Winning Sales Coaches Don't Manage

How would you like to coach a team that wins at the sales game like top-ranked teams win in the NBA, NFL, and NHL?

Why wouldn't you? Who's better at producing consistent winning efforts than professional sports teams?

Business?
Education?
Government?
Science?
You gotta be kidding!

Professional sports teams excel where business, education, government and science fail because professional sports teams invest in developing extraordinary coaches who develop extraordinary players.

And there's a nugget of truth that ought to excite even the most jaded sales manager . . . don't you think? If an extraordinary coach in the NFL can develop extraordinary players, why can't you?
It's no accident that successful professional teams win off-field before they ever win on-field. No team reaches the NBA playoffs, plays in the Super Bowl, or wins the Stanley Cup simply because it pays big bucks for talented athletes. To make it to the top of its sport, a winning team, like a winning business, has to play well in every facet of its operations or lose.

Don't you agree that it's tough in field sales these days? In fact, it may well be tougher today than ever before in recent history. You and your sales force work your hearts out, day in and day out, struggling against determined competitors to sell your products and services to prospects and customers who demand the impossible: low prices, discounted financing and instant, top-notch service.

How can you rise above the fray, how can you set yourself and your sales team apart from your competitors, and how can you achieve the consistent success you so richly deserve?
Simple . . . you need to find new business models, new strategies and new tactics to cope with these challenges.

Where can you find these new business models, strategies and tactics?

Like we said before . . . look no farther than professional sports teams.

When you compare the way business plays the sales game to the way professional sports teams play their games, you discover some interesting dichotomies.

First and foremost, business does not demand the best from its greatest asset: sales professionals. Because business doesn't hold individual sales professionals accountable for their failures to perform, when you evaluate the win/loss record of the typical sales team in any company, large, medium, or small, you find it consistently loses many more sales than it wins . . . usually at a rate of about ten to one.

If you applied this win/loss record to the National Football League, which plays 18 to 20 regular season games a year, the typical NFL team would win 2 games a season.

Unlike professional sports coaches, sales managers typically stay out of the action on the sales playing field because they're too busy sitting behind their desks managing the administrative affairs of the sales department. How can the average sales manager get in the sales game when he or she is too busy working on projections, profit and loss statements, personnel problems, factory politics, and company politics?

If professional sports teams played the same way most sales organizations play the sales game, NFL quarterbacks would run failed play after failed play, quarter after quarter after quarter, with no input from coaches. If professional sports teams operated the same way most sales organizations operate, Major League Baseball pitchers would walk player after player, inning after inning, while managers ignored the action and sat behind desks shuffling papers in offices far away from action on the field.

Business seems to be perfectly willing to put up with sales managers who consistently run bad plays. And, as if that isn't bad enough, business is also willing to retain field sales people who consistently fail to achieve performance goals and sales projections.

Business doesn't lead . . . business follows economic cycles. As a result, business gets sales people-bloated during good times and goes sales people-lean during tough times. Why?

Because when times are good, business gets greedy and tries to grab every dollar it can by sending too many people after what ultimately turns out to be too few opportunities.
And then, when the next economic slowdown occurs, business panics and cuts back.
And then, when the inevitable recovery comes along, business gets caught flat-footed and winds up throwing too few people at too many opportunities, creating a costly cycle that plays havoc with sales, profits, and people's lives.

When business loses, it refuses to accept responsibility for its own failures. Instead of looking within to make necessary changes and improvements, business tends to blame outside forces including ad agencies, competitors, the government, even customers, for its problems.
Whenever a professional sports team loses a game or a season, it doesn't waste time playing the blame-game.

Professional sports teams take immediate responsibility for their failures. Nothing, not politics, money, and/or relationships, changes a professional sports team's motivation to achieve defined performance. Failure to perform (Win) causes the team to make immediate changes in management, coaches, players, training, or whatever else it takes to turn the team around.

Business bounces from loss to win to loss because it is unwilling or unable to invest the resources necessary to train sales professionals to perform at the top of their sales games.
Professional sports teams, on the other hand, are more than willing to invest whatever it takes to prepare coaches and players to compete and win against their toughest competitors.
So, what does this mean to you?

It means this: If you're serious about winning, you'll study, adapt, and apply professional sports team performance strategies and tactics to prepare your team to win against your toughest competitors.

Sales managers will become sales coaches.

Sales people will become sales players.

And, sales meetings will become sales practices.

After all, if you can't coach your sales team to renew and reinvent itself as well as a professional sports team so you can win more sales in changing market conditions, your team loses and so do you.

When all is said and done, your mastery of the skills and techniques we present in this article may be the most important contribution you ever make to your sales team, your business, and your profession.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1148150