Teams Require Players – A ‘team’ goal can’t be achieved by a manager alone, yet many sales managers often resort to herculean efforts to win deals for their company individually. When managers don’t engage their entire team, co-workers begin to believe that their efforts aren’t needed. This is very dangerous.
Your sales team includes multiple players who perform essential tasks including:

— Generate leads — Answer phones/respond to emails — Set appointments — Perform pre-call research — Build trust and rapport — Survey customer needs and wants — Survey technical factors — Review findings and recommendations — Present priced options — Offer consumer financing

— Confirm work order approval — Create scope of work — Stage equipment & materials — Perform scope of work — Confirm system performance levels — Verify customer delight — Collect final payment — Perform accurate accounting — Request testimonials & referrals — Maintain system performance.

Without a doubt, this requires a concerted team effort to win in the HVAC repair and renovation business.

Players Require Coaches

When you ask sales managers if sales coaching is an important aspect of their job, most are sure to agree. However, in the fast-paced HVAC world, it is easy to avoid investing the time required for team and individual skill development activities. After all, the most important thing is selling that job today, right?

The main objectives of sales coaching are to accelerate learning, achieve behavioral change, and improve results. All objectives are equally important because they bring about the true benefits of sales coaching. Unfortunately, most managers tend to focus their attention solely on today’s numerical results. This is a mistake.

Numbers are great indicators; they tell you where there is success or pain. As Lord Kelvin says, ‘When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it. But when you cannot measure it or when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.’

While that is true, numbers only tell half the story. To be a truly effective sales coach, managers must learn that sales coaching is not just about numbers ‘ it is about effective learning and impactful behavior change.

Therefore, to truly build a sustained and high-performance coaching culture, one must first understand the true challenges that prevent success.

Common Coaching Challenges

Let’s face it, coaching is a tough job. Specifically, the fact that most HVAC companies are too small to employ a full-time Sales Manager/Coach makes it even tougher. Great coaches recognize their deficiencies and search for ways to conquer them.

Coaching can be an extremely rewarding experience. However, there are times when the coaching relationship can become frustrating for both participants. That frustration is most likely rooted in the answers to these seven important questions:

1. Do we enjoy a trusting relationship?
2. Am I asking, listening, and guiding or am I simply telling?
3. Do they expect me to solve their problem or guide them to their own solution?
4. Are my team mates ‘know-it-alls” regarding the solutions and therefore don’t value my experience?
5. Do they have a hard time seeing the behaviors that they need to change?
6. Are they not willing to commit to taking action personally?
7. Are they unable to manage their own emotions?

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