Bank Sales Corner

Sales Coaching Pointers from the Masters

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Did you watch the Masters this year? If you're a real Golf Channel addict, you might have heard about the coaches that some of the top professionals turn to for advice. These aren't household names like Coach K, Bill Belichick and Joe Torre; they're more like Jack Lumpkin and Craig Harmon. Who?

Well, these guys are not exactly unknowns. They rank 19^th and 20^th on the Golf Digest list of top teaching professionals. They don't give away advice for free-a week of lessons at Sea Island with Jack isn't cheap-and they do count top PGA Tour types as students. (Not Tiger Woods, though: Craig's brother Butch was one of Tiger's coaches before his fall from grace.)

But most of the people these two teaching pros advise have a hard time breaking 90. They hack and slice their way around the golf course and if they have delusions of grandeur, it's probably more likely about winning the sixth flight of a Member Guest Tournament than the U.S. Amateur.

Coaching average-performers (whether they're golfers or bank sales people) is clearly different from working with high-performers. What Jack and Craig know is the following:

1. While not everybody will become great, everybody can get better-eventually. If better means consistently shooting in the mid-90s, great.
2. There are certain things that you can't coach (e.g. attitude, competitiveness, etc.)
3. You shouldn't try to change more than one or two things at once. (Too much sales training assumes you need to teach everybody everything all at once.)
4. You often have to review the basics with people.
5. Breaking the process down into its component parts can help a lot. (As an aside, that's why slow motion video is now routinely used in analyzing golf swings.)
6. Small adjustments can produce significant improvement.
7. You can only make so much progress in a lesson. For golfers it starts on the practice tee but has to move to the course.
8. Once the basics are in place, it's consistency that matters.
9. Most average-performers are looking for how-tos and techniques, not theories or concepts to improve their golf game or sales skills. They want to develop confidence handling challenging situations.
10. Even the best performers can benefit occasionally from objective, expert coaching.  (Phil Mickelson, the Masters winner this year, has coaches who help him with many different things--e.g. conditioning, diet, putting, sand shots, etc.)

So the next time you're looking for coaching inspiration, think about Jack Lumpkin and Craig Harmon.  They know it's about incremental improvement, consistency and confidence. And they know how to help average-performers progress.

For more coaching tips go to http://www.mzbierlyconsulting.com/tips-for-sales-managers.  You can also check out our archived webinar on Pre-call, Post-call Coaching at http://mzbierlyconsulting.webex.com.