MARK DONNOLO: What about culturally? Have you seen in your organizations any cultural resistance to coaching? Defensiveness? Is there a problem with actually opening up? And if so, how have you addressed that?
TSLF Member: We are being acquired by a large financial institution. And our company, a payment processing company, is adapting itself to the culture of a very large bank.
A payment processor is not necessarily held in the same esteem as a banker. As sales people with an aggressive
outbound sales mission, we are now interacting with a more passive and more risk-resistant financial institution.
The bankers are not out pursuing deals in the way and the fashion that we are pursuing deals. And so we have to adapt to the large corporate culture issue.
I would say most financial institution bankers are not sales people. They are consultative. They deal with very
complex issues, but they are not out in a sense pursuing opportunities, because a lot of opportunity knocks on the door for them. The brand is so well
recognized. And their mission becomes to filter what opportunities they need to chose from. Where payment processing, if you’re not out knocking on doors, not many people are picking up the phone to call you and say, “I was really hoping you would provide me with some credit card processing.”
But there’s a corporate culture issue there. I think the way we’re trying to navigate that is to instill in our new owners the competency and the efficiency and the differentiation between where we were as a payment processor in the industry. And it’s going to take them some time to get
comfortable with that and
understanding our risk model and how we have to pursue and look at the business.
I don’t know if you have all gone through a merger and acquisition and that corporate culture change, but I think that it can truly impact the mechanics of how you sell.
CHRIS ROY: We went through it hard core. I’m an SBC guy, and we bought AT&T, took their name, bought Bellsouth – call them all mergers, but there’s a cultural shift whether it’s a small company that you acquire or it’s AT&T Wireless even, just a few years back. You have a natural change that would have had to occur. Right now
The Sales Leadership Forum 81
you’ve got that emotional shift and that cultural shift that has to occur when you’re universalizing, or maybe not even so much universalizing but at least having some sort of similarity and a plan to put in place for all your sellers.
And a seller that’s been on board 20 years that’s handling the state of Texas account, or if you have a seller on your team that sells iPhones – very different mindsets. Opposite ends of the
spectrum. Which poses a problem. And I think to your point, that’s what we all have to work through. That’s the reason I asked Coach Doherty, “What’s the biggest difference?” Same game, we’re all probably playing the same game or a similar game as when we started our career, but things can morph and be so very different. But the roots are still similar. And the only way to get there, at least where we’re going and I’m real proud of us for doing this, is you have to stop and hit reset and ask yourself,
“What would the client think? What is your customers’ view of this thing?” It doesn’t matter if you’re an iPhone seller or a state government seller or a startup company seller or a Fortune 500 seller.
The perception to the customer has to be the same.
I like to work the equation backwards when we’re putting the plan in here.
Pure clarity to seller’s lens. When I say pure clarity, I mean when they have visibility into everything you’re trying to accomplish, with exception to
proprietary. It makes the
communication of a plan and the implementation of a plan much easier because there’s that much trust built into the organization.
My background is different than
probably 80 percent of my team’s. They understand my boss’ goals and the tactics and strategies that were put in place by him, by me and by everyone else down the line. So that while they might not all have the same knowledge I have and I may not have the same they have, we all understand where we’re headed, and there are specific steps along the way. Because it’s been over communicated.
And if there are gaps in communication there’s at least visibility to the point where they can ask questions to help guide them along the path. No one is chasing something in a black hole.
Everyone understands the end game, and getting there is kind of a journey.
And by the way, the interesting piece here is, especially along the lines of acquisitions, you set a course. Now that things seem to be settled, that’s going to change. There will be another acquisition or we’ll be picked up at some point and then we’ll be part of someone else’s strategy at that point.
TSLF Member: Change is inevitable, pain is optional.
DAVE SHARP: When Coach Doherty was speaking I was trying to remember back when I played athletics, who my favorite coaches were. And, what coaches did that got me to do more than I thought I could do.
When I look back at my football coach, my basketball coaches, when I look back at my battalion commanders in the Army or I look back at the folks that I
The Sales Leadership Forum 82
trust today, those coaches could get me to do something above and beyond that which I thought I was capable of doing myself. So I hope that when I synthesize all of this information and I take it back and apply it somehow to my line of business today, I’m going to think about what I can do as a coach to be able to get my team to do something that they didn’t think they were capable of.
MARK DONNOLO: The coach has the vision. They’ve seen it before and they know what you’re probably capable of doing, but you may not.
When you’re teaching, is there a standard methodology that you give them in your business? And if so, is it something that you’ve developed or you’ve gotten from a third party that says, “Ok, here’s a good coaching process.” Or is it more organic? Is it something that everybody does in their own way? What have you found to be the practices that are most successful?
TSLF Member: I like to go back and think about what I’ve heard. To me that’s a key component. It’s the opportunity to reflect. And in order to do that it’s really about getting feedback. Did you run the route right? Did you pivot properly?
How did you handle that meeting?
People give you feedback and then you have a chance to reflect on it, and bounce that against some kind of template.
The best coaches – and this comes to the method question – have the ability to visualize what is needed or most effective and can show you how you
either perform to or deviate from that.
And then give you the opportunity to make some mid-course corrections. To me that’s sort of the underlying
methodology of whatever the individual style or organizational approach would be about.
EDDIE BIRCHFIELD: Do you think most sales managers know how to coach?
LINDSAY JOHNSTON: That’s an
interesting question. I think if you look at where management has come over the last 20 years or so, it used to be a type A personality. Now we kind of see the softer side of people because people just got fed up and left those companies.
It really depends on the culture. I don’t think necessarily everybody knows how to coach, and a lot of it comes down to personality. And it comes back to coaching your coach.
Often I think the manager takes the persona of who they are reporting to.
I’ve been with this company five and a half years, and I’ve had three different bosses. When I had the type A
personality boss I would find myself, whether I liked it or not, with a more type A personality, because that’s the type of culture I had to respond to. Just recently I got a new boss who’s a little more laid back and a little more coaching positive, and so I sometimes take that persona.
But, to Mark’s original question, did we do this organically or did we have some people come in and actually teach us how to do this? We did it organically. I
The Sales Leadership Forum 83
as a manager try to pick up things from different folks, different leaders in my organization and try to apply it.
TSLF Member: There’s a professor at SMU, an excellent speaker, and he talks to the demand curve population and then talks specifically about the
millennium generation. He speaks about it, and he says, “You have to manage them differently because you’re not going to get the same reaction.” And he uses the example of being a professor.
He said, much like the coach said when we were coming up, 10% of the class got As, 30 percent got Bs, 30% got Cs – I’m pulling numbers out of the air – but he said now 42% are getting As. You get people graduating with 4.0s and if I give someone a B they’re going to call or the parents are going to call. And the interesting thing is my administration, my boss, is going to come down on me for giving a B if they get the wrong call from the right person.
I think ironically it’s something we’re all probably dealing with because we’ve got an aging work population and we’re just starting to bring these folks in and there’s a bit of a clash. But they’re the future of the world.
TSLF Member 2: I’d like to add to that. I know what you’re talking about. My peer that runs the MBA programs, all the grad programs, she has a great presentation about this. The MBA students, I want to say something like 80% of the MBAs are currently
millennials and by 2012 they’ll all be millennials. So the MBA faculty and administration is like the canary in the coal mine for this generation coming
through. And she’s got some
illustrations and stories kind of like that that say, “What are these people going to be like when they get in the
workforce? What are they going to be like when they reach decision making levels and when we have to sell to them in decision making levels? How will that be different?”
We have a couple other professors who have run workshops on this for some of our corporate clients as well.