Sales managers are challenged with finding enough time to coach. The table below is a voice of hope, showing you:
- How effective hiring minimizes certain coaching. Some aspects of sales expertise need to be interviewed or tested for. Things like coach ability, empathy, numerical and verbal reasoning are innate, and salespeople need to walk in the door with these abilities intact. No need to coach those, unless the manager chooses (for whatever reason) to take on the manager’s portion of a personal development project with an otherwise-strong candidate.
- That some kinds of training don’t require extensive reinforcement by the sales manager — because they are “knowledge acquisition” rather than “selling behavior modification”. Highlighting the differences between those two types of material can help a FSM focus more tightly on one, and give the organization guidance on how to offload from FSM to an L&D department.
- Behavior modification is where FSMs need to live. I’m toying with coaching apps to help organize and streamline this part of it, but here’s what I have so far. I have more detail underneath this high-level graphic, but wanted to get your thoughts on the basic approach first.

Copyright, Mark Boundy. 2016
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