VICTORIA PARK SEPTEMBER 2017 BCBUSINESS 23
PROVIDE A STRUCTURE
"When I was a young sales direc-
tor, I thought I was a great coach
because my door was always open—I
was always ready to help my sales-
people," Morin says. "But if you're
not structured, what happens is that
you're only going to talk about issues
and problems. You're never going to
take time to really talk about, 'Let's
practise on the messaging or the call
planning. Let's review an opportu-
nity together, and I'll challenge you
and try to bring you some ideas
and values.'"
REINFORCE THE TRAINING
Many organizations undertake
some type of training but fail to
follow up with coaching and rein-
forcement, Irwin points out. "Don't
put somebody in a course for three
hours and expect the problem to
be solved," he says. "That's the
start of a learning journey. As a
coach and as a manager, your
job is to continue to reinforce the
learning and the behaviours that
are expected from what was being
taught in that course."
INVEST IN YOUR LEADERS
Companies have a tendency to
promote their top salespeople
to sales director, but they don't
spend time coaching the coach,
notes Morin. "The best return
on investment is to make sure
that ‰rst of all you invest in
your leaders, because they have
to coach, and they have to help
their sales team."
DEFINE WHAT YOU'RE
COACHING FOR
Doing a needs assessment of the
person to be coached is key, Irwin
advises. "Once you've undertaken
that needs assessment, you know
what the needs of that person are.
Then, from a company's perspec-
tive, one needs to develop a plan."
The plan can be something the
coach does on their own or an
external training program.
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MEASURE PERFORMANCE
"There's a saying, 'If it doesn't
get measured, it doesn't get
done,'" Irwin says. "If you've
got something that you're try-
ing to train against, to coach
against, you've got to make
sure you've got some de‰nable
metrics which you can measure
your progress against. Louis
and his organization are very
much focused on having things
called
KPIs, key performance
indicators."
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Telus Corp. and the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA),
headquartered in Toronto, launch a new sales training and certification
program for the Vancouver-based telecom's employees this fall.
CPSA
president and
CEO Peter Irwin, and Louis Morin, VP of sales performance
culture at Telus, share a few tips
by Felicity Stone
Sales Calls
DIY MANAGEMENT
