We all know a sales manager or two like Brad Hutchinson, the main character in Brian Souza’s new book. Seems like they always have three things:
Image credit: Evolve Publishing
- amazing numbers,
- endless confidence,
- and no clue how to manage people.
But how do you break it to them that they should be more concerned about leadership than their own leads?
In The Weekly Coaching Conversation: A Business Fable About Taking Your Game and Your Team to the Next Level, Souza has created an short, breezy tale in order to teach such managers how to become true leaders. The story begins with Brad heading out to a local bar to toast his “Sales Leader of the Year” award, as well as his general awesomeness. He invites his whole team out to celebrate, but when he gets stood up by the lot of them, he’s forced to question all that he set out to celebrate. Luckily, “Coach” Mick Donnelly is at the bar and easily explains why Brad’s all alone.
“You said that you crushed your number, right? Well… how many people on your team crushed theirs?” Coach asks. Continue reading »
For their new book—Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies From The World’s Sales Leaders—Thomas Baumgartner, Jon Vander Ark, and Homayoun Hatami observed the inner workings of successful companies. Based on interviews of more than 120 of today’s most successful global sales leaders, this book offers real-life examples of how they overcame difficulties and found growth in a challenging market.
Part of finding growth is developing a sales team. While mentoring is a learning process, it shouldn’t feel like going back to a high school lecture hall. In this excerpt from the book, the three partners in McKinsey & Company talk about trainers and coaches who apply the tenets of successful adult education to their programs. Adults retain the most new information by doing—not hearing—and companies that integrate hands-on learning into their mentoring programs can benefit from that built-in bias. The authors also address how to reinforce successes while also giving special attention to those who need it. The excerpt closes with an innovative method of coaching the coach, an investment that for one company yielded an impressive return in close rates.
EXCERPT:
Coach Rookies Into Rainmakers
Unlocking people’s potential to maximize their performance is about helping them to learn rather than teaching them. This form of coaching is critical in sales because adults learn best through “experiential” learning—that is, by doing. Studies have shown that adults retain 65 percent of experiential learning compared to just 10 percent of material they receive in a lecture setting or in demonstrations. Continue reading »
By E’toile L. Libbett, GRI, associate broker with Preferred Carlson, REALTORS®, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Mentoring: A Success Guide for Mentors and Protégés. Floyd Wickman & Terri Sjodin. 167 pages. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1997.) $24.95.
Floyd Wickman and Terri Sjodin have collaborated to produce an excellent guide on mentoring.
The book is punctuated with entertaining and sometimes emotionally charged stories about protégés and their mentors. Some of these stories are from or about well-known personalities such as Les Brown, Tom Hopkins, and Ben Franklin. Most, however, are about ordinary people such as you and me.
The authors say that using a mentor is a way of achieving your goals faster and that mentoring does not replace other types of training; it enhances it.
The book explains what a protégé can expect from a mentor, how to select a mentor, and what the protocol of being a protégé involves. It gives 16 laws of mentoring.
The mentoring relationship can save the protégé time and money by opening doors the protégé couldn’t have opened alone. The relationship provides coaching and troubleshooting assistance for the protégé, thus helping reduce the protégé’s frustration. Used in conjunction with goal setting, mentoring can help the protégé achieve increased productivity and career satisfaction.
The selection of a mentor is explained in 21 detailed steps. These steps begin with brainstorming your wants. In which areas of your life do you want a mentor? Where do you see yourself in five years?
Wickman–a speaker and real estate trainer noted for his “Sweathogs” educational program–and Sjodin say there’s nothing worse for a mentor than to have the protégé fail to follow up on the list of tasks the mentor has suggested. The authors feel that a protégé has “to earn the right to hear the secrets of the masters.” The basic tasks lead to the bigger secrets until the “most precious pearls of wisdom” are shared.
Completion of the basic tasks is probably the most difficult portion of the mentoring process for the protégé. The basic tasks may mean that the protégé must step outside the protégé’s comfort zone. The protégé may also realize that success is imminent if the tasks are completed, but the protégé may not be ready for success. However, if one is hungry for success, comfort level will not matter and the protégé will be propelled to take action on the shared wisdom of the mentor.
Wickman and Sjodin say that the laws represent the characteristics that a mentoring relationship must display if it’s going to last. The laws help the mentoring relationship grow, flourish, and be successful.
The book ends with a collection of comments–pearls of wisdom–from many mentors.
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