by Steve Chriest

“Sales Managers and Coaching”

“Coaching” has become one of the buzzwords of the new millennium. Coaches have always been important in sports, but the idea of coaching has permeated everyday life, including business. For just about anything you can think of, you can find coaches. You can even find so-called Life Coaches who purportedly will coach you into better living habits!

Some of the better sales consulting firms advise sales managers to become effective coaches for their sales teams. While I absolutely agree with this advice, I think it's important to examine the practice of coaching and to understand what makes an effective coach in any discipline.

There are, in my opinion, three types of effective coaches. At the lowest level there is the good coach. The middle level is occupied by the great coach. Extraordinary coaches occupy the very top level of coaching.

All effective coaches share at least one talent – the ability to teach. Teaching techniques for any discipline vary widely, but you cannot coach effectively unless you can teach. It's not so important how coaches teach as it is what they teach that distinguishes the three levels of coaching.

A good coach, for example, effectively teaches the fundamentals, whether it's the rudiments in drumming, the compulsory figures in figure skating, or the basics of the baseline and net game strokes in tennis. Good coaches don't have to be superstars in their fields. The ability to effectively teach fundamentals is the most important attribute of the good coach.

The great coach is not only adept at teaching the fundamentals, but also possesses the ability to extract superb performance from his or her students. The great coach sees in a student what others don't see and, many times, what the student doesn't see. Great coaches know intuitively how to motivate those students with exceptional talent to give exceptional performances. These coaches have the ability to draw out from their students' performances that the students themselves may not believe they are capable of delivering.

Then there is the extraordinary coach. There aren't many of these. These coaches are master teachers of the fundamentals who routinely coax the very best performances from their students. What sets the extraordinary coaches apart from all other coaches is their ability and willingness to teach significant life lessons to their students.

Next week we will examine the role of the sales manager as coach, and we will explore how sales managers might go from good, to great, to extraordinary coaches of their sales teams.

Copyright © 2006 Selling Up TM . All Rights Reserved.

About the author: Steve Chriest is the founder of Selling Up TM (www.selling-up.com), a sales consulting firm specializing in sales improvement for organizations of all types and sizes in a variety of industries. He is also the author of Selling Up , The Proven System for Reaching and Selling Senior Executives. You can reach Steve at schriest@selling-up.com.