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February 21, 2023

Unlocking the Secrets: Proactive Time – Key to hitting targets

Are you struggling to meet your targets? Feeling like you’re always behind and never quite catching up? It’s time to take control of your time and start tracking your proactive time.

That’s right, by tracking the time you spend on activities that you control, you can start to take back control of your day and achieve those elusive targets. And it’s not as difficult as it might sound.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of tracking and managing your proactive time, how to do it, and some common pitfalls to avoid. So let’s get started!

The Benefits of Tracking and Managing Proactive Time.

The most important benefit of managing your proactive time is increased productivity. Becoming aware of how you are spending your time allow you to plan and make adjustments to ensure that you are using your time in the most productive way possible. For example, if you discover that you are spending too much time on incoming support requests from small D-customers, you can find smart ways of minimize this time, and adjust your schedule to allocate more time to major customers. If you have decided that you need to prospect a certain number of new customers, then for a certain number of hours per day you must give priority to this over incoming requests even from large customers. And so on. It’s all about YOU deciding what to do with the time.

Improved Time Management.

One clear benefit from monitoring and following your proactive time is improved time management in general. When you understand where your time goes, you can actually start managing it. You will make better decisions about how to use your time in the future. For example, if you find that you are spending a lot of time on tasks that do not produce results, you can decide to focus on different tasks in the future. This means that not only your immediate productivity goes up, but also your ability to make better and more powerful plans increases.

A chance to actually follow your plan!

And finally, by tracking your proactive time it gives you back control – a chance to actually follow your plans and turn them into reality. Too often, people make plans but then do not follow through with them. By tracking your proactive time, you can hold yourself accountable and make sure that you are actually following through with your plans.

How to Track Your Proactive Time.

So, the first step to gain back control over your time, is to know where you stand today. You need a simple way to monitor your time spent. Most time awareness initiatives that fail do so because people reject the notion of spending additional time administering and registering every move. Don’t add to your burden. Use existing sources.

Simple monitoring

In order to get an a picture of where you spend your time, start with the places where your activities were registered for the last two weeks (or any period you want to include). I normally look at my Calendar (exporting all activities and meetings in a list with activities and their durations) and logged CRM activities (if you have customer activities logged, and you should). This will give you a good idea of how much time you actually spend on customer-related activities, as well as how much time is spent on other tasks.

Categorise

Categorise your activities in terms of

PROACTIVE Customer work that is part of my sales plan – planned proactive time
REACTIVE Customer work – initiated by customer (requests, support, firefighting)
other: non-customer related tasks in outlook. This will help you see where most of your time is being spent, and whether or not you’re able to focus enough attention on customers.
Other tasks that you don’t log. Try to estimate. One way of thinking could be that all inside a 40 hour week that is not in any of the previous categories,

Later on, you may want to start using tags and categories on your meeting calendars to make the analysis bit easier.

Determine the % share and hours of each category

Once you’ve categorised your activities, it’s helpful to determine the percentage share and hours spent in each category. This information can be used to create a more balanced schedule that allocates more time for customer-related tasks.

Make a plan that you can comitt to!

If you want to improve your productivity and actually achieve your goals, you need to commit to proactive time – time that you control, rather than reacting to the demands of others.

Set realistic targets on proactivity

Set an objective on time that you will spend pursuing your plans. How much available sales time do you really have?

It’s not realistic to expect ALL the time to go to the plan and proactive selling. Assuming that all available time goes into the planned activities will almost certainly make any salesplan fail. How much time should go to incoming requests, problem-solving, firefighting, internal meetings, trainings etc?

Block and Allocate Time

Once you have a good understanding of where your time goes, it’s time to start setting timers to allocate specific blocks of time for proactive activities. For example, you might set a timer for 30 minutes to work on a specific task, and then take a 5-minute break before starting the next task.

Daily follow up on the committed time

Be sure to follow up with yourself daily to ensure that you’re still on track. Instead of focusing on the individual tasks in your plan, look at the global picture. Did you really use all the time you had set aside for the Proactive work?

If you do this at the end of each day and a make a small note of it, the end of the month checkup will be so much easier, and you can do small adjustments along the way.

Take back control of your Email Inbox!

Your email inbox is your best friend and worst enemy at the same time, .It is helpful to control it to reduce the amount of hassle and overload. Here are a few ways to do this:

First, set up email templates for conversations you have on a regular basis. This will save time and you won’t have to spend time thinking about the perfect response.
Next, create a folder filing system for your inbox quickly. This will help you organize your inbox quickly and make it easier to find emails that need a response by the end of the day or week.
Last, set aside and block time each day to respond to emails rather than reacting as you receive them. Unless an email is urgent and requires your immediate attention, give yourself an allotted amount of time to focus and prepare it for the next day.

Make proactive time allocation a part of objectives

It’s also important to make proactive time allocation a part of your overall objectives. This way, you can hold yourself accountable and ensure that you’re making progress towards your goals.

Common Pitfalls in Proactive Time Management

One of the most common pitfalls when working with your proactive time is overcommitting and planning in too many objectives simultaneously. This happens when you try to allocate too much time to too many tasks, or when you try to do too much in one day. It was most likely happening before your started proactive time management, but then you didn’t have the data to identify the problem.

When this happens, it’s important to take a step back and reassess your priorities. Try to focus on the most important tasks, and cut back on the number of tasks you’re trying to accomplish in one day.

Another challenge is when all those incoming customer requests continue to interfere with your allocated time blocks. It’s important to remember that you can’t control everything, and that some things will always come up that you didn’t plan for. Try to be flexible with your time, and if a customer request comes in that you weren’t expecting, see if there’s any way to pass it on the right channels, or find ways to work it into your schedule.

Conclusion

The big secret to hitting targets is to commit to and manage your proactive time. By doing this, you can increase your productivity, improve your time management which in the end will allow you to finally follow your plan. There are different tools available, including prospecting aids, CRM software, calendar management, automation, and pre-scheduling breaks. Blocking and Allocating time with pre-scheduled breaks and better Email Inbox control are other strategies that can be used to make the most your day.

To track and manage your proactive time, study your last two weeks, categorize your activities and set objectives to allocate time. Then, make a plan that you can commit to and follow up on daily. Some common pitfalls when tracking proactive time include overcommitting, continued incoming customer requests, and focusing on too many goals at once. Take a moment of reflection every afternoon and take not of the day. Did you decide what to do today? Or did someone else?

February 13, 2023

Salary talks 101 – Preparations and trust are key

Mastering Salary Discussions: Preparation and trust are key

January and february is the time of year when many, both team members and managers get that lump in the chest and a general feeling of discomfort as the annual performance talks and often related salary discussions are getting closer. Doesn’t need to be that way!

In this article, we walk you through the steps, and give tips and advice on how to: Prepare, Run and Follow up on these sometimes challenging talks.

As in the case of any difficult conversation, what we would call a effective or successful salary discussion focuses on listening and empathy to generate the trust and openness that will turn it into an opportunity for both.

By taking the time to truly taking in and understand your team member’s needs, you can create a dialogue that leads to productive results. Additionally, it’s important to be open to reasonable negotiation and be prepared to justify your decisions.

the Psychology and Nature of Salary Discussions.

When it comes to these conversations, it’s important to understand a bit of science behind. Having a firm grasp of the psychology of these conversations can help you navigate them more effectively, while being aware of the significance of listening and empathy can help create a more productive dialogue.

The psychology is complex, and three things you need to keep in mind that makes the salary discussion even more complex:

First, people tend to be very sensitive about their salaries, so it’s important to approach these discussions with sensitivity and care.
Second, people also tend to compare their salaries to others’, so it’s important to be aware of this tendency and try to avoid creating any comparisons during the discussion.
Finally, people tend to react emotionally to news about their salaries, so it’s important to be prepared for this possibility and have a plan for how to address it if it does come up.

The importance of Listening and Empathy.

In these conversations, all science points to listening effectively and showing empathy towards your team members as the absolute key. These two things can go a long way in establishing trust and rapport with employees, which is essential for productive dialogue around sensitive topics like salaries.

When approaching these conversations, make sure to give your full attention and really listen to what your team members are saying. At the same time, try to see things from their perspective and show that you understand their feelings on the matter.

Essential – Preparations

While the psychology of salary conversations and the importance of listening and empathy are both critical factors to consider, there are also some essential elements that all effective salary discussions should include.

Expectations – Set expectations first of all for yourself. It’s important to be clear about what you’re hoping to achieve from the discussion.
Research – make sure to do your research ahead of time so that you’re well-informed about fair market rates and the specific situation of your team member.
Finally, prepare for responses – be prepared to respond appropriately during the discussion, demonstrating positive reinforcement, being open to reasonable negotiation, and providing justification for decisions made.

In the coming sections we will walk you through the preparations, what to thing anbout in the meeting, and what follow up and documentation you should always do.

Place & Setting for the meeting

Select a place for the talk where you will not be disturbed. Ideally go offsite or to a floor where your closest colleagues don’t pass by too frequently. Do something a little new and avoid holding this talk in the habitual meeting-room where you hold all other meetings.

Research

When preparing for salary discussions, it is important to first research fair market rates for the position in question. This will ensure that you are able to justify any salary arguments to the team member, and will help to set expectations on both sides.

There are a number of resources available online to help with this research, such as salary surveys and cost-of-living calculators.

Analyze Performance.

Before entering into salary discussions, it is also important to take some time to analyze the team member’s performance. This will help you to identify any areas where they may be under- or over-performing, and will give you a better sense of what their true worth is to the organization. If possible, try to use objective measures such as sales figures or customer satisfaction ratings rather than subjective opinions.

Generate Constructive Dialogue.

Once you have done your research and prepared your arguments, it is time to start thinking about how you will actually structure the conversation itself.

In general, it is best to avoid coming across as confrontational or adversarial; instead, try to focus on generating constructive dialogue that will lead to a mutually beneficial outcome. To do this, start by clearly stating your objectives for the discussion, and then invite the team member to share their own thoughts and concerns. Once you have both had a chance to speak openly, work together towards finding a compromise that meets everyone’s needs.

During – In the meeting

It is essential to demonstrate positive reinforcement in order to maintain a constructive dialogue. Some things to remember:

Keep open and be aware of your own behaviors

Maybe this goes without saying, but here you need to suppress own negative thoughts and reactions to your colleagues’ words and ways. Use affirming body language, such as making eye contact and nodding in agreement. Use verbal encouragement, such as saying “thank you” or “I appreciate your input.” Finally, it is beneficial to offer specific praise for the team member’s contributions. For example, “Your work on the Smith account was impressive and helped us land the client.”

Be Open to Reasonable Negotiation.

Another key element of effective salary discussions is being open to reasonable negotiation. This means being willing to consider the team member’s perspective and compromise when necessary.

It is important to remember that salary negotiations should never be about winning or losing; rather, they are about finding a mutually beneficial solution that meets the needs of both parties. Try to move it away from becoming just a zero-sum game.

Sometimes you may not have much room to negotiate anything close to what your team-member asks for. Then you need to refocus and reengineer the persons perception, just like you would a customer in Value Selling. This way you make other areas and values appear much more important than the immediate paycheck next month.

Provide Justification for Decisions.

Finally, it is important to provide justification for decisions made during salary discussions. This helps team members understand the rationale behind decisions and feel like they are being treated fairly.

Justification can be provided verbally or in writing, depending on the situation and preference of the team member. For example, if a team member asks why they are being paid less than another team member with similar experience, a manager could explain that the other team member has been with the company longer and has taken on additional responsibilities over time.

After – Agreement & Follow up

After the meeting, establish clear expectations with the team member, and repeat what was agreed. This will ensure that everyone is on the same page and that there are no misunderstandings. Be sure to go over what was discussed during the meeting, what was decided, and what the next steps are. It is also a good idea to provide a written summary of the discussion for the team member to refer back to.

Ensure the Team Member is Satisfied.

It is important to ensure that the team member is satisfied with the outcome of the salary discussion. If they are not, try to understand their concerns and see if there is anything that can be done to address them. It is also important to follow up after a few months to see how they are doing and if they are still happy with the arrangement.

Document the Process.

It is important to document the process of salary discussions in order to keep a record of what was discussed and agreed upon. This can be helpful in case there are any disputes later on or if you need to reference something from the discussion. Be sure to include date, time, names of those involved, and a summary of what was discussed.

Summary

In conclusion, as managers and team leaders you need to use some basic psychology in order to prepare for and respond appropriately to these conversations.

By preparations – researching fair market rates, analyzing a team member’s performance, and generating constructive dialogue, managers can set the stage for successful salary discussions
During the discussion itself, it is important to demonstrate positive reinforcement, be open to reasonable negotiation, and provide justification for decisions.
Finally, follow up after the discussion by establishing clear expectations, ensuring satisfaction from the team member, and documenting the process.

January 18, 2023

Leadership will get you really far, but only management knows where to…

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked the question about Leaders and Managers, and what you should be. The answer is both. In management models, they live side by side and must work together. Our 6 pillars of Sales Management is no exception, the 3 cornerstones of Sales Management are Management – Leadership – Development in our model.

Leader or Manager? Both!

Management and Leadership are necessary and complementary. In his 1990 Harvard Business Review article “What Leaders Really Do,” John P. Potter argues that management and leadership are both crucial for the success of executives as they advance in their careers.

The myth of the born leader

One of the most prevalent misconceptions in the business world today is that there is a competition between leadership and management, and that only leadership will take you where you want to go. Often leadership is thought to be all about charisma and vision – and that it is something you are born with and into. Leadership is different from management, but it’s not about having a certain personality or being chosen by a higher power.

Leadership skills are not there from birth, some personality traits may make it easier for you to develop them, but they can certainly be acquired, developed and fine-tuned by anyone!

It is true that many larger companies today have too much management and structures and often lack the space and energy to develop the right leadership. They need to develop their leadership skills by identifying people with potential and giving them opportunities to grow. However, it’s important to remember that strong leadership alone is not enough and needs to be balanced with strong management. Both leadership and management are necessary for success in business. A successful company needs both strong leadership and strong management to thrive.

Leadership is about dealing with change and being able to inspire and guide others to work towards a vision. Management, on the other hand, is about dealing with complexity and keeping the day-to-day operations running smoothly.

In essence:

Management skills, such as planning, organizing, and controlling, are essential for maintaining the day-to-day operations of a company. However, leadership skills, such as visioning, inspiring, and guiding, are necessary for creating and implementing a strategy that will take the company to the next level.

The leader vs Manager roles

The role of the leader is to provide direction and set the course for the organization, while the role of the manager is to ensure that the organization is running smoothly and efficiently.

The best leaders are those who can balance these two roles effectively, by being able to both lead and manage. Potter writes that “good leaders are good managers, but good managers are not necessarily good leaders.”

Daniel Coleman’s 2004 article “What Makes a Leader” also emphasizes the importance of both leadership and management skills for success in the business world.

Leadership is more needed than ever

Coleman notes that the role of the leader has become increasingly important in recent years as the business environment has become more competitive and more volatile. He states that leaders must be able to create a vision for the future and inspire others to work towards that vision. At the same time he emphasizes the importance of management skills, stating that managers must be able to plan, organize, and control the day-to-day operations of the organization, in order to ensure that it is running smoothly and efficiently.

What makes a leader?

The article identifies the traits and characteristics of successful leaders. He argues that effective leaders have a combination of:

emotional intelligence, EQ- self-awareness, self-control, motivation, empathy, and social skills, which allow leaders to connect with and inspire their employees.
cognitive intelligence, IQ – strategic thinking and problem-solving, which allow leaders to make effective decisions.
technical or subject expertise in their field – allows leaders to understand the industry and the challenges their company faces.

Learn from mistakes

Coleman also emphasizes the importance of adaptability and the ability to learn from failure in leadership. He states that leaders who are able to adapt to changing circumstances and learn from their mistakes are more likely to be successful.

Conclusion

Companies should actively seek out people with leadership potential, give them opportunities to grow and use both strong leadership and strong management to balance each other. As a matter of fact, there are multiple facets of management that needs continuous evaluation, development and perfection. Below you will find an image collection that points to the function of our 6 Pillars of Sales Management. Enjoy!

May 24, 2022

Athletes train activities and fine-tune behaviours, you should too!

Clear and challenging goals boost performance

Studies show that by setting clear, challenging, meaningful, and agreed objectives for ourselves, our productivity increase 10-15 percent. When the goals are followed up with structured feedback methods, the positive effects are approximately doubled (!!) (A little book on Goals, Christopher Svensson & Stefan Söderfjäll 2020).

Performance (Activity) and Learning objectives are not micro management

Setting and working with objectives on all levels is enormously effective and will almost certainly guarantee you a new boost to your growth. As the team’s manager, you need to become very good at using different types of objectives in combinations, often adapted to the capacities and experience of each individual.

Most companies we work with have sales targets for sales personnel in the form of quota letters, with or without financial rewards attached to them (bonuses). These are pure result goals, and the problem is that we cannot coach or improve results – they already happened! (See our article on “Leading and Lagging Indicators.”)

Our focus must move to performance/activity and learning. The activity, how well we perform it, and which customer we prioritiseexplains a good part of the productivity increase; the rest is explained by the increased motivation through the intrinsic sensation of empowerment and control of your own situation.

The first part, how well we do customer work, depends on competence and skills, and improvement happens through learning.
The second part – prioritising the right customers and contacts in the right moment – improves through pro-active calendar planning and careful selection of where we invest out time.

Define tactical 1-2 month objectives, plan the month together, and move focus to almost exclusively discuss the activity, not the result. Set goals for the activity: who to visit, where to present, contacts to prioritise. While the overall result objectives may stay the same for a year, your road there – the choices you make, the visits you plan, the trade fairs you attend, the calls you make – will be constantly adapted, revised, and changed!

Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.

Richard Branson

As the manager, your principal goal is to make your sales rep become successful, to sell more with less effort, to spend more time with prio customers, and eventually to have a better life and more time with family. This is important to understand: the wish to excel must be present and rooted inside our rep. As with all change management, the desire to perform must be there before you can introduce new ways of setting goals. Otherwise, you risk being perceived as a “micro manager.” (See ADKAR model, prosci.com on Desire in change management.)

The swim coach and you

You can compare the methodology to coaching athletes. The athlete and their coach set up a common goal: “I shall win the World Championship in 200-meter Medley.” None of us would expect a coach to just give the athlete the result objective of winning the championship and then walk away wishing them luck. Right? Yet this is what we often do as sales managers/directors.

What does the coach do? The coach follows the athlete through training, identifies weaknesses, uses strengths for tactics, builds individual training programs, and coaches and helps the athlete to push them to the limit and across it.

In Medley, the three strokes are carefully studied, and optimal individual training programs are planned and executed. Just like we need to balance our platform in sales, the swimmer needs to balance training in Butterfly, Backstroke, and Breaststroke. And it is the coach ́s job to cut the total time of the 200m distance down to a minimum (as it is our job to maximise revenue).

The training and exercise program that the coach builds is everything to the success of the athlete. And it is activity based – the result objective of winning championships is there at the horizon, but the daily challenge revolves around movement and behaviour – activity. The coach looks at every movement in the water. Should the left hand be a little more angled during the stroke? Is the position good in the water?

In the same way, we can only help our salesrep if we know where in the process they tend to get stuck, where they spend too much time, and if they are talking to the right people, saying the right things, and asking the right questions. Our job as sales director is to build these individual training programs, and by joint activities and follow-up, to coach our sales rep to excellence!

April 6, 2022

Sales call coaching – Getting the most out of every sales minute

Sales Call Coaching – going together to customers is a great coaching tool

Sales call coaching means visiting customers together with the purpose of receiving feedback and improving sales skills. It is on-the-job-training for all of us, regardless of position or role. It is a vital part of the continuous development for the whole sales organisation. It is a tool for sales professionals to learn and develop while getting to know each other better by sharing knowledge and experiences.

As a sales manager, you need to sharpen your coaching skills to do this well, but when done well, it is an invaluable input for later when you hold more general performance evaluations. Do this live in customer situations, and not by interviewing the sales person. Discussing and coaching on activities and quality of work is not realistic nor trustworthy without continuously observing and studying behaviours in real-life situations.

Sales call coaching is your best tool to get a first-hand feel for sales behaviour. You should consider doing this with all customer facing personnel, inside sales, product specialists, and account managers. We all need to develop self-awareness and understanding of how our behaviours affect the outcome in customer situations.

Why should all managers coach on sales calls?

The first line sales organization aims to provide increased customer value. To ensure sales reps can perform in line with this and provide this increased customer value, sales management needs to change and provide added value for reps. Sales call coaching is a key tool to achieve this.

Doing sales calls with reps will help managers in the following ways:

Continuous improvement towards a world-class sales team!
Benchmark successful behaviors
Train and ensure product knowledge among sales reps and other customer-facing team members
Develop sales skills in all staff
Find out how sales reps spend their time
Obtain good ideas for benchmarking and best practice
Ensure value sales is applied professionally
Gather information from the market
Practice and improve yourself in difficult negotiations, meeting key customers, etc.
Get to know staff better and further improve teamwork

Download - How To: Sales Call Coaching

Evaluating and giving feedback on different customer interactions in the sales process require different skillsets of the manager. Sometimes we may even need to work on multiple roles at the same time, in complex multirole meetings selling as a team.

Sales directors and higher management should also make an effort to find the natural opportunities to visit customers, together with their sales reps and managers, in order to help them become better at what they do. For the manager, this is coaching the reps.

Aim to spend at least 2 working days per week in the field. Some of the visits can be virtual, but make sure you apply a mix of different types of meetings and situations so you coach and support all phases of the sales process.

Sharpen your skills evaluating reps and coaching for all situations!

If planned and executed well, this work should not take more than half our week.

Download - Sales Call Evaluation template

What to look for

You should pay attention to basic sales process situations and how different tools and sales situations and parts of the meeting (see example below) are applied.

Different steps of the pipeline sales process require different skills. See the evaluation template for inspiration. Adapt the template depending on what type of meeting it is that you coach. How is the sales rep performing in different situations? Notice when they are doing the following:

Attempting to open new parts of the business with a focus/growth customer
Cross-selling on higher levels of the management of key accounts
Applying value selling to increase share of wallet in already well established accounts

… etc. etc. The examples are infinite. Select the situations to train and coach according to your tactical needs, and go for it!

April 5, 2022

The GROW model

The GROW model is a simple sequential coaching model that allows executives to simplify the complex realities to reach the right conclusion on directions to take and decision to make. It is used by executive coaches all over the world as a framework to use with their work.

As a manager, you are wise to learn how to use it in your 1-on-1s for mentoring and coaching your team members.

GROW is an acronym that stands for:

Goal (establish objectives for the session)
Reality (how things are going right now)
Options (possibilities to consider)
Way forward (agreement and commitment going forward)

Needless to say, an open and fluent coaching session doesn’t necessarily follow a clean 4 step sequence, but it is a great tool for us as new managers to use as guidance for our conversations.

As you gain experience and confidence with the model, it becomes a natural flow for your 1-on-1s as you allow the conversation to move a bit back and forth throughout the structure.

Similar to many sales techniques, such as SPIN and solution selling, the key to using the GROW model and to coaching in general lies in asking the right question. This is central, because here we are not telling people what to do. Good coaching is about helping them find their own answers by asking the right question at the right time.

Below you find the GROW framework, and some questions that can serve as inspiration for each step in the process.

Goal

Coaching starts with establishing a goal. This enables us to focus on one specific thing to try to solve in the session. It’s helpful to consider what goals can actually be:

Result or achievement goals
Activity or performance goals
Learning and development goals
Process, problem solving, decisions to make

Formulating objectives is not easy either. To get more productive sessions (and for many other discussions as well), you may want to train and practice target setting with the SMART model.

All well-formulated objectives are:

Specific (concrete that you understand)
Measurable (can be determined if we achieve or not)
Attainable (within our realistic reach)
Relevant (matters – of real importance for us)
Timebound (agree by when it should happen)

To set the goals/objectives for the session, you may want to ask:

What do you want to achieve from this coaching session?
What goal/objectives do you want/try to achieve?
What would the benefits be if you achieved this goal?
What would you like that [someone/thing] did?
What outcome/result would be ideal?
What do you want to change?

Reality

Here we are trying to gain awareness of the reality. What is the real current situation? How far off are we from the ideal? What is going on, and how good/bad is it?

Use your soft skills and go easy with your questions. Plan the question and let the person reflect on the answer. Listen, and avoid jumping to suggestions or sharing your own opinions and experiences in this stage. Here we are defining the context and reality, not finding the answers and solution.

Here are some questions you may find inspiration in:

1. What’s the status now (who, when, and how often)? Where are you now in relation to your goal?
2. Have you already taken steps towards your goal? (What have you already tried?)
3. How would you describe what you did? What was the effect so far?
4. On a scale of one to 10, what progress did you make?
  1. What things worked out the best?
  2. What could you do better this time?
  3. What is working well right now?
5. Why haven’t you reached that goal already? What do you think is stopping you?
6. On a scale of one to 10, how bad/urgent is the situation?

Obstacles and Options

When you have agreed and established the current situation, you can move on to the solution. Start by evaluating obstacles to success, and then the available options. Let the employee lead, guided by your questions.

Here are a few samples you may find helpful:

1. What is the hardest/most challenging part of that for you?
2. What do you think would happen if someone else did/said that?
3. What is the best case? What could make that happen? What would be the worst case? What should you avoid for that not to happen?
4. What do you think you need to do next? Which option do you have?
5. What do you think you need to do to get to your goal?
6. Could you find help in anyone, anywhere?
7. What has worked for you already? How could you do more of that?
8. What would happen if you did that?
9. What options do you feel are the lowest hanging fruit?
10. How have you tackled the same situation before?
11. If there were no limitations at all, what would be the best way forward?

Way Forward

Similar to the accept phases in sales techniques, we probe for acceptance and commitment to the actions. When accepted, we establish a clear path to the end.

Finally, again, here you have a list of questions that will help you guide your coachee to commit to the right actions to achieve the goal.

1. What should you do to start? What do you need to do right now?
2. Tell me how you’re going to do that.
3. How will you know when you have done it?
4. Doing that, what is the likelihood of your plan succeeding? (Use a “on a scale 1 to 10” if you like.) Subsequently, what would it take to make it a 10?
5. What hinders do you expect, roadblocks that require planning?
6. What else do you need? Is there anything missing? What support do you need to get that done?
7. When will you start? Tell me at least two things you can get started with and done already this week.
8. How motivated do you feel to get this done now?
9. What would happen if you don’t get this done? What would the consequences be?

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