One of the biggest shortcomings managers face is not realizing they don’t have rapport with their employee until it’s too late. That’s precisely why the second stage in the 4 Stages of Sales Coaching is to gain rapport before moving forward.
But to really know why that’s so important, you have to know what rapport is in the first place.
A lot of common definitions I’ve seen would tell you that rapport is having a friendship with someone you work with. Having friends at work isn’t a bad thing, but it’s also not what rapport really means. At least not in a business sense. In reality, rapport is being on the same page with your people. That means you’re speaking a common language and have shared understanding about what to do next. That’s the true springboard for success.
If you’ll remember, the first stage of the 4 Stages of Sales Coaching is to gain position of strength. You did that by asking the four goal-setting questions: What do you need to accomplish by when? Why do you want to accomplish this? How will you accomplish this? and who will help you accomplish this?
Now that you’ve figured all that out, it’s time to get on the same page by determining what your employee needs coaching on.
Imagine a scenario where you’ve gained position of strength with an employee. You’ve gotten buy-in around their goal, but instead of gaining rapport by determining where they need coaching the most, you’ve decided on that fact yourself. Maybe you think they need the most help asking for the close, but in reality they know need the most help with handling their customers’ objections. So you’ll spend coaching session after coaching session on the close without addressing their biggest problem. That’s how coaching becomes a circular rat race. And you don’t want that.
That’s why you need to lean on tools to help you diagnose the biggest area your employees need individual coaching on. And in the home building industry, you’ve got some great ones to lean on. Here are the absolute best three to start your coaching with so you never have to guess about what’s holding your people back right now.
Observation
You learn a lot about your team by how they react in gut instinct moments. Think about the idea behind a driver’s test. You study and practice for months, and then you step into this real-life laboratory with an instructor to test your instincts. Let’s say another driver cuts you off during the test – the point is to test how you react. If you react well, then you past the test. If you don’t, then the instructor steps into the gap and coaches you to do it better next time. It’s the same with the people you coach. You must be in the trenches to understand what they’re actually doing.
The Videoshop
As just about every sales manager in the business can tell you, the videoshop is maybe the greatest tool to diagnose where your people are right now. You can see everything: how they follow their process, where their process breaks down, and what sort of art they’re bringing to the science of the process. There’s no escaping the videoshop, either. When you watch how something happened in real time, you can spot correct and then adjust on the fly. That’s every coach’s best friend.
The Registration Card
There’s such a wealth of information in that registration card, and yet so many salespeople ignore it. Why is that? It’s giving you a literally roadmap to where the sale stopped so you can brush up on your technique for next time. Imagine failing a test and then never seeking out the correct answers. That’s exactly what salespeople do when they ignore those cards. In order to push yourself to be better than you were yesterday, it’s vital to use every tool at your disposal. And that’s exactly what the information on this card will do for you.
The 4 Stages of Sales Coaching: Gain Rapport from Forrest Performance Group on Vimeo.
