majority of salespeople do when faced with a request like that? Well, they fall right into the trap and begin to do their “dog and pony” routine. Talk, talk, talk! And as my one time teacher and mentor Tom Hopkins would say, “If you’re talking then you are only learning what you already know, and not learning what you need to know to make the sale!”

Using a tennis analogy, as a salesperson you hit the ball into the prospect's court by asking them a question. They then answer the question, or sometimes they hit it straight back into our court by asking us a question or requesting information. In the previous example, we start asking them questions to determine their needs, and instead of answering us, the prospect says to us, “Well, I just wanted to find out about you and what you guys do and what you may be able to offer us?” Now you have the ball, they have hit it straight back into your court. What is your best strategy for getting the ball back safely and effectively over the net again? Here is a power-house tactic for getting the ball back over the net and keeping it in play, step by step.

Step 1.
Firstly, right now, take out a piece of paper and quickly list, bullet point style, the top 5 problems you solve for your customers - the top 5 reasons why customers choose your organization.

Example: Using myself and the services that we offer at Salestutor as an example, the top 5 reasons why customers choose to work with myself, Ian Segail as a Sales Performance Coach are as follows:
We help our clients with...

Strategies for retaining and growing existing customer revenues
Strategies for acquiring new customers
Improving forecast accuracy
Helping more of the sales team to achieve their sales goals
Generating more qualified leads

Those are the problems I solve. That having been said, stop right now and write down the top 5 issues that your product/service is designed to solve. (If you don’t do this exercise now, then the rest of the tactic will lose its impact for you!!)

What are the top 5 problems that you solve for your customers?

Step 2.
Understand that when you first ask your needs discovery question (hitting the ball over the net initially) in an attempt to uncover your prospects needs, their return volley can only come back in the form of two questions, or requests for information. Firstly, they will either have a specific question in relation to your products and services - most likely a question relating to one or more of the top 5 reasons customers choose your organization, as specified in Step 1. Or secondly, they will toss over a generic opening question like the one above “Can you tell me about your organization and what you guys do and what you may be able to offer us?” anticipating that you will now begin your “sales pitch!” Unfortunately it is this second option request from the customer which happens in the majority of cases.

Step 3.
Where the prospect asks a specific question in relation to your products and services, the job of the salesperson is then to return the ball back over the net with a bounce back question asking something to the effect of, “Tell me more about that” or “Why specifically is that an issue for you?” “What’s working, what’s not working for you currently in that situation?”

This is the easy option and allows you entry to easily peel back the onion and identify the issues and impact. As pointed out earlier though, unfortunately this situation happens in the minority of occasions. What happens most of the time is when the customer lobs the generic open question of “Tell me about your organization and what you guys do?” that causes most of the difficulty.

So instead of doing the typical salesperson “dog and pony” show, answer the prospect's question with a detailed direct question. Again, I will use the services of Salestutor as an example: Let’s say the prospect says something like, “Ian, can you tell me more about your organization and what it is that you guys do and maybe what you may be able to offer us?”

My response using the powerful tactic mentioned above will be... “Joan, let me begin by saying that the reasons customers choose to work with us here at Salestutor is because we were able to solve one or more of the following problems for them. Firstly, our customers come to us because we are able to help them with effective strategies for not only increasing the loyalty of their existing customers, but we are also able to assist them in growing revenues from their current client base. Secondly, we have helped our clients improve their accuracy when it comes to forecasting. Thirdly, customers choose us because we are able to help them with strategies for acquiring new customers. Joan, the fourth reason we are called in is to help more of our customer's sales team members achieve their sales quotas and then finally we are to help our customers generate more qualified leads.

Now here’s the power question that wins the point: Joan, which one of those five reasons would be important to you?

Step 4.
Once the prospect names one or more of the 5 reasons you’ve just laid out for them, then the job of the salesperson is to easily knock the ball over the net with a bounce back question asking “Tell me more about that” or “Why specifically is that an issue for you?” “”What’s working, what’s not working for you currently?”

This powerful tactic will not only keep the ball in the customer's court allowing your salespeople to keep probing for issues and impacts, but it will stop them from launching into a premature “elevator type pitch” without being able to relate to any specific needs that the prospect may have. If your salespeople are being sidelined by generic questions as to your products and services, then apply the above very influential, directed questioning approach.

Why Sales Training Doesn't Work - Part 1

2009-02-24T13:58:00.000-08:00

If you're like most managers who arrange sales training for your Sales Team, you're unlikely to report being "completely satisfied" with its worth.

McKenzie Consulting regularly surveys senior Sales Managers in medium-to-large sized organisations and the following comments are, unfortunately, very common.

"They seemed to enjoy themselves, but two weeks later we saw very little change." (Regional Sales Manager, Automotive Manufacturer)

“Overall the training was good, but the problem is in getting the guys to implement the new skills. Nothing really seems to have changed much."(National Sales Manager, Building Industry)

"My people go on these courses and get pumped up for a day or two and then their performance slips back to what it was before the training - and in some cases even worse because they’re confused" (State Sales Manager, Retail)

If you've ever attended a training course yourself, it's not hard to see the reasons why.

You enjoy the course and leave energised, with great intentions and a list of things you want to do differently once you're back at work. But, by the time you get back to two days' worth of unanswered emails, calls to return and proposal deadlines to meet, it’s another ten days before you even stop and think about the training. The moment for change has passed you by.

Training impact studies confirm that the knowledge gained at a seminar or workshop falls off significantly within just a few days of finishing the course.

And given the way people actually learn, this isn't at all surprising. Even so, we continue to expect that the sales training event itself will make a measurable difference in light of strong evidence that this is unlikely to happen.

Let's think about this logically. Would you send your child to a two-day course to learn to play the piano, and expect them to good enough to compete or pass exams with their new skill? Of course you wouldn't.

Yet isn’t that the expectation we have when we send our salespeople on a two-day “sales training" program, our Sales Manager on a course to “Improve People, Productivity and Motivation”, or our Call Centre Manager on a two-day “Financial Management for Non-Financial Managers” course?

Why most sales training just doesn't work

Whilst the right sales training course is a key ingredient in changing behaviour, the sales training event on its own is and can never ever be the "magic bullet."

Change is a process; it's not an event

Achieving a sustainable and real change in sales behavior requires much more than sending your salespeople off to be trained. To get salespeople to measurably improve and begin to do things differently requires a different approach. If we want to see “real” behavioral change and get a return on our investment, we need to use proven adult learning strategies and behavioural change tactics to boost their knowledge and enhance their capabilities. This means making a departure from the traditional way we approach sales training.