Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
What is Deal Coaching? Find What It is and How To Use It
62 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Dan Sanchez speaks with Brian Dietmeyer about the concept of deal coaching. They dive into the intricacies of deal coaching, its importance within the sales process, and how it differs from skills coaching and job coaching. This conversation sheds light on the critical role deal coaching plays in executing sales strategies effectively and optimizing deal outcomes.
Timestamps:
05:12 Emerging definition: deal coaching is strategic execution.
09:29 Leveraging best practices through discovery and application.
13:08 Coaching in execution of sales strategy evolution.
15:48 Sales strategy needs clear communication, data collection.
17:49 Executing strategy, data and insight for sales.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Deal Coaching
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back to Close Mode, the enterprise sale show. I'm Dan Sanchez, and I'm here with Brian Diepmeyer flipping the script again and having the host be the guest. I'm excited because as the producer usually of the show, I get to hear all these conversations. Every once in a while, my ears will perk up. I'm like, you know, Brian's said this term many times.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm not a salesperson. I think that's advantage sometimes because I don't, I don't know what I don't know sometimes. Um, and it's really helpful because I get to turn around and then ask Brian questions and be like, Hey, what you say this over and over again, but I actually have no idea what it means, but I think it'd be helpful to actually explain in case anybody else out there doesn't know what it means.
What is Deal Coaching?
00:00:43
Speaker
I think many people do, but just for fun, Brian, let's make an episode about deal coaching because coaching is a fairly broad,
00:00:52
Speaker
There's lots of different coaches for different situations, but we talk about deal coaching a ton on this show. And I know it's a big part of the model that you've pioneered over the last a few decades with your consultancy. So for starters, can you give us like a just short definition and then kind of go into where it came from? What is deal coaching? You know, I do have to react to your opening statement though. I also love, I love chatting with you. So I love, I love when we.
00:01:19
Speaker
We flip the tables. I genuinely enjoy all the podcasts and I really enjoy when you're in our chat. So yeah, we're realizing this lately. In the last year, you know, we've, man, we've between the podcast and.
00:01:32
Speaker
And just building out the new business, we've talked to, I think 110 executives now in sales, the neighborhoods, CROs, uh, CSOs. And, and we've realized that people think of maybe monolithic's the right word. You know, they think of coaching as like monolithic. It's this thing. Well, what we've realized is that, especially a lot of technology that's out there, uh, coaching is skills coaching. Right. It's, it's skills. It's like, Hey, how good was your questioning that kind of thing? How good are you doing research on the account?
00:01:59
Speaker
Which is different than deal coaching. And, and we're, we're finding we're having to differentiate between skills coaching and deal coaching because they are different skills, different process, that kind of thing. So it's more than one thing.
Challenges in Deal Coaching
00:02:12
Speaker
And I even heard you say before we push record that it's even job coaching, which is a totally different thing from skills coaching. Yeah. It's the old, I'm sorry, for those who have been there, yeah, it's the old coaching and counseling. You know, Hey, Dan, you're not getting along with the other teammates.
00:02:25
Speaker
You know, you're too loud in your office, you know, it's those. And so, but yeah, it's like, and that's a skill. And then even skills coaching, like, okay, I just listened to your call recording and you know, you're talking more than you're listening. That's another kind of coaching, but how do I get this deal closed and how do I maximize the size and the quality of this opportunity? That's a very, very unique thing. That's that's separate of those other two. So there's multiple kinds of coaching and
00:02:55
Speaker
If you're like most organizations, you might not be doing any of them, right? But if you're a decent manager, you're probably doing some job coaching and you're one-on-ones with them, just doing day-to-day manager stuff and working with them. If you're probably pretty good, you're probably also coaching them on skills. But we know from talking to a lot of people that even that's probably not happening as much as it should be. But I find just based on the conversations we've had, not very many people are actually doing deal coaching, is that right?
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, there is, um, the, the last stat we saw was that 5% of deals in the pipeline are being coached. And, and when we get under that again, with these hundred plus conversations, plus just all the real world consulting we've done, um, there's a number of issues there. One frontline sales managers just do not have the time. They are slammed, you know, and Dan, you know, on one of our podcasts, one of the sales leaders was like, make time, damn it. And it's like, I get that. And I, and I like that idea.
00:03:55
Speaker
But they just don't have time. And then a lot of them, and everybody has talked about this on the podcast, a lot of our sales leaders were great sales reps. Right. And so then they got promoted in being a sales leader. And when you're a sales rep, your job is to be a lone wolf and a rock star. And then when you switch over to being a sales leader, like are, do you have the chops? Do you have the skills to do real deal coaching that scales? You can say this is what works for me. This is what made me a rock star, which is why I'm now a regional manager.
00:04:24
Speaker
But that, that's another problem. So 5% of the pipe, people don't have the time. People don't have the skills, but yet by the way, we know it has, uh, impact, maybe more impact than a lot of other investments we can
The Role of Strategy in Deal Coaching
00:04:34
Speaker
make. Yeah. It's 5% man. That's so low. I mean, I imagine most managers are too busy because they're in constant fires, fire drills and dealing with the urgent.
00:04:45
Speaker
but not important, important slash urgent, like fills up almost 90% of their bucket. So if they ever get to the important, not urgent stuff, which is coaching and probably the most important thing here is not getting to it. Yeah. So spreadsheets and meetings to up to up an awful lot of time.
00:05:02
Speaker
So I still haven't heard a definition yet. What is deal coaching? Cause we've talked about how it's different from skills coaching, different from job coaching. What is deal coaching then? All right. This is an emerging definition in my brain. You know that we, we, we, I live eight bra breathed and slept this stuff in the human services coaching environment for almost 20 years. And now have been doing the same in the AI tech environment. And what I'm realizing is deal coaching.
00:05:32
Speaker
maybe a better definition of deal coaching. It, first of all, it's, it's almost more consulting. And I think we should talk about the difference between auditing the work someone's doing and consulting and helping them improve on it. But I think at the highest level, deal coaching is how you execute your strategy one deal at a time. A good coach should be coaching against the strategy. And we can talk about like strategic shifts and how those fit into different stages of the sales process.
00:05:58
Speaker
But to me that that's the ultimate coaching is is bringing alive your strategy your ever changing strategy one deal at a time in a way that helps us win deals and and optimize deals.
00:06:11
Speaker
So that's interesting. To me, it gives, it's almost like a bigger picture. Are you doing the bigger picture things that we need to be doing versus skills coaching is the smaller things. The way you handle a phone call or a meeting in particular, right? Is a lot of skills coaching. It's the micro level stuff or deal coaching you're saying is like the macro level stuff happening across multiple conversations. Is it heading in the strategic direction that we want to go to the using the flow that we wanted to go to? Yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, and there's two pieces. What we've learned over the years coaching on billions of dollars of deals is there's process steps, right? And I'm happy to talk about those if you want to. But more importantly, there's data that the coach brings to each process step to almost have a consulting role.
00:06:57
Speaker
with the rep, which is radically different than auditing going, Hey, Dan, have you done this? Have you done this? Have you done this? No, you haven't. Okay, go do it. That's auditing. And some of that is necessary, but what's also necessary. One of the biggest parts of coaching, man, I just did a presentation, a couple of them and strategic account management association the last two days. And this is what we were presenting is the data and the insight a coach needs to bring to a rep that aligns with every stage of the sales process. That's going to help them.
00:07:27
Speaker
win the deal and win the deal like at, at higher margins or a, you know, a bigger, fatter solution configuration, that kind of thing. So deal coaching is coaching on the process, not the call. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, well that, yeah, that, that's a whole, a whole nother thing as we used to say, where I grew up, a whole nother thing, which is listening to the call sort of after the fact. That would be, I think those are integrated because the, like,
00:07:52
Speaker
Pre-call is saying, all right, Dan, this, this is what we want to be doing. This is the coaching. This is the data we're trying to extract from the customer. Here's the discovery questions that I'm helping you build. Here's the points of our, of our value. We want to emphasize whatever it is. And so that coaching happens up front and then you go out and execute and the call recording records it. And then we can go back and coach against that. But without that first step, if we're just listening to call recordings, you know, we're not, we're only telling them where they went after the fact, if that
00:08:22
Speaker
It's sort of like, you know, a sports analogy would be, we have no practice. We just go out and do games. And then we look at the tape and go, here's where you guys screwed up. But when you combine, we're going to rehearse, we're going to practice. We're going to drill. Then we're going to go execute. And then we're going to debrief the after the fact stuff, very helpful, but put it's debrief. If you're doing deal coaching properly, is there still a need to do skills coaching on top of it? Or are you handling skills coaching in the overarching deal coaching?
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think some, I wish I could give you a more black and white answer to that one, but I think yes, there are some skills that happen in there, but I still do think there is a need for practice, right? So a good deal coach won't tell you, Dan, hey, go Discovery. I'm going to actually build for you Discovery questions that are by different stakeholders you should be talking to in this client organization that uncover
00:09:19
Speaker
the current and desired state across all their KPIs. If you as a coach are not doing that, if you're just going and going Dan, you got to do a better job in discovery. You got to, you got to talk less and listen more. No, we've got to actually take that consulting role of, and we often talk about leveraging best practice to common practice. You know, a lot of people want to do this, but what's the, what are the kinds of discovery is being executed by the best of your best?
Aligning Coaching with Business Strategy
00:09:45
Speaker
And then how do you get that in the hands of your coaches and then
00:09:49
Speaker
begin to apply that to each deal one step. So handing them that content, that insight about here are the best possible questions. Then there's that issue about, yeah, let's practice it. Let me practice it. And, and, and by the way, all, all, all great discovery questions should have a follow-up because that's part of the practices. Okay. Dan didn't give me a really good answer or gave me a gray answer. So let me ask it a different way.
00:10:10
Speaker
So yeah, that skills does come in, but I think the more important part is the target. If we're practicing, if we're practicing against old school discovery questions to keep with that, uh, ant that analogy. Um, and we're practicing those open-ended questions. Hey, Dan, what keeps you awake at night, blah, blah, blah. And you get really good at those. That core content's kind of broken, just open-ended questions as discovery. The client's just telling you what they already know, and it's not adding any value to them. But if we have.
00:10:37
Speaker
what we call guided discovery questions, where I'm saying, Dan, for someone sitting in your role as producer of a podcast, I think these are probably the type of KPIs you have, and I think these are the kind of struggles you normally struggle with. This is what we're seeing across other organizations. How are you entering your world, Dan? That's different than going, hey, Dan, what do you want to get fixed this year?
00:10:57
Speaker
So I hope that makes some sense. So I want to coach against something that's better to start with that the very content that we're out there executing and then coach against improved content. And most coaches don't think about themselves as bringing that sort of insight. It could even be competitive insight. Hey, Dan, I know you're competing against this particular company right now.
00:11:17
Speaker
I'm going to bring some insight to the table and you and I are going to say, this is where the customer wants to go. This is their KPIs. Let's look at how well we execute that versus this competitor. There's not a lot of coaching that's being done by that, like competitive enablement that's being done by the coach. And I think that's the, that's the modern coaching is taking the best practice for competitive enablement, for discovery, for qualification and, and getting it in the hands of your coaches. And we should talk a little bit about also making sure it's in alignment with your business strategy.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point, right? Is you're coaching, you're coaching on the business strategy less on the individual skills. Right. Yeah. And I think if I could Dan, cause you, you know, this is like a big, a big thing to me. Let me give you a quick example. So we were talking to an electronics component manufacturer, right? And so their job, they were a contract manufacturer.
00:12:08
Speaker
And they looked and said, you know what, we should get into integrated design and manufacturing. Cause that's a lot stickier. There's a lot more money we're involved early and you know, we're commodity on the backend. So, okay. Got it. That's your strategy. So what, and this is where a lot of strategy falls down and you and I did a podcast with one of our guests about strategy falling down. Cause the question is at a really street level, here's what a great coach would do to go. Okay. Got it.
00:12:34
Speaker
strategy is now integrated design and manufacturing doesn't mean we don't want to do some manufacturing only contracts but we want to start selling the new thing which everybody struggles with and the reps all run back and sell the old thing so here's the here's when we look at a good coach saying okay dan i'm coaching you on this deal let's start with who should we be talking to and what conversations should we be having given that we have this new strategy that also includes integrated design that's gonna impact towards and by the way
00:13:03
Speaker
I have that for you. I'm not just asking you that question. I'm saying here's who we should be talking to. Here's the kind of conversations we should be having. The next one is when we qualify opportunities. We know what a qualified opportunity looks like for contract manufacturing, but how does that change now that we also do design? What makes a great deal? What gives us higher probability of wearing opportunities that look like this or this? How does that shift with the strategy?
00:13:26
Speaker
What kind of discovery should we be doing and with whom? How are we configuring our solutions? And how is that changing our commercial terms? How are we getting what customer problems are we solving for? That's the coaching kind of at a pretty high level all the way through the sales cycle in alignment with the strategy. You know, you already know how to sell component manufacturing.
00:13:45
Speaker
But what happens all the way through? And as a coach, I should be coming to you helping put that new data into your mindset to make that shift, to execute the strategy. And that to me in 2024 is coaching. It's executing that strategy one rep at a time, one deal at a time, one sales stage at a time. And oh, by the way, your strategy is going to shift 90 days from now. So we've got to get that in the hands. So I see it as this ecosystem of strategy to coach
00:14:13
Speaker
to rap to deal to sale stage and and that's that's the way we think about it and and it works it's a living breathing ecosystem of of executing strategy and you're right making sure the reps have the skills to do it a lot of them do more importantly they need the data and insight what question should be asking who do i need to be talking to now.
00:14:35
Speaker
is actually a great example because within that example you can see really clearly at least I did saw clearly it's kind of like okay well you have this whole new thing you're rolling out of a whole new approach
00:14:47
Speaker
Skills coaching isn't going to address it because even your top performers can run away from it. Even though they don't need more skills coaching, they are highly competent sales machines. And a lot of times those guys will still run back to the old thing because they know how to do it because they're in a habit of doing it. There's something more that you need there. It's not job coaching. It's not skills coaching. It's not even product training because they can be highly knowledgeable about the new integrated thing.
00:15:12
Speaker
and how it works and still not sell it because ultimately we've, we've changed the, the buyer persona, how, and how they think and how to a map your, their sales know-how, their skills and their product knowledge to the actual buyer. And what I think about when you're saying that it's the how to, and this is what one of our podcasts was saying.
00:15:35
Speaker
Podcast guests were saying we announced the new strategy at SKO to sell this new integrated solution or to move from selling point products to selling our whole suite of solutions. Great. That's where we want to go.
00:15:48
Speaker
It's that, it's that next third and fourth level downs of how do we get there? How do we get there at each stage of the sales cycle? What words need to be coming out of my mouth? What data do I need to be collecting? How am I now competing in the marketplace versus traditional competitors with this new strategy? That's where, that's where it falls apart.
00:16:07
Speaker
And there's just sort of this wing and a prayer, I guess, of like, okay, well, the sales guys are just going to go out and sell it. The sales girls, sales people. And the reality is that most people will say, no, most of us are going to fall back on selling what we know.
Consultative Approach in Deal Coaching
00:16:22
Speaker
But if they're given the tools and the insight, and then these coaching sessions, it's like, oh, that's what I should be talking to. And these are the questions I should be asking. And this is our new, our new competitive position. These are the new KPIs we impact in the client organization.
00:16:36
Speaker
All of that, it really is the data. And I think that's the part that people are missing. There's like a consulting, you and I were talking before this podcast about even redefining coaching because it brings up a thing in people's minds. It's almost more like consulting to me that a good deal coach is definitely not an auditor only.
00:16:58
Speaker
A good deal coach is a business consultant, bringing insight to you as a rep on how to move through each stage of the deal cycle against the company strategy, not generically how to do it, but in context of what the hell are we trying to do in 2024 in our company? What moves are we trying to make? What leading and lightning indicators are we going after? Well, the difference between a consultant and a coach to me is a consultant tells you what to do and a coach will ask you what you need to do to lead you to the answer, right? So which one is it of those?
00:17:26
Speaker
Can we, uh, is there a, I'm trying to quickly think of a word where we can, we can mush together consulting and coaching. I can't, but yeah, I think, yeah, I think you make a great point. It's, it's, it's neither and both. Uh, and there, there's probably a new moniker out there for doing it in this way because it's.
00:17:43
Speaker
You know, or we just simply redefined the existing one, which is probably better deal coaching. This is what modern deal coaching looks like. It's executing the strategy, bringing, bringing the data and the insight reps need to execute the strategy one sales stage at a time. And by the way, the good news about this is once you have that data and insight that tracks with the strategy tracks to each stage of, of selling, it's not that it's not.
00:18:08
Speaker
It's not super easy, but it's not super hard to build it out. But now you, you hand it to 15 or 20 coaches in your organization who are coaching 200 or 300 deals over the next year. And, and you're using that over and over again. And you're getting organizational learning to say, Oh, we need to adjust, you know, the qualification criteria, or we need to adjust these discovery questions we're pushing out there because Johnny or Susie is, is kicking butt in the New York region. And we just learned some stuff from them.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
00:18:34
Speaker
So let's get it into the coaching.
00:18:37
Speaker
Well, I'm fine. We're glad I finally asked the question. You know, sometimes I feel dumb asking these questions, but I've learned a ton about deal coaching now and how it fits into the whole scheme of, of coaching around or how it's different from skills and job coaching and how it fits into the overall strategic picture of essentially a go to market motion. Yeah.
00:18:55
Speaker
And it might be broader than that, but I'm going to save that for another episode. So Brian, thank you so much for unpacking this on Close Mode today. Thanks for asking the question. Yeah, it's needed. So I appreciate it. It's fun to talk about. Thanks, Dan.