Sales Coaching

Please read the general background to our coaching if you haven't already. Sales Coaching has a greater emphasis on the personal skills and resources necessary to be successful in a sales job.

The main areas are:

1. Relationship Skills
2. Motivation
3. Goal Setting
4. Overcoming Difficulties and Setbacks
5. State Management

1. RELATIONSHIP SKILLS

Rapport and Listening

Having rapport (usually called ‘being in rapport’) with someone is key to a workable relationship based on trust and ‘win-win’ outcomes. Being in rapport means meeting a person in their world. Only then can you bring them into yours. So in order to influence someone, you must be in rapport. There are ways in which a person interprets what you say to them and represents it internally that, if you understand them, can help you to communicate better with them. These are called Representational Systems. Achieving rapport becomes much easier if you understand how someone’s representational systems are structured. You can learn now how to identify a persons preferred representational system, and use them – meet them in their model of the world. As you learn more about this you will be able to understand them better and make yourself understood, by talking with them in the ways that they are most comfortable with.

2. MOTIVATION

Personal Motivation comes from Inner Alignment. What is Inner Alignment? It's an alignment between yourself - your behaviour, your environment including the work that you do and how you do it, - and your BELIEFS and VALUES. We look at the beliefs you hold about yourself and the world, and the values that you have, and you decide if they serve your purpose; are they appropriate and relevant to you and how you wish to be in your life and work? If not, we develop new ones!

3. GOAL SETTING

How many times have you read about people who’s lives are extraordinarily successful, and noticed that they set goals for themselves? Goal setting is no more than thinking about and choosing what we want for ourselves, and yet so few people do it! Is it any wonder that, if you don’t decide what you want for yourself, and then adopt strategies to get what you want, that it doesn’t happen?

Outcomes that are ‘Well-Formed’

An objective or goal or target that has been systematically refined by ensuring that it fits six criteria or well-formed ness conditions

When thoughts or wishes have been defined using this process they become more believable and more realisable. This is why they are then described as being ‘well-formed’ outcomes.

Applications for ‘Well-Formed’ Outcomes

• The 'well-formed outcome' process creates a detailed internal representation in your mind - an important step in creating a belief in your objective.

• The outcome process ensures you focus on what you DO want rather than on what you do NOT want. Your attention is on what to do and how to do it rather than on problems, excuses, alibis, and explanations.

• Outcomes directionalise a persons thoughts and actions. Use them for your goals, dreams, and wishes — and watch what happens. The well -formed outcome process distinguishes between those factors which are relevant to creating a clear outcome and those which are in the realm of history’, complaint etc.

• It improves rapport with other people. When you use the well-formed outcome process with another person, matching and aligning your objectives, it adds to the rapport already existing between you. The other person will appreciate your concern and interest. And you now have a joint commitment to the outcome towards which you are both moving

• It provides a means of evaluating progress. Should you find that you are thinking or acting in ways that are at variance with your well-formed outcome you recognise that you need to stop and re-evaluate your activities.

• The outcome steps provide a working framework that keeps discussions and activity on course - whether in a business context or in personal interactions.

4. OVERCOMING DIFFICULTIES and LIMITING BELIEFS

NLP offers some very effective techniques to help us to be more resourceful and effective in situations which, for now, may be a cause of difficulty or discomfort. Do you have trouble getting motivated to Cold Call? Maybe you have a hard time with important presentations, or handling meetings with certain other people? Are there certain people whose communication style or methods of working phase you. If you answer yes to any of these, we can help you, first by helping you to an understanding of what is going on, and then by showing you how to draw upon your own resources and strengths to overcome the negative or inhibiting feelings you have around these situations.

5. STATE MANAGEMENT

This is a term we use to describe the totality of a person’s experience in a given moment - to what they are consciously and unconsciously experiencing.

A state is not a static thing - it is rather like a single frame of a movie. People change states continuously.

A person’s state will endure for seconds rather than for minutes, hours, or even days. For example, while a person may talk of feeling depressed all the time their state will vary considerably during the period they are thinking about - it is just that they pay most attention to, and therefore will remember best, the state elements they associate with depression.

When we attach a label such as angry or resourceful to a state we nominalise or ‘freeze’ the internal and external behaviour that makes up the state.

Labeling states is useful for the purposes of change work but the process must be used with caution and with the awareness that it is an artificial process.

Labeling a state as 'good' or 'bad' states are subjective evaluations. It could be said that there are no good or bad states, only appropriate or inappropriate ones. Every state can have value in some context.

Sometimes people use the labels ‘enabling’ and ‘disabling’ states. This labeling is frequently based on the belief that it is desirable to always be in a positive and up-beat state. Other people consider such an approach to encourage a way of feeling, thinking and responding that is too mechanical or controlled and one that removes what they consider to be the ‘colour’ of daily experiencing. Again, the concept of appropriateness may be more useful and precise.

As you develop your own ability to manage your state easily and skillfully you may find it strange that others are content to spend time in apparently unresourceful states. This is particularly the case when you know they have the skills and ability to move out of an apparently un-useful state.

It may be that in their model of the world there are no ‘bad’ states and that they choose to fully experience the variety of life with its ups and downs by fully experiencing every state.

Or it may be explained by the concept of Secondary Gain - the payoff which a particular state or behaviour gives us such as enabling us to avoid something, to gain attention, to control a situation, etc.

We show you how to be 'in touch' with your state through your thoughts, feelings and physiology and 'manage' your state using tried and tested techniques.