The best coaches know how to break productivity death spirals and turn their coaching sessions into demonstrable winners. The absolute best way to accomplish that goal is with the third in The 4 Stages of Sales Coaching – The 8 Objectives of Coaching.
But let’s rewind for a minute. Whether you recognize it or not as a coach, there’s always a natural law at work among your employees. I call it the Law of Limited Performance.
Here’s the law: People soon discover the level of performance their managers will settle for and then gravitate to that level. As a result, managers then assume that’s all that people are capable of achieving. They accept it as fact that they can’t reach a higher standard, and they quit challenging them to get better. So both sides end up reinforcing what the other believes. This is how coaches and employees alike combine to create those productivity death spirals.
Stage 3: The 8 Objectives of Coaching from Forrest Performance Group on Vimeo.
Coaching is a positive strategy to help you move through this natural law, and as you move through, you’ll always enjoy greater rewards. The coaching along the way makes all the difference, and The 8 Objectives of Coaching are a game-changer that will transform your employees’ lives one coaching session at a time.
These are the stages we’ve already worked through.
1. Position of Strength. You gained buy-in with your employee by using the four questions.
2. Gain Rapport. You got on the same page with your employee by determining what they need coaching on most.
The first two steps are all about setting the table for your coaching. Now it’s time to eat.
These 8 objectives were designed through years of experiential research coaching clients. Your goal as a coach is to take an employee from buy-in to accomplishment, right? Then you’ll find these 8 objectives the best, most repeatable way to do that with every single employee, every single time.
1. First you need a preframe. This sounds something like, “Suppose I could show you a way to solve that problem, so you would be one step closer to your goal. Would you be interested in hearing about that?” Of course they’ll say yes. You want to bring them into the coaching process so they’ll feel like you’re collaborating on the solution together. Now you have the perfect on-ramp for the rest of the objectives you’re about to go through.
2. What. The point of this step is to lay out the new strategies you need your sales professionals to work on. The preframe is opening the door to your employee’s goal, and the what is establishing what they actually need to work through. So let’s say your employee is spending too much time prepping their model home and not enough time focusing on selling the model home. The what is all about laying that out in the table.
3. How. The how is giving them the steps to walk through it. This is where you present the strategy they’ll need to move forward. So if your employee needs to spend more time working on their selling pitch and not as much time fixing lights and karate chopping the pillows, this is where you tell them the steps to doing that. Bring your expertise to the table so you can give them the knowledge they need to remove their leashes.
4. Validate. The validate step is all about transferring your certainty to your employee about their steps to accomplish their goal. Remember, your prospects are the primary source of confidence, motivation, hope and certainty in their customer’s decision to buy or not buy. Just the same, you are the source of confidence, motivation, hope and certainty in your employees while they follow their steps.
5. Believe. With the belief step, you’re identifying their beliefs in three areas by asking three specific questions: Do you believe this will work? Do you believe you can do it? Do you believe this will work 100% of the time? This is getting into their internal beliefs, which is where you can work on building them up and giving them your confidence in their abilities.
6. Will. The will step is centered around one question: will you do this now? You’re inviting your employee to take massive action on their goal. You want them to commit to doing it right then so you can burn off their procrastination and get them to step into the arena right away.
7. When. This step revolves around a single question: when can we follow up? Set a time, make sure you iron out the details and commit. The more accountability you create, the more you’ll drive your people to succeed.
8. Celebrate. Now it’s time to follow up and celebrate. You want to create a culture where people are celebrated for following their process over the results. The process is what will create an award-winning culture and a profit-generating business. So make sure to take some time and celebrate with your people at the end of the day.
