DECEMBER 2017 SEEDWORLD.COM / 73 HOW DO YOU develop top salespeople in your company? How do you get eve- ryone from new hires, to your so-called veterans, to achieve their sales goals? Too often, neither one of those groups meets their company’s expectations because they’re missing the key element needed to succeed in sales — coaching. Coaching is the opposite of managing. Managing is monitoring WHAT salespeo- ple do, while coaching is monitoring HOW they do it. Coaching focuses on the pro- cesses needed to achieve the goal instead of the goal itself. It analyzes HOW sales- people are doing their job, not just WHAT they are doing in their job. By focusing on the HOW, coaches allow sellers to take charge of their own successes by helping them think through their own problems in order to devise solutions. It also means, once a sales goal is set and the processes are in place, that sales goal does not need to be looked at again until the sales year is over. The only thing that matters is executing the processes to achieve the goals. So, the next time field sellers have a question, a problem, or can’t get a sale, they search for solutions on their own to keep the processes moving forward instead of running to their managers to find the answers. The result is that coaching creates leaders, whereas managing creates followers. Coaching is the most neglected strat- egy available to companies when develop- ing a top performing salesforce. Instead of hiring coaches, companies hire managers to watch over their field sellers and make sure they know WHAT they are doing every minute of the day. Managing salespeople Stop Managing Your Salespeople — Coach Them Instead ROD OSTHUS R.C. THOMAS COMPANY PRESIDENT @RodOsthus • rod@rcthomas.com • rcthomas.com is a total waste of time, energy, and money. Every company needs to stop managing their salespeople and start coaching them. Are you one of those companies who has a stable of managers, each one with a different title, charged with keeping track of WHAT everyone in sales is doing? Do you get weekly reports from your field sellers telling you how many farm calls they’ve made or how many people they’ve talked to? The problem is, when the end of the year comes and sales and profit targets aren’t met, those reports can’t tell you why. That’s because the only road to suc- cess is writing orders and that requires improving the execution of the processes to get those orders. Improving execution of sales processes can only be done through coaching — not managing. WHEN IT COMES to marketing and fos- tering customer relationships, there are a number of approaches that can be used. These include distributing a company newsletter, attending tradeshows, hosting educational sessions, making a personal phone call, or better yet a face-to-face site visit. Each of these offers advantages and disadvantages, and one should not exclusively rely on a single approach. Instead, a multi-pronged approach must be taken. Whether you provide a product or a service, we all recognize that value is defined by our customers. As such, this year we have strategically decided to focus our resources on visiting customers at their facilities and in their offices. There is no better way to get a full understand- ing of a customer’s needs, challenges, successes and the value that we can provide customers than by meeting them in their locations. This means we won’t be at some of the trade shows where you might normally see us, but you can count on us to be reaching out to visit you in your plants and offices. While trade shows are great for networking, showing industry support, broadening your prospect base and building brand awareness, the trade show environment makes it difficult to engage in qual- ity discussions that allow us to build relationships and add the most value for customers. We want to help customers grow their business, and the best way for us to do that is to better understand the unique needs of each customer. Seeing their facility and sitting across from them will allow us to custom tailor our recommen- dations and help them find solutions. Site Visits Foster Customer Relationships, Offer Long-Term Benefits DEVON INGO EXECUTIVE ADMINISTRATIVE MARKETING DIRECTOR, OLIVER MANUFACTURING devon.ingo@olivermanufacturing.com • olivermanufacturing.com Oliver Manufacturing is a family- owned business and we want our cus- tomers to feel they are a part of our family. We want to ensure that they are fully satisfied with the solutions and equipment coming out of our manufac- turing facility in Colorado. As such, we have three teams of two Oliver represent- atives hitting the road for two to three weeks to visit customers. We’ll be visiting customers each week and look forward to learning more about their businesses, the unique challenges they face and any feedback or recommendations they might have for us. While this is a significant investment, we believe the value garnered from these site visits will yield substantial insight. Call me today to see if we will be in your area. I can be reached at 719-254- 7813 and look forward to talking with you.