Professional Outside Sales

(republished from the Pharmaceutical Sales Manager Journal)

Oh no, not another article about coaching! I hear you cry. Yes and this one is different. It has just as much to do with sales as it has to do with coaching. If you want to grow your sales, then read on.

As a leading supplier of performance coaching solutions to our industry, we are repeatedly asked such questions as:
What difference does coaching make to actual sales performance in the field?
What is the ideal span of control for a sales manager?
Can we benchmark our coaching capability?
How can we establish a coaching culture?

We can now answer these questions with a very high level of certainty. Extensive research has established the correlation between representatives sales performance and sales manager coaching performance. The research from the Centre for Management and Organisational Effectiveness (CMOE) and the Sales Executive Council (SEC) is based on the analysis of over 2,500 sales professionals and 500 sales managers. What can we learn from it and more importantly, what do we need to do as a result?

There are many findings from research into pharmaceutical sales coaching. This article focuses on a few key questions:
What is the impact of coaching?
Who should we coach?
How much time should we dedicate to coaching our people?
How good do our sales people think we are at coaching?
How can we create a world-class coaching culture?

Why coach?

The level of sales performance is strongly correlated with the level of coaching a representative receives. A low level of coaching support in the SEC study was defined as <2 hours per month, an average level as 23 hours per month and a high level as >3 hours per month. As Figure 1 shows, the amount of coaching a representative receives has a direct influence on the level of sales performance. Coaching also has a direct bearing on the levels of representative engagement and retention.

Many studies have also shown that effective coaching increases the level of discretionary effort given by individuals.

The research also clearly shows a differential sales performance from the representative depending on the coaching skills of the manager. The average sales performance of representatives whose managers had the lowest coaching capability was 83%, compared to 102% for representatives whose managers had the highest coaching capability.

Coaching is also the key to maximising the value of sales training effort such as skills workshops. Without on-the-job reinforcement, representatives lose most of what they learned on a workshop. But if you combine training and post-program coaching, the productivity impact rises fourfold. The research shows that training plus coaching led to an 88% increase in productivity, whereas training alone led to a 23% increase.

As the training manager of a large pharmaceutical company, I had a memorable personal experience of the power of this principle. Early one morning, I was writing a message to the sales managers about the transfer of learning and asking them to follow up some sales training we had conducted with field visits. As I was writing, it dawned on me that I was not personally setting a good example. One of my direct reports, a field trainer, had recently attended an Insights Discovery development workshop.

This workshop helps people adapt their style and language so they can connect more powerfully and influence more people. I had not spoken to him in the days following the workshop, so I immediately picked up the phone.

Luckily, I caught him before hed met the representative he was working with for the day. We talked through what hed learned on the programme and how he could use this during his field visit. He was working with someone he found it quite difficult to relate to one of his more challenging assignments. It only took a short while for him to work out an action plan for the day. He called me at the end of the day and said triumphantly that hed had the best ever coaching day with this representative! Hed helped the representative to make some real breakthroughs in terms of sales skills. It was a great reminder for me that a 10-minute coaching session after a training event can make a huge difference: in this case, it set up a chain reaction that ended with better sales for our product.

Who should we coach?

Conventional wisdom suggests that coaching should focus on the stars. In practice, managers normally try to spread coaching time equitably across the team. However, the research indicates that coaching time should be focused predominantly on core performers.

The SEC study looked at the relative impact of effective coaching on low performers, core performers and high performers.

Overwhelmingly, it showed that coaching offers greater leverage when targeted preferentially at core performers those who show ability but have unrealised potential.

Effective coaching achieves only marginal sales improvement for the stars, but it does have a significant positive impact on the retention of star performers.

How much time should we spend?

Most pharma companies task their representatives and account managers to make 68 contacts per year with their target customers. Much less than this and we do not achieve incremental sales. A significantly higher frequency results in diminishing returns on the time spent with the customer.

This principle applies equally to your coaching effort with representatives. As Figure 1 shows, coaching effectiveness improves dramatically as more time is spent on coaching up to a level of 35 hours per representative per month. After this point, additional time has minimal impact on effectiveness. But how much coaching happens in reality? Figure 2 shows that fewer than 30% of representatives (green segments) are receiving the optimal amount of coaching time from their managers, while nearly 50% (red segments) receive less than 3 hours of coaching per month.

An interesting related finding concerns the span of control. When considering opportunities to free up time for managers to coach, leaders often look to reduce the span of control.

Fewer representatives should, on the face of it, mean more time for coaching. But in fact there is no impact on coaching effectiveness unless the span of control is exceptionally high (>14 representatives). Poor coaches will be equally poor with large or small spans of control. Similarly, great coaches figure out how to make coaching happen to maximum effect with the time they have. The research shows how star managers prioritise their time compared to core performers.

How good are we as coaches?

We recently ran an 8 Skill Coaching Skills development programme for 180 sales managers within an organisation across Europe. We provided electronic voting pads and asked the audience: How do you rate your coaching skills compared to others in your organisation excellent, above average, average, below average or poor? There are no prizes for guessing that considerably over 50% thought their skills were above average or excellent. From our experience in judging the sales manager coaching role-plays for the Pf Awards, we know that there are some inspirational and talented sales coaches out there. We also know that there are others who are less accomplished. We have worked with managers/leaders across many industry sectors throughout Europe and America, and the story is always the same: they can articulate very well what coaching is all about, but this is no measure of their actual ability.

The only truly effective way to assess and benchmark an individuals or organisations coaching capability is to do two things: observe coaching interactions (in real life or in role-play) and gain 180 feedback. Without either of these, you are just guessing and probably losing sales.

Most sales organisations have a selling skills model that helps to define a language and agree standards for sales capability. In the same way, it is essential for sales managers to have a coaching model and language to describe excellent coaching behaviours. There are many coaching skills models, including GROW. Another and more powerful one is the 8 Skill Coaching Model.

Creating a world-class coaching culture

This is easier to achieve than you may realise. The SEC road map for achieving a world-class coaching culture applies to all organisations, regardless of size. The 17 elements of the map fall under 4 umbrella headings:
1. Sales coaching culture
2. Sales coaching talent management
3. Sales coaching process
4. Sales coaching metrics and rewards.

By benchmarking your organisation against the 17 parameters, you can identify and prioritise the key areas to develop, then formulate a plan to address them.

Coaching is definitely an art, and it impacts on your sales performance. Paying scant attention to your organisations coaching capability is playing into the hands of your competitors. The good news is that solutions are easily available.

SUMMARY

A serious investment in improved coaching skills can improve sales results dramatically in most organisations.
Focusing coaching resource on core performers, with the stars being coached for retention, will yield the greatest returns.
The optimal amount of time for coaching is 35 hours per month. However, quality of coaching is more important than quantity.
It is vital for an organisation to have a sales coaching model. Within that framework, a world-class coaching culture can be created.