It's about getting better.
I spend a lot of time with sales leaders and sales organizations talking about improvement. One of the more common, and I'd say inherent, things that make sales a killer profession is the commitment and desire to get better and improve.
Unfortunately, in spite of the culture of improvement, sales leaders and salespeople struggle at actually executing a process or approach of self-improvement. Creating a culture of growth and constant learning is often met with resistance as salespeople interpret management's efforts to help them, as judgment and evaluation rather than support and improvement.
In defense of salespeople, in most cases they are right. Sales leaders aren't coaching, AND in defense of sales leaders, many salespeople aren't open to improvement. It's a two-way street.
With that said, both sides still mess up the execution of coaching. Coaching is about helping people improve to become better. It's not about getting good and this is where both sales leaders and salespeople struggle.
Sales leaders start with their underperformers, focusing on them, thereby giving less time to their middle and top performers, arguing they're already good. But good isn't the goal -- better is.
Good is a destination, a subjective destination to make matters worse. Salespeople declare themselves good, and the learning stops, the growth ends, and their ego is now attached to this belief that they are good or even great. If the sales leader subscribes to this notion, that the salesperson is good, they stop coaching the good salesperson.
This is a problem.
Because of this management focuses their time on the bottom performers, and if the sales leader does attempt to coach top performers, they interpret coaching or engagement from management not as coaching but as a negative, micromanagement, suggesting they are not doing their job. The sales people then reject the coaching under the guise of, I'm already good. Remember, good isn't the goal -- better is.
We want better. Better isn't static, like good. Getting better is a journey, with no destination. It's infinite. We can always get better.
Here in lies the issue with creating a coaching culture. Both salespeople and sales leaders need to understand that coaching isn't about getting good, it's about getting better. It's about building a growth mindset that allows salespeople to continually improve and strengthen their skills and capabilities.
A growth mindset doesn't lock in on performance goals, like quota, or average deal size, or most significant deal, or presidents club, but instead mastery-oriented goals, like stronger question asking skills, improved social selling skills, or improved business acumen, etc. Mastery orientation focuses on the underlying skills that allow us to reach the performance goals.
A sales leaders we need to shift the prevailing philosophy of sales from performance goals and being good, to mastery goals and getting better.
We have to change attitudes and drink a cup of humility every day. We have to be able to look at ourselves objectively and say, "Yup, I could improve in that area." or even better. "I want to improve in this area or learn this because it would make me even better at what I do."
Being good at something is great. But getting better at something no matter how good you are is where the win is.
Sales leaders, coach your people to become better. Salespeople, commit to getting better. Don't try to be good, good helps no one. Be better!
