Yeah, ActionCOACH knew this already but it is great to see someone else recongize it.  According to American Express Forums, salespeople can benefit greatly from coaching.  Linda Richardson, a Wharton faculty member, talked with AE and suggested that they way sales people are trained need to change if they want to be successful. 

 “Salespeople are not needed for product knowledge anymore, so they need to be more prepared for strategic discussion,” says Richardson, who is also founder and executive chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales performance firm, and author of The New York Times bestseller, Perfect Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2008). “Salespeople are facing a sales environment that none of us ever faced before. And it’s taking a toll on morale.”

Below is an excerpt from the original article:

At one major tech company, she says, “We trained 400 front-line managers to be coaches.” The six-month training began with a one-week intensive course. “Then our trainers worked with each sales manager once a month on a 40-minute phone call to help them carry out coaching plans and to embed coaching into the culture.” The results were impressive: Job satisfaction improved as well as the retention rate of salespeople and managers. The company saw a 17 percent increase in sales year over year, and a 29 percent increase in earnings per share.
 
Richardson recently worked with a professional services firm where, she says, there are fewer deals than there were before the recession, and longer times to close. After training sales managers how to coach their sales teams, she says, “opportunities within the pipeline grew 195 percent. Targeted sales approach accounts have added $140 million in the pipeline in one year. They spent $1.4 million on the training and were able to attribute $23.7 million in new business to it.”

If you feel like the market has changed on you and you don't know if you can keep up, give us a call, 727-786-2900.  Let us show YOU how you can improve your overall perfomance, be a better boss or manager, and get the direction you need.  Visit us on the web at www..actioncoachpinellas.com. 
 

1. Business Coaches and Executive Coaches Can Show You How to Get More Returns with Less Work.

You're working too many hours and pretty sure that if you left for a vacation or holiday, things wouldn't operate anywhere near as effectively as they do now ... put another way, you're ready to work a whole lot less ... Whatever you call it, small business coaching, executive coaching or just plain old business mentoring, ActionCOACH is the world's #1 business coaching firm and executive coaching firm. In fact, in 1993 Brad Sugars and ActionCOACH started the business coaching industry and now with more than 1,000 offices in 32 countries, ActionCOACH has literally turned the old business consulting model into business coaching and executive coaching, a far more powerful, profitable and more affordable way for you as a business owner or as an executive to get the help and mentoring to grow your company ...
 

2.  Business Coaching and Executive Coaching Creates More Profits.

You're ready to make a whole lot more profit ... if you're not making anywhere near enough money to justify the effort, risk and investment you're making in the business ...it's time to turn that around ...With literally 282 profit and money making strategies your nearest ActionCOACH will be able to help coach you in sales, marketing, advertising, profit growth, business systems, time management and team building strategies to literally jump your revenues in a matter of months ... and unlike a business consultant who does the work for you, a business coach will teach you how, while an executive coach will work with your company to get the results your executives need.

3.  A Business Coach or Executive Coach Will Help You Develop Your Team.

You're ready to build or develop a team of people that can grow the business whether you're there or not ... recruiting, training and keeping the best people makes your life so much easier ... From our team training programs to our ever so powerful recruitment systems, building a team of motivated, passionate performers is all part of the program that our business coaches and executive coaches will help you implement ...

4.  A Business Coach or Executive Coach Will Help You Rediscover Your Passion.

You need to fall in love with your business again, it's gotten boring and at times you even feel sick of it all ... time for a re-injection of that vision and passion you had when you first started ... Motivation is at the core of everything your Business Coach will take you through. Building either a simple business plan or marketing plan will give you the clarity on not only what needs doing, but how to do it. Whether you work from home, are just starting, or run a multi-million dollar organization a Business Coach or Executive Coach is one of the fastest ways to a better business and a better lifestyle ...

5.  A Business Coach Will Help You Navigate Changes in the Economy and Your Market.

You know that to grow you need to be learning more, but you don't even have time to keep up with your industry changes let alone the changes in global business and how to improve it all ... Business education has moved into a new realm, with business mentoring and business coaching taking over from traditional consulting, books and seminars so you get the right information at the right time. Think of it as an entrepreneurial degree using your company as a case study ...
 

6.  Executive Coaches and Business Coaches Create Accountability.

You need a Business Coach, a business mentor to hold you accountable, to demand a profit, to demand results, someone to push you, cajole you and hopefully more often than the rest ... congratulate you on a job well done ... Being an owner can be a lonely job, having a sounding board, a business mentor and coach, a friend to talk with you and provide expert coaching, helping you to solve your problems and turn them into opportunities. Creating opportunities is just a small part of what our business coaches do, but often it can be the most valuable ...
  

7.  Executive Coaching and Business Coaching Provides a Second Expert Opinion.

You need a Business Coach, a business mentor to hold you accountable, to demand a profit, to demand results, someone to push you, cajole you and hopefully more often than the rest ... You need a Business Coach who can see the forest for the trees, an expert who isn't blinded by the industry and by too many years in your industry ... Running your own company like any part of life, often you need a business mentor to see the simplest of things to help you in areas such as sales coaching. . Often business mentors will ask the tough questions so that you're on track ... Join the thousands of other owners and executives around the world, who have implemented business coaching. Take the step before your competition does ... see one of our ActionCOACH business coaches today ...

Find out how you can change the way you do business to achieve the results you deserve! Contact us now. 

Strategic Planning is the most important function of a CEO or business owner. It identifies where a company wants to be at a defined point of time in the future and what actions it is going to take to get there. Strategic Planning is critical to the growth and success of every company. And if the company has a Board of Directors, a formal strategic planning process enables the Board to have a significant impact on the company’s overall direction and on-going performance. For a company of any size, strategic planning is the “roadmap” to future success.

The strategic aspect of the planning process is to understand the current operating and performance situation of the company and the relationship to the outside business environment, the vision and mission of the company as identified by the executive management of the company, the resources and structure to achieve the roadmap goals, and the summary of how the outcome strategic plan will impact the future of the company. The structure of the strategic plan is designed to carry out strategic thinking, direction, and action that leads to the achievement of consistent and planned results.

Consequently, having skills to execute the planning process for any company is critical to the long term viability and success of the company. The process of planning includes the selection of the planning team, clarification of team member roles, careful structuring of the planning meetings, and the guiding of the team through the process itself.

In embracing the importance of strategic planning to achieve both short term (1-3 years) and longer term (3-5 years) results, there are 4 key issues to recognize:

1. It is essential the process be led by the owner or CEO and the executives as well as managers in the company understand and use the planning process.
2. There must be organizational commitment to both the planning process and the implementation of the plan; all the participants in the process must see the benefits to themselves personally as well as to the company as a whole.
3. The planning process is as important -if not more important –than the content of the plan itself.
4. The planning process is never done. It is part of the overall process of managing the company and the planning process is an ongoing process rather than an annual event.

Recognized internationally as the most practical book on the subject is, “The Executive Guide to Strategic Planning,” written by Patrick Below and his co-authors George Morrisey and Betty Acomb. This book was recently named by the Chinese Productivity Center as “one of the ten best books on U.S. Management.” Patrick Below is a long-term resident of Madison and over the past 30 years with his company, CEO Consulting Services, he has built a very successful domestic and international consulting business in this field of strategic and operational planning.

The unique approach to strategic planning in the below method for any sized company is a total framework for depicting the organization’s planning and control system. There are three specific processes that make up the ‘Integrated Planning Process’ framework:

STRATEGIC---------- OPERATIONAL-------------RESULTS
PLANNING                 PLANNING                    MANAGEMENT

As part of the Integrated Planning Process, the strategic plan focuses on the basic nature (mission) and direction (strategy) of the organization. The operational plan concentrates on how to implement the strategic plan and produce short-term results. The results management component is concerned with comparing performance with plan (both strategic and operational) and ensuring the achievement of results. Even though each component serves a different purpose, each of the components is fully integrated with each other. The strategic plan fits into the Integrated Planning Process as an activity that is developed at a point in time whereas the operational plan and results management defined within the strategic plan are implemented over a period of time, usually 1-3 years.

Specifically, there are 7 elements that make up building the Strategic Plan:

   1. Organization mission
   2. Strategic analysis
   3. Strategy
   4. Long-term objectives
   5. Integrated programs
   6. Financial projections
   7. Executive summary


A strategic plan must be seen as a living document clearly communicated throughout the company and should not be a “fluffy” document that ends up collecting dust on a shelf and wasted time and energy in its development. The purpose of planning is not to produce plans; it is to produce results. A strategic plan needs to be the result of a productive process of committed executives led by the business owner or CEO of a business –irrespective of its size –to provide the thinking and planning for the future success of the company allowing for the detailed operational planning to achieve short-term outcome results. It should also define measurement performance criteria representing the long-term success goals for the company.

No company has the option to hope it will be successful; every company must have a management committed and disciplined process of strategic planning to create a roadmap to both short-term and long-term business and financial success.

Find out how you can change the way you do business to achieve the results you deserve! Contact us now.

John Lankford won the #1 award as the Associate Business Coach of the Year and since winning, he is asked, “What do successful businesses have in common?”

This is his response:

The sober reality is that most companies lack the mindset, the assets, and/or the appetite to devote to strategic planning. he answer starts with a commitment to evaluation.

Changing your results is predicated on strategic planning, operational planning, and performance management planning. Strategic planning is the roadmap to the future. It means revisiting your vision, mission, and values - in other words, your “rules of the game”. Strategic planning is about where you’re headed and what you will accomplish when you arrive.

The purpose of planning is not to produce results, but to align your executive team and set the long-term course. This dialogue is critical to help these senior leaders adapt, focus, and commit.

The operational plan is “how” you are going to implement the strategic plan. Under normal circumstances, the operational plan should be completed during the fourth quarter. Determining a matching budget and key performance indicators are also obligatory segments of a well-designed plan.

Once you’ve purposefully mapped out the next 3-5 years and have designed an operational plan that articulates HOW you are going to implement the strategic plan, teams and individuals must be made to understand their roles. Most organizations try to use their performance management system. Unfortunately, this is where the plan falls short. But all the planning in the world will go down the drain if no one can state the top three priorities they must accomplish every day and what the company’s top three priorities are for the year.

And finally, a reality check. The likelihood a company will achieve its strategic plan is in its review of the operational budget to determine whether the required funds for success are allocated.

Find out how you can change the way you do business to achieve the results you deserve! Contact us now.