“I have a problem. I find my time is sucked up answering my team’s client issues all day long and I have no time to do my actual job. I want to be there for them, and help them achieve, but I also want them to operate independently, each developing their own style and approach. What should I do?”
Helping your team figure out their own answers to the obstacles in their role rather than responding to every question they bring to you will help them develop their own style and acquire the knowledge and skills so that one day they too can become a manager. If you spend your day directing them, they will never need to think for themselves and you may run the risk of losing the more independent team members who want to be stretched. You need to empower them, giving them responsibility for themselves, and let them make their own mistakes, while being there to catch them if they fall.
This frees you up to focus on longer-term activities that will help scale the business, such as strategising with vendor partners, marketing to customers and employees and analysing historic results and target data for insights and better future planning.
Give Them a Fish or Teach Them to Fish?
Do you give them a fish or do you teach them how to fish?
How can sales leaders make this style of leadership work? The answer is that by adopting a coaching style of leadership with the team, they will be more accountable, acquire the necessary business skills to boost performance and ultimately rise through the ranks.
A Coaching Approach to Sales Leadership
By adopting a coaching style of management you create a less co-dependent relationship with your team. Helping your team to explore different behaviours or approaches to achieve better outcomes motivates them to work more independently; and frees you up to do your job as manager and leader.
Coaching develops the team through a focus on individuals. You will need to listen, be empathetic, patient and adaptable, with a focus on shared problem solving.
In the beginning it is more time consuming than providing quick answers, and it can feel more like personal development than closing a sale. You might even see a short-term impact on the bottom line as you spend more time coaching your reps. But your team will be more motivated and you will be helping them to grow.
Making the Shift from Directive to Coaching
These outcomes won’t appear overnight. But with consistent coaching, reps will each develop the necessary knowledge and skills, enabling you to be more strategic.
A way to get started is to set clear expectations with the team. Outline why you’re changing the way you respond to them and what the benefit is to them. Advise them that the next time they come running to you for an answer, you will ask them to pause and think through the issue themselves first:
- What do you think you should do?
- What similar situation in the pas have you experienced?
- What possible solutions are you considering?
- What have you already tried?
In this way, you can support your reps to develop the knowledge and skills to come up with their own solutions. And give them the credit when it does.
Leadership Coaching for a More Self-Sufficient Sales Team
Adopting a coaching style of leadership is essential to help your team to develop. Without it, they won’t aspire to anything greater, you won’t build bench strength, you won’t be freed up to focus on more strategic issues, and the business won’t develop.
The Sales Leader as Coach
You can hand out the fish, one by one, or you can have a self-reliant team of fishers who hit their targets without being dependent on your input on day-to-day issues. You get the best out of everyone while carving out time to fulfil your own leadership and management duties instead of simply being a source of answers.
For more help on this topic and other sales leadership challenges contact me online and I’ll get back to your message asap.
