From Good To Great To Extraordinary | Sales Improvement Articles

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From Good, To Great To Extraordinary

It is perhaps more important now, than it has been at any time during the past 80 years, for front-line
sales leaders to acquire the right coaching skills for teaching fundamentals and encouraging exceptional performance and loyalty from their teams. The ability to coach, as much as anything else, may be the
largest single contributing factor to sales health in the next few years. In many cases, the success or
failure of many companies may depend on it.

“Coaching” has become one of the buzzwords of the new millennium. Coaches have always been
important in sports, but the idea of coaching has permeated everyday life, including business. For just
about anything you can think of, you can find a coach. You can even find so-called Life Coaches
who purportedly will coach you into better living habits!

Some of the better sales consulting firms advise sales managers to become effective coaches for their
sales teams. While I absolutely agree with this advice, I think it's important to examine the practice of
coaching and to understand what makes an effective coach in any discipline.

There are, in my opinion, three types of effective coaches. At the lowest level there is the good coach.
The middle level is occupied by the great coach. Extraordinary coaches occupy the very top level
of coaching.

All effective coaches share at least one admirable talent – the ability to teach. Teaching techniques for
any discipline vary widely, but you cannot coach effectively unless you can teach. It's not so important
how coaches teach as it is what they teach that distinguishes the three levels of coaching.

A good coach, for example, effectively teaches the fundamentals, whether it's the rudiments in drumming,
the compulsory figures in figure skating, or the basics of the baseline and net game strokes in tennis.
Good coaches don't have to be superstars in their fields. The ability to effectively teach fundamentals is
the most important attribute of the good coach.

The great coach is not only adept at teaching the fundamentals, but also possesses the ability to extract
superb performance from his or her students. The great coach sees in a student what others don't see
and, many times, what the student doesn't see. Great coaches know intuitively how to motivate those
students who have exceptional talent to give exceptional performances. Great coaches have the ability to
coax superior performances from their students that the students themselves may not believe they are
capable of delivering.

Then there is the extraordinary coach. There aren't many of these. These coaches are master teachers
of the fundamentals who routinely coax the very best performances from their students. What sets the extraordinary coaches apart from all other coaches is their ability and willingness to show their students
how what they learn can be applied for their benefit to the rest of their lives.

Next month we will examine the role of the sales manager as coach, and we will explore how sales
managers might go from good, to great, to extraordinary coaches of their sales teams.

About the author: Steve Chriest is the founder of Selling Up™ (www.selling-up.com), a sales consulting
firm specializing in revenue and sales improvement for organizations of all types and sizes in a variety of
industries. He is also the author of Selling The E-Suite, The Proven System For Reaching and Selling
Senior Executives and Profits and Cash – The Game of Business. You can reach Steve at
schriest@selling-up.com.