August 2008


Coaching is Key to Sales Gold

In the past few weeks, several CEOs have expressed concern over missed sales goals

I often ask what they’re doing to ensure that their sales teams succeed. There is typically quite a long pause.

As a leader, you’d be mortified to learn that you could be responsible for your sales people missing their goals. If you’re not holding them accountable, you really are part of the problem…yikes! How do you react when goals are missed, contracts are lost, margins erode, and your sales people blame the economy, competition, and your company for their lack of results? If you accept any excuse, you’re cultivating a breeding ground for excuse-making and enabling poor results.

Your leadership is critical for empowering the sales organization to compete more aggressively and hit sales goals. It starts with the basics of effective coaching…setting clear expectations and providing feedback on meeting those expectations. The author of Three Signs of a Miserable Job explains how critical this concept of Immeasurement is:

“Employees need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves. They cannot be fulfilled in their work if their success depends on the opinions or whims of another person…Without a tangible means for assessing success or failure, motivation eventually deteriorates.”

Leaders must help sales people dissect missed opportunities and apply learned lessons to future opportunities, so they can achieve their goals. It’s all about leveraging discipline and creativity to drive consistently successful results.

To read a case study of real world results from EPCO, go to the case studies on this web site and see how EPCO:

  • Completed most profitable month in company’s history…38% higher than same month last year.
  • Completed a profitable first quarter… exceptional achievement considering first quarter historically has been unprofitable.
  • Metrics improve dramatically to increase margin over last year… from 31-42% depending on product line.

Discipline Creativity Results

Danita