Your Manager Doesn't Have to be Your Coach | Sales Tips

Recently, I was pulled aside at a sales meeting by a couple of sales reps who said, “This is all great, Colleen, but my manager won’t coach us.  He won’t take the time to help us develop our skills. What should I do?  I mean I can’t get better because I can’t be coached.”

Here's my advice. If you can’t be coached by your sales manager for whatever reason, then find someone in the organization to coach you. Seek a top performer inside the organization who can mentor and coach you.  Ask them for permission to tag along and listen to joint sales calls. You don't want to waste their time by taking them away from the field.

Find someone else in the organization who is in sales or sales leadership that you can bounce questions off of. You can also find a top performer in another industry that you can share complementary information with. In the worst case scenario, coach yourself, read books, watch videos just like these, and analyze your results to create your own path forward on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

There are also professional sales coaches and mentors out there who might just be willing to take you on as a coach, so don’t discount that option either. Just because your manager won’t spend the time to develop you doesn’t mean that you can’t seek out development on your own.

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