About This Episode

There’s nothing better than a great coach.

Behind every successful athlete, artist, performer, or business executive, there’s at least one, possibly several, coaches who have made all the difference. In order to create a truly winning team culture, you’ve got to incorporate coaching. But how do you do that? How do you know if your coaching is working? What sort of coaching protocols do you need to put into place? What if you don’t think you have time to implement a coaching program?

On a recent episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down with Gary Smyth, Sr. Director of Inside Sales at Informatica for a candid discussion on all things coaching.

Culture and coaching are two pieces of the same puzzle. It’s an ongoing event, not just a one time thing. It’s a process of discovery, as you explore conversations with team members.

Once you have that culture in place, how do you know that your coaching investments are actually working? Are they actually paying off?

As-Is vs. To-Be

When you’re building your brand, ask yourself a few questions: What are the top ten attributes of a successful sales professional? What does good look like, and how do you communicate that back to your team?

Whether it’s mastering your sales methodology, forecasting accuracy, pipeline generation, whatever they are, make sure that they’re known.

Then share them back with your team and score them on a 1-10 system. What does your brand look like when taking these into consideration? Score each attribute and then get feedback from your team? How do they score themselves? Remember to ask yourself, what is your current state, and where do you want to be?

G.R.O.W.

When you’re focusing on coaching, Gary and his team recommend something they call the GROW method.

Goals: What are our goals? What are we trying to achieve as an organization and as a team? What are your goals personally and professionally?

Reality: Where are you? Where does the team and the organization stand in this particular place and time? You can’t get where you’re going without knowing where you are.

Options: What are we doing to continue to improve?

Will: What are we doing between now and our next meeting to get us from where we are to where we want to be?

When it comes to coaching, the most important thing you can do is GROW.

“But I Don’t Have Time”

We’re all busy. Everybody has a thousand things to do. Nobody needs another set of tasks to feel like they have to accomplish every week.

But the good news is there are some simple things you can do to start to implement a culture of coaching in your organization.

Start where you are. Establish a core cadence and put some meetings in place. Make sure that you establish consistent, regular 1:1 sessions, and don’t move them. Then start the GROW conversation. You’re not trying to boil the ocean. You’re not trying to implement change all at once.

Ask, “What were our goals going into this training, and have they changed since it’s been delivered?”

A culture of coaching will truly take your organization from where you are to where you want to be.

This post is based on a podcast interview with Gary Smyth from Informatica. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast. If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.