When I sat down to start writing the eBook we just published and launched (details on how to get your free version below) I was pondering why deal coaching has been lost as a competency in many sales organizations today. It was a core competency in many of the largest, best known organizations when I started my career at IBM and I’ll bet you can name countless other companies that excelled in this arena.
One observation that struck me is that 20+ years ago these organizations didn’t have much “enabling technology.” Heck, in those days we were lucky to have an admin with a typewriter and if we were really lucky we had a low-tech voice mail system for messages. We submitted forecasts via fax machines but we never even considered the notion of a CRM system.
Without an abundance of technology we had no confusion about how to spend our time or about our core job responsibility – to close new business and grow existing accounts. We didn’t have to struggle with how to balance our time between too many priorities. Our job and our life seemed pretty simple in contrast to today’s world.
Fast forward to today’s environment – is it possible that our abundance of enabling technologies has actually diluted sales people’s and sales manager’s time devoted to winning? Is the “tyranny of the urgent” that seems to describe their average day, one of the factors that has made deal coaching a lost art?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not an advocate of turning the clocks back 30 years when we didn’t have any CRM and related tools. No, my warning is don’t let these tools be the excuse for not doing what we all know is the core function that sales people (and their managers) are hired to do: strategize to close deals. My evidence in leading Sales Management Academy workshops is that managers are really struggling to find the time to do just that. Used properly, these great tools should allow you to identify the right deals to focus on closing.
How about you? Are you a victim of this phenomenon? Do you need to make proactive adjustments to your calendar priorities (or the use of your tools) to spend more time on activities that matter?
If you want details on this whole topic, which is the focus of my new eBook, Deal Coaching is a Lost Art, you’ll find a link below to the replay of the webinar we hosted this week and you’ll also find the details on how to download your free copy of the eBook.
I look forward to your feedback and good luck and good coaching!
Download our free PDF eBook Deal Coaching is a Lost Art – http://www.complexsale.com/ebook-lost-art
Watch our most recent webinar on deal coaching with TCS’s Peter Bourke & David Stargel – http://www.complexsale.com/july-webinar-assets