It’s one thing to train your associates on sales. But if the new behaviors are going to stick, part of the “sales ecosystem” must include coaching to reinforce the desired behaviors. That’s obvious and easy to say, but coaching is a skill that takes time to learn, and practice not just something all managers just automatically do well. The biggest challenge to this that I’ve seen in my 15+ years in the industry is that very few organizations invest the time and resources to create a coaching climate and teach managers to coach; without an intentional approach we can’t expect managers to know how to do it. 

Our leasing associates’ success is critical; after all, they really are the ones who get prospects to become customers. So how do we create a coaching culture to help them succeed? Here are three quick tips:

1. Focus on one thing at a time. Good football coaches don’t start practice with a scrimmage. They start with practices individual skills like blocking, catching, throwing and running. They build up to components of plays and only then put all of it together into a full scrimmage. The same is true with any other sport. Similarly, a good sales coach/community (or regional) manager doesn’t overload an associate with improving multiple things at once. She focuses on a single skill—the opening conversation, asking more probing questions, dealing with decision reluctance (aka “objections”), talking price, …. People learn and internalize the new skills when they work on one thing at a time.

2. Use visualization. Sports psychologists teach athletes to visualize the big game. To visualize hitting the winning shot. To imagine going through various situations in their minds. What does it feel like? What are you doing? How are you reacting? Great athletes have already been successful many times in their own mind before they even hit the court/field/…. This works as well or better for sales coaching. Our leasing associates can role play in their minds…and then practice their verbalizations and reactions with their coach. It’s a great way for them to find their own voice and to get more comfortable with their sales model..

3. Employs “reflective learning.” Close the loop on each sales encounter, successful or not, by asking the associate three simple, yet devastatingly simple, questions:

   1. What worked?

   2. What didn’t work?

   3. What would you do differently next time?

Think about and employ these three tactics in coaching, and I guarantee you’ll see increased success from your sales team!