Preface
In March, I started a new project with my employer Spring Venture Group. I am managing the Sales Coach Program for the company, an exciting change that is a great intersection between my skill set and current business needs. In this role, I manage 64 sales coaches across two businesses.
One of the things that excites me about this work is creating a culture of continuous improvement among the sales force. A coaching culture is one where everyone is participating in multi-directional development regardless of title, and my work involves creating both systems and structures to support the developmental relationship between sales agents and coaches, while developing sales coaches as leaders even (or perhaps especially) in the context of remote work.
I have started a weekly leadership discussion with the coaches across all locations, and here is the content I presented from our first meeting with the sales coaches.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is defined as:
A cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.
When we are coaching new sales agents, they move from the Huh? stage to the I know everything phase as soon as they get their first sales. We’ve all seen the agent who isn’t quite sure about themselves be overcome with confidence after their first sale, which is what we want. We want them to feel amazing about this job, because being successful in sales is one of the most rewarding feelings in the world.
After the initial high of that first sale wears off, new sales agents are confronted with a litany of situations they’ve never encountered before. They try what worked once or twice and it stops working, and they are suddenly facing the realization that There’s more to this than I thought, which quickly gives way to I’m never going to understand this.
The Trough of Despair
What happens next is why sales coaching is so crucial. The space between I’m never going to understand this and It’s starting to make sense is what’s know as the Trough of Despair. It sounds dramatic, but it’s very real especially in sales. When you’re in the Trough of Despair, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep going because you’re strong, but it’s really hard. The space between I’m never going to understand this and It’s starting to make sense is the difference between:
Agents who quit and agents who stay
Agents who thrive and agents who limp along for months without unlocking their potential
Agents who are bought in to the vision and agents who become cynical
The Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity
Sales Coaches are even more important in a remote environment where new agents are experiencing the trough at home, alone, without the physical presence of a team. The trough is intense enough in its own right when in the office, but even moreso when working remotely. The act of guiding agents through this process and to the other side of the curve is of utmost importance. The role of the sales coach is to walk people to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. And once agents crest that hill, it’s much smoother sailing moving forward. Sales Coaches facilitate agents through this process more quickly, and their dot-line (no formal authority or reporting) relationship means that conversations are often more quickly “down to brass tacks” than they may be with more formal solid-line relationships.
Impostor Syndrome
The inverse of overestimating your skill is also true: highly-skilled workers often find themselves feeling like impostors or frauds because they realize how vast the knowledge landscape is and doubt their hard-earned ability. The more you know, the more self-aware you are, and the more prone you are to baseless self doubt. This is the Trust me, it’s complicated part of the curve, because we’ve seen it all. Sales coaches are sales leaders. And as sales leaders, this is important to remember especially since technical credibility is always top of mind.
A bad day, week, month, or even quarter aren’t definitive of our leadership abilities. Our potential, and our people’s potential, transcends such rigid boundaries.
Now, more than ever, a coaching culture is imperative for our remote organizations to succeed.