Robin Green

When your salesperson shares that they are having trouble with an account going dark, they are asking you to tell them what to do. Our “coaching” often looks like war stories and campfire tales from back in the day. That is not coaching. That is not strategic. That is having a fixation with fixing…and a recipe for an underdeveloped team and an overstressed boss.

If you are in sales, you have left the "chase" message, haven’t you?

The follow-up call. The check-in. The status update. Desperate. Begging. Needy. I considered myself a professional yet here I was, feeling like an insect. A pest. It nearly drove me out of sales.

Join our guest, René Haines, Founder and President of FocalPath Coaching as she talks about how she got started as a business coach, what kinds of things she helps business owners with, and some ideas on how to weather the storm in a distressed economy. 

As John approached the long sidewalk, he heard Duke, his neighbor’s dog, wailing to the top of his lungs. He hurried his steps to see what was going on – and he saw Duke laying there on the porch, head turned to the sky, ears flopped back…and giving his best hound dog wail.

As business owners, sometimes we are like Duke. We wail to anyone who will listen. We gripe to our friends. We complain around the kitchen table. But we don’t move; we are stuck. Lying on the nail. It doesn’t hurt bad enough to do something different. We just wail, complain, and bellyache about the “if only’s” that are holding us back.

An old Cherokee tale gives us the story of a young boy and his grandfather. The boy shares, “There is a fight going on inside me. It is a terrible fight. It is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, regret, arrogance, self-pity, false pride, lies, and ego.” He continues. “The other is good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, faith, generosity, and kindness.” The grandson pauses and then asks his wise grandfather, “Which one will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Everybody has an idea of what sales training is and it's probably different for every person. Your concept of sales training is based on your personal experiences.

My first shot at being a sales manager was quite an adventure. I took over a team that were "victims" of a corporate merger. They loved the old company.

The entry level requirements for any salesperson worth their salt is to have a positive, "Can Do" attitude. You must be optimistic, seeing a solution to every problem. But so does a negative attitude. And you Jon Gordon and Zig Ziglar aficionados stay with me. 

Joe Madden, then the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, was being interviewed by a member of the media. Somewhere near the end of the interview, the reporter asked a great question.  

The ebb and flow of business. It seems that about every 10 years or so, the good times turn tough. Many of you have been through this before – though not exactly like this. Quarantine is becoming the new normal. “Social distancing”, a phrase that was new to most of us, is likely forever entered into our lexicon.