Team coaching offers a different way to develop commitment

Q I feel my sales team lacks training but I am not entirely sure what tools/training I should turn to, in order to develop the skills to offer the best customer experience possible to our clients. Can you help?

There are various ways to develop the skills needed by your sales team. Retail team coaching is one. The objective is to optimise sales, keeping the teams alert, and to generate commitment from team members.

This commitment is a voluntary agreement, shared by the whole team, and it generates energy towards performing your job. These are some of the noteworthy differences between a retail coach and a traditional manager:

Traditional managers try to motivate people, while coaches insist on self-motivation.

Traditional managers are responsible of the people they direct, while coaches demand their collaborators take responsibility for themselves.

Traditional managers think about ‘what’s wrong’ and ‘why things happen’. Coaches focus on the future, generating commitment that will help create a new reality, and looking for ‘what can be improved’.

A retail coach cannot manage their teams without quality tools. And the first and most important of those are KPIs. A good team leader has to be able to check the evolution of their team based on clear, objective numbers.

Retail team coaching requires clear objectives, that help our collaborators orient their efforts and motivate themselves to complete them. Once these objectives have been established based on clear data, they have to be transmitted to the team. Therefore, communication is one of the main factors in retail team coaching success.

But the coach must not forget the individual. A routine of periodic coaching sessions needs to be created, in where each team member is dealt with individually, talking about their current and ideal situations, and how to reach their goals.

Retail coaching has been proven to boost results, not only by making the best use of KPIs, but also by bringing teams together, motivating and generating commitment. And as we all know, committed and empowered teams will strive to offer the best customer experience.