Coach’s Corner: Managers, put your coaching caps on

Jewelry store managers need to leave their ego at the door and make sure they are motivated to help others succeed, “The Jewelry Coach” Pat Henneberry writes.

Michelle Graff michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com

Pat Henneberry is vice president of global learning and development at Hearts On Fire. She also is founder of The Jewelry Coach, a sales training community for jewelers. Reach her at pat@thejewelrycoach.com.

Calling all retail jewelry managers: It’s time to put your coaching caps on.

I talk to a lot of managers (I was in five retail jewelry stores last week), and when I ask them if they are actually coaching their sales teams they say no. When I dig deeper into why not, they say because they don’t know how. Yet I find most of you out there have the skills and attributes to become a great sales coach. The one key that you must have, that main thing, is you need to make sure you have an intrinsic desire to see others succeed.

As a manager, I take satisfaction in the fact that my success is based on the performance of my team. You need to make sure you leave your ego at the door and you are motivated to help others succeed; this can be your greatest attribute.

Having succeeded in sales prior to taking a management position will provide you with the credibility to offer insights and guidance as a coach. There are many different types of coaching. There’s coaching that involves helping salespeople implement strategies for specific sales opportunities. A bigger challenge for managers is when it comes to skills coaching, which involves helping their associates develop better selling skills.

Overall, developing a sales coaching mindset, determining what skills to coach on, and following a defined coaching process is a bigger subject than this short article.

What I hope you get from this, however, is the knowledge that most good managers can be great coaches. Start to dive into all the coaching sites and LinkedIn groups (I love my LinkedIn groups.) You can get a ton of great free information to start making your plan.

In the meantime, here are three key areas you can start with.

1) Map it out. Map out a plan for you and your sales associate. While there may be many areas for improvement, it is best to identify two to three with which to start, such as identifying priorities or managing objections over some reasonable time period. You need to keep the map highly focused and actionable. Focus with a mountain view first. As you take a deeper dive there will be many areas in your map that you will discover and, as you learn more about your sales associate, there will be numerous other areas for

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improvement. These are best deferred until the initial skills have met expectations.

2) Observing on the sales floor. It is only coaching if the manager observes, focusing primarily on the key skills identified in the map. While the manager may comment briefly from time to time, the emphasis needs to be on the sales associate’s development, not helping them sell. That is not to say that there are not times when it is beneficial for both the associate and manager to sell. In coaching, the manager observes the customer interaction with an emphasis on the specific areas identified for improvement.

3) Coaching time. The coaching should take place as soon as you can after the customer leaves the store. While you may be tempted to immediately share what went wrong or the sales associate could have done better, you need to resist this temptation. Instead, you should offer a few encouraging words about something that went well, and then lead the associate in self-discovery as it relates to the areas for improvement. This will allow for more ownership of the improvement and more productive coaching conversations.

Like I said, I walk into a lot of stores and meet a lot of great mangers that can be great coaches. It’s in your blood. Your sales teams need it.

Start spending more one-on-one time with your sales associates. Relate to the stories and experience you had as a sales professionals so they can learn from you.

You will rock their world and you will watch your teams grow and become more successful, and that’s what a great manger wants to see.

Michelle Graffis the editor-in-chief at National Jeweler, directing the publication’s coverage both online and in print.