We can’t discuss coaching the sales team without talking about developing a terrific proposal team, a terrific project team, a fabulous team, period. Program managers have to be very good at nurturing and leading all those teams. There is plenty of education about teams on the interwebz. I’ll add the 13 essentials that worked so well at Radian Corporation:
- hire well: hire well-spoken, composed, mature people we actually wanted to work beside late into the night
- which made it easy to lead them and train them with a light hand
- their good work made it easy to leave them to work autonomously
- and not interfere or micromanage them
- but being the one pushing the boundary of high-risk, scary big sales meant I had to watch my words, namely,
- I had to explain myself extremely well, making the goal specific and meaningful
- be encouraging and challenging
- let them know they were valid and valued
- then leave them alone, because they had to feel trusted
- when trusted, they excelled
- when all that worked, “correcting” them was a matter of one or two good questions from me
- and I was always grateful and very proud and they always knew, and
- we won a lot of our proposals.
Thanks for the “Must read” – that’s a fine compliment. My mentors taught me those 13 steps, I’m pleased to pass them on. Which one do you think is the most important?
hey, do you have a twitter?
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