How to Change Sales Behaviors

I’ve said before that sales managers earn their money by developing and improving the performance of their salespeople through a process that I call “profitable behavior change.” In this case, “profitable” means that the company and the salesperson make more money from the change. “Behavior” means how they handle every part of their job; usually, we focus on external, customer-facing behaviors, but sometimes, you need to improve internal behaviors and relationships with co-workers. And we all know what “change” means.

Whether you have a team of low, high, or mixed performers, your job is to help those people perform better—at least up to their abilities. I’m not a fan of high turnover. It damages your company culture, the sales team’s morale, customer relationships, and your mindset. Sometimes, you do have to fire someone, but I like to feel that I can look at myself in the mirror and say that I’ve done everything I could to help them succeed before I fire them. That’s where a process of profitable behavior change comes in.

Profitable behavior change is done in three steps: Training, Coaching, and Accountability. Entirely too many managers (or owners) skip the first two steps and go straight to accountability. We hire them, but they don’t get results. We dictate, and then we fire them. That’s lame, it’s unfair, and it’s unprofitable. Let’s look at these three steps in a little more detail.

Training is the structured transfer of knowledge in a teaching environment. Essentially, training is built around the idea that we want our salesperson (or employees in general) to know certain things, so we are going to create a structured method of teaching them these things. The knowledge could be about the sales process, sales methodology, the company’s products, services, culture, business process, or any other pieces of knowledge they need to do the job correctly.

What distinguishes Training from Coaching is its preplanned nature and objectives. Training creates a baseline of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques you expect your people to know and implement. It lays out how you want business to be done and how you want your customers to be treated. It’s not a step to be skipped or a shortcut. Training should begin during the 90-day onboarding period after you hire a new salesperson. When should it stop? Never. Ongoing training reinforces and refreshes what’s been taught before, and it should also advance and build upon the skills baseline with new skills and techniques.

Sales training isn’t a one-time cure-all for what ails your sales team (I probably shouldn’t say that since it is a big part of my business, but there it is). Sales training is an excellent way to build your team’s skills, but it loses much of its effectiveness if management does not continually reinforce and refresh. Whatever sales training program you choose should be part of your sales culture and language, and it should be consistently updated to keep pace with buyer preferences and expectations (and the pace of that change is at an all-time high right now). What’s “tried and true” might be tried, but it might not necessarily be true now.

Coaching is also a transfer of knowledge, but it’s far less structured. Coaching, done properly, is an ongoing process of skills improvement with no fixed beginning, end, or pre-set curriculum. Coaching involves observing your salesperson’s behavior in a real-life selling environment (such as a ride-along for face-to-face sales calls or a listen-in for phone or video sales calls), finding opportunities to improve the way their customer reacts to their selling, and then helping them to build their skills in whatever area of selling you observe.

The biggest mistake that sales managers make when they attempt to coach is taking over the sales call and trying to make the sale for the rep instead of shutting up and letting the rep fail if necessary. I know. That’s hard. In fact, it was the most difficult thing I ever had to do as a sales manager. Watching a sales call go wrong is excruciating when you know exactly how to bring it back right. Remember that your job is to improve the rep’s skills on every call they make, and if you step in and sell, you’re only helping them on this call. You can’t always be there.

The second biggest mistake is to dictate instead of persuade. Coaching isn’t a dictatorial process of “You must do this;” but a persuasive process of “If you do this, here’s how you’ll benefit.” Use your selling skills in coaching—remembering that you’re trying to sell your rep on a new course of action.

The final method of profitable behavior change is the least fun: accountability. Now, you’re not persuading. “Holding people accountable” means acknowledging that they are deficient in some phase of their job, that you won’t accept that deficiency, and that they must correct it. This could be activity-based (maybe they aren’t hitting their activity numbers), it could be skills-based (perhaps they refuse to implement a critical sales skill despite having been trained and coached on it), or perhaps they are not treating co-workers well.

Now you have to say, “Do this, or else these consequences could come to you.” That doesn’t have to mean termination. It could mean losing territory or customers, entering a probationary period, or other smaller, short-term consequences. One thing to remember is this: In all but the most extreme behavioral problems (for instance, lying to customers, maltreatment of co-workers, etc.), you don’t have the standing to hold someone accountable over a behavior unless you’ve trained them and coached them on it already. At some point, if they refuse to succeed, yes, you have to terminate them—but it’s a progressive process.

Profitable behavior change is possible, enjoyable, and the best way to improve your team’s results. Remember and implement the three steps, and you’ll be fine.