A key part of the sales manager’s responsibilities is to support their sales team in making profitable sales. One way of doing this is to arrange
joint visits with each of your sales people to customers and then to use these opportunities to uncover any poor sales techniques or personal behaviours that are limiting the sales person's success.
Even the best sales ales people will over time, without regular intervention and one-to-one coaching from their sales manager, fall into bad habits that will affect their sales success. These bad habits can take many forms, but one of the most damaging is when the sales person acts in such a way as to injure the self-esteem of his or her clients.
As a Sales manager you should arrange to accompany your sales people to client visits so that you can see first hand if there are any areas that the sales person could improve. On such visits you should take particular note of any behaviours the sales person exhibits that could be adversely affecting the self-esteem of the client. Often sales people are not aware that they are doing anything wrong, so your aim is to make them more self-aware.
There are many ways in which a sales person can injure the self-esteem of his or her clients. However the following six patterns of behaviour are particularly common:
1. Interrupting them and not listening to what they are saying
2. Adopting a sloppy posture, wandering eyes and tired gestures which signal disinterest with what the customer is telling them.
3. Running down people and institutions that the client holds in esteem, or praising people and institutions of which he/she disapproves.
4. Boasting about the size, strength, output or superiority of his or her own company and products.
5. Giving the client know-all suggestions on how he should run his department or company.
6. Obstinately standing up for views which are contrary to the convictions and experience of the client.
If you notice these, or similar patterns of behaviour, in a member of your sales team, then you must act immediately. Provide them with personalised, one-to-one coaching immediately after the sales visit to help them rectify these bad habits before they start to impact on their, and the company's, sales success.
