Living Sales Excellence - Dennis Connelly's Blog

For those of you who regularly read my articles, you already know that I spend a considerable percentage of my time training sales leaders how to coach. When managers and leaders are first introduced to coaching, they usually believe they are already doing it. They are coaching in some manner all day, blocking and tackling, giving advice, and keeping deals moving along. Including those components isn't wrong but gives the definition wide latitude and limits the great potential of excellent coaching.

To violently twist the words of the James Bond character Vesper Lynd, speaking to Bond in Casino Royale, "There is coaching and coaching, this is the latter. And if you want your people to make constant incremental improvements to their skills, I'll need you performing at your best."  I told you it was twisted. It turns out coaching is a term that describes a wide variety of activities and it's important to make the distinction up front to help leaders bring about the changes they envision for their team much faster and in a way that makes improvements stick. 

Coaching can be all those things mentioned above, and it can be on-demand, in the moment, or solving an immediate problem. But there's a certain kind of coaching that, when adopted as defined, dramatically changes the outcomes. First, ask the following questions about coaching.

7 Questions to Evaluate Your Coaching Process

1. Will it help my rep improve?
2. Does it identify a competency or selling DNA for their specific situation?
3. Is there a lesson learned or takeaway that could be written down?
4. Does anyone review and critique my coaching?
5. Am I following a coaching process?
6. Is my coaching tied to a sales process?
7. Are my reps getting demonstrably better?

What about before you hire them? Is there anything you can look for in the candidate, the existence of which promotes the kind of coaching environment you are building? After all, there are coaches and coachees. You're hiring the latter. When selecting new salespeople, there are important characteristics possessed by some candidates that will contribute to your environment of constant learning and incremental improvements. 

5 Critical Candidate Attributes Required for Coaching

1. Is the candidate coachable?
2. Do they make excuses or do they take responsibility for their outcomes?
3. Do they come to work every day ready to perform at their best?
4. How much discomfort will they endure to become better?
5. Do they have the minimum required selling skills, DNA, and will-to-sell to be recommended for consideration for the position?

The first four candidate attributes above are also components of the sales DNA for that individual. While sales DNA is different than sales skills, many believe it's more difficult to modify DNA than to learn a specific skill. That used to be the case, but now you can simply use the Sales DNA Modifier, which is available as an online subscription for just $119/year and comes with a money-back guarantee.  Check it out here. Companies invest tens and hundreds of thousands to teach their people selling skills. But even after they learn the skills, it's their DNA that prevents them from using them. At $119 for a one-year subscription, there isn't a more cost-effective method for improving your team than this.

And finally, while there are many types of coaching, we want to know the components of good sales coaching that contribute most to the primary outcome of creating an environment of constant improvement? For this, we need something more formal. 

7 Key Components of Effective Sales Coaching

1. Regular scheduled time, on the calendar
2. One-on-one (usually) but sometimes in groups
3. Appropriate length of time for the type of business, usually 30 minutes
4. Answers key questions that allow anyone to understand the outcome of the coaching session
5. Always one opportunity is discussed. It's not a sales meeting, nor a pipeline review.
6. Effective use of role playing
7. Written lessons learned

Sales management best practices now require managers to spend close to 50% of their time coaching. If they "can't," reassess your priorities. There are few things more important for a manager than ensuring that their team produces the outputs for which the manager is held responsible. My dad used to spray Gumout into the carburetor of small engines that wouldn't start. It's a combustion accelerant and it always worked. Coaching, in turn, is the accelerant to fire up your sales team to reach heights you once only imagined.

If you want to improve your sales leadership skills and learn how elite sales managers coach, motivate, and hold their people accountable, come to our highly-acclaimed two-day Sales Leadership Intensive coming up June 4th and 5th. Group size is limited to ensure optimal participation and learning. There are still some seats available. Click here to learn more about the event.

 

--

Book Dennis Connelly to speak at your event.

Photo Credit: Le Moal Olivier  (123RF.com) 

 

Imagine using a script for all of your sales calls and meetings. Get on the phone: use a script. Have a meeting: use a script. Get hung up on an objection: use a script. Now imagine managing your people. "Here's your script. Don't stray." And imagine what your ad for salespeople would look like? "Wanted: Anyone who can read."

Sales managers frequently ask me how to use a script for certain selling situations and how to use them for coaching their people. You might be thinking that one shouldn't have or need a script, or that sounding scripted is unnatural and not something real salespeople need, or that scripts are only for rude telemarketers. And you'd be right. And they also serve a more helpful purpose. The sales manager on top of their game understands both the useful purpose of a script and the need to toss it aside just before you might actually be tempted to use it. Let's explore this misunderstood but important area of sales coaching and find out how to use a script to help your people improve while perhaps not sounding scripted at all. Ready?

First, where do we find scripts. Here are some examples:

1. Cold call opening
2. Response to an inbound lead
3. Handling an objection
4. Asking for a referral
5. When your prospect says they are all set
6. At tradeshows
7. At Closing

It might sound something like this: 

"Good morning, Bill. Do you purchase industrial phenolic wheels? Good. May I take fifteen minutes to tell you why mine are the best? Thank you. We have a vast array of kingpinless phenolic wheels at any load capacity you need...blah blah."

Or:

"Thanks for telling me that, Jill. I often hear people say they are all set. Can I take a few moments to let you know what you might be missing? We have a vast array..."

Or:

"Thank you for stopping by the booth. What interested you? Who are you buying from now? May I show you this short video showing the vast array of..."

And so on.

I chose these somewhat comical scripts because they are close to the kind of language I often hear from clients at the beginning of our engagement. And it doesn't matter if it's industrial wheels, software as a service, TV advertising, or professional services. The concepts are the same. 

On the flip side, some will say, "I don't want to script anything. I'll just wing it." Then I'll ask them, "So what's your strategy for when a prospect says they are all set?" And I usually hear some hesitation followed by several reasons why they should consider buying from them. "If I can just show you our vast array of wheel options, I think you'll be impressed. We are second to none in service. We ship to this area three times per week. We keep every accessory and part in stock locally... etc..."

The Purpose of the Script

The above examples demonstrate where scripts can be helpful. Here's why. Absent a formal sales process, most salespeople will result to the kind of language patterns shown above, and will follow a default process that is some variation of trying to get in front of the right person, present all their great stuff, and ask for an order. The resulting coaching session might sound like this:

Typical Coaching Session
Manager: How did it go?
Salesperson: Great!
Manager: Where does it stand?
Salesperson: They're going to get back to me in two weeks.
Manager: What went well?
Salesperson: They liked the product and we know a lot of the same people in the industry.
Manager: What could be improved?
Salesperson: Since they are talking with someone else, too, I need to do a better job explaining why we're different.
Manager: Great. Let's work on that.

On the other hand, if there were a formal sales process in place (grade yours here), the manager might have poked a few holes in that description and analysis. "When you asked them why it was so important to make a switch at this time, what did they say?" And then, "It sounds like your presentation was a bit premature."

"Okay," your rep might say, "What should I have said?"

And this is where you might write a script together that will start the conversation off the right way. What might that sound like?

Example of a Script

"It's nice to meet you, Bill. I find that the people who do what you do, and who ultimately want my help usually tell me either that they are frustrated by slowdowns caused by bad wheels on their industrial carts, or that they are concerned by the high variability in service life of their wheels making it hard to plan ahead. Are either of those true for you?"

From the prospect's answer, a conversation can ensue. Wouldn't it be nice to work out in advance how this initial question should sound so that it sparks a discussion about your prospect and their issues, concerns, and difficulties, rather than making it about you? Your rep will normally resort to doing it the way they are used to doing it and the way that makes them comfortable. The point of the script, in this case, is to practice a new conversation starter to the point when which it becomes comfortable.

When coaching your people, role play this scenario enough times so that it rolls off the tongue and so they are truly comfortable with it. Then...and here's the good part; never say it the way you wrote it. In other words, write the script, and then don't use it. The point isn't to have a script. It's to get comfortable with a new approach to a conversation. When you are in the moment of a real sales call, be yourself, speaking to your prospect the way you might speak to a friend that you believe you can help. Your salespeople will be relieved that they don't have a recite a script. If they aren't, you might have other problems with your team and you can do some quick math here on what a non-performing person can cost you.

The script is for thinking through a change in the sales conversation. Coaching is an opportunity for a manager and a salesperson to work, one-on-one to make an improvement in the salesperson's skills. Now imagine your people using a script as a tool to make improvements over how they've been doing it for perhaps years and years. Someone smarter than me once told me that no one is in sales for 20 years; they are in sales for 5 years and repeat the fifth year fifteen more times. Now you can add script writing to your available tools to help your people make improvements regardless of how long they have been selling.

 

--

Book Dennis Connelly to speak at your event.

Photo Credit - Copyright :  dmitrimaruta (123RF) 

How many times do you write an email to a prospect and get no response? How often do you think, "My product makes so much sense for this prospect that if they only agreed to have a conversation, we'd be doing business." Here's a recent real-life example from my work with a client that I believe will give you insights and tools to dramatically increase the likelihood of getting an actual response.

The target for this email could be on your top 50 prospect list or it could even be an existing transactional customer who hasn’t been farmed in a few years, as was the case in this example from just two weeks ago, though the lessons are widely applicable.

In particular, this kind of email is useful when you believe it is squarely in your prospect's best interest to have a conversation with you. We often work and re-work those emails, sending them off into the darkness, and listening for a response, hearing nothing but crickets. We’re about to increase your odds of success. Read on.

So let's set this up. I received the following email from a sales manager at one of my client companies:

Good morning Dennis,

One of my sales reps is working on sending an existing customer an email to try to get a meeting to get reconnected. We’ve been doing business with some of their properties for years without fuss, but we know they have a lot more and there has always been reluctance from this gentleman to work with us or even see our value. He inherited our services when he took over the role he's in and he's always been skeptical. The old business is essentially just hanging on and frankly, we're a little afraid of calling attention to it.

We have not had a business review with this client for many years nor any communication. My rep’s initial attempt at an email to this guy was lengthy and provided a lot of information - probably too much. Thinking about what she learned in the training sessions, she shortened it to the note you will see below, which is much better, in my view, but still doesn’t seem quite right. Didn’t know if we could review it this morning in our regular coaching call.

Thanks,

Sarah, Sales Manager

--

Here is the email that Sarah’s business development sales rep, Jill, wanted to send to this prospect, who was high on her target list for her company's initiative to farm old customers and grow their accounts:

Dear Mr. Janson,

Hope you are doing well today. I work for Agency Solutions, Inc. We work with management companies to help them find hidden sources of revenue on their properties without the burden of taking time to negotiate and administer all the ancillary contracts on their own, especially when they are usually unrelated to their main revenue sources. I would like the opportunity to come and meet with you in person. I have the following days/times available, please let me know which one of these will work for you:

• November 16 – anytime from 8:00 – 1:00
• November 17 – anytime from 8:00 – 10:00 or 1:00 – 5:00
• November 20 – anytime from 8:00 – 5:00
• November 21 – anytime from 8:00 – 5:00
• November 22 – anytime from 8:00 – 5:00

Thank you,

Jill

--

Take a look at her letter and ask yourself what you might change:

• How is she positioning her company?
• What's the message she's sending about herself?
• What could make this email more effective?
• Is the prospect likely to read the whole thing?

We will never know the answer to these questions because she never sent the email. Phew! But we can draw from our experience, make some educated guesses, and suggest changes that might increase the chances of a favorable outcome. Whether you're a salesperson, business development expert, or a sales manager, what edits would you suggest?

Later that morning, I met with Sarah and the President of Agency Solutions, her boss, so we could dig into this email and see if we could improve it. I'm going to share with you what we came up with, but first, let’s pick out the key points and make some comments:

• “Dear Mr. Janson” – Let's start there. That kind of salutation works better for some but not all members of a certain age bracket and I recently read an article about email etiquette in the Middle East and it recommended starting off that same way. However, it’s usually better to position yourself as a peer. So let’s use “Hi Frank,” or “Dear Frank,” or simply, “Frank,” your choice. If you disagree with this and want to keep it formal, then continue doing it the other way, especially if it’s helping you engage better, differentiate yourself, develop rapport, and position yourself as an advisor at their level whom they can trust.
• “Hope you are doing well today?” – The body of the letter starts with this. It usually means, “Warning, this is a sales letter so you can stop reading now.” If you wouldn’t kick off an email to your best friend that way, don’t do it here either. Oh, you mean Frank Janson isn’t your best friend? Fine. Pretend he is, and he just might become one.
• “We work with management companies to help them…” – This is pretty good, but I’d rather use “I,” for starters because in sales today, and particularly when there is product parity, the best differentiator is often you. And the phrase “work with…companies” removes you too much from the specific people you help so perhaps you might dive right into “I help managers…” I love the whole rest of that sentence.
• “I would like the opportunity to come and meet you…” – Wait a minute. Whose opportunity is this? So what you're saying is, “Please, oh mighty prospect, grant me your time for my personal opportunity, and while it’s possible there might be something in it for you too, at least you know that I have myself in mind from the outset.” The only opportunity here is a chance for your prospect to receive much-needed help. Don’t make it about you.
• “I have the following times available…” After this sentence, the email continues to list times and dates that add up to 38 hours of available time over five consecutive business days. Now there's a message for you. “Listen, Mr. Janson, I’ll try to stay awake that week in case you call. In fact, I’ll put the phone next to the TV so I’ll be sure to hear it. With any luck, you’ll be my first customer in months. We’re going to have some fun together, buddy, cuz my schedule’s clear sailing to the new year!”

Okay, now that we’ve had some fun with this, let’s take a look at how we changed it during our 30-minute call later that morning. When we finished, Sarah, the sales manager, gave the copy to Jill to send off to Frank. Here's what she sent him:

Frank,

I’m sorry we haven’t contacted you in some time, even though we are already representing some of your properties. I wanted to reach out and introduce myself, to set up some time to understand your needs better and see if and how I can help.

Would you be available to meet in the next couple of weeks? I am available on the following dates:

• November 16 – From 10:00 to Noon
• November 17 – From 1:00 to 3:30

Please let me know what might work or suggest another date and time.

Thank you,

Jill

--

There are other methods we could have used and other approaches to this particular challenge including picking up and dialing the phone. And Jill surely had that on her tactical roadmap, but as everyone in the trenches knows, calling prospects on the phone is an increasingly frustrating method for making initial contact. I once cold-called a CSO of a Fortune 1000 company with whom I had never spoken. To my amazement, he answered the phone. However, before he’d even let me tell him why I called, he said, “I answered the phone because I happened to be expecting a call from someone with your area code, so can you call back another time?” Hey folks, this doesn’t only happen to you.

Almost immediately after our coaching session on the phone, Sarah sent the new email copy to Jill and two hours later, I received an email from Sarah who had forwarded a note she just received from Jill:

Sarah,

OMG! I got a reply within an hour of reaching out. I’ll forward it to you! Holy Crap – he even tells me some of the issues they have….

Jill

--

Success! While not every email gets a response so quickly, if at all, what lessons can you take on how you might improve your email outcomes? Here are my top six rules for getting prospects to respond:

Top 6 Rules for Effective One-Off Email Prospecting So They Respond

1. Position yourself as a peer on their level.
2. Make it all about them.
3. Don't talk about your stuff as it gives them a reason not to respond.
4. Make the purpose about helping them if they need it.
5. Your time is a scarce resource. Narrow the choices.
6. Remember it's their opportunity, not yours.

If you took something valuable from this article, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

--

For those interested, a few times a year, we host an open-enrollment live online training series for individual salespeople in a group environment who are trying to improve their game and master the most effective and easiest to learn sales process ever. The next session can be found by clicking here.

--

Photo Copyright : file404

I noticed the nurses and doctors rushing past me one afternoon as I lay on a gurney, parked in the hallway of a busy ER. Reasonably sure, by then that my spooky, painful experience was just kidney stones, I turned my focus to all that rushing about.

Over the course of a few minutes, a nurse, then another nurse, then a doctor, and several more, rushed by, all moving quickly to the same place past the central desk and part way down one of the halls. They weren’t running, exactly, but they were moving pretty fast.

Then I overheard one of them yelling over her shoulder, “I’ll look that up in five minutes,” she said, “I have to get to our huddle!” I felt like a kid hearing a siren and waiting to see the fire trucks, only to realize that it’s just the noon alarm in the center of town.

One of the more indispensible tools for the world-class sales manager is the huddle. Yet it is often neglected due to real or imagined time constraints. Why?

For sales managers, the morning huddle is primarily an accountability tool, to help salespeople stay focused on the most important top-line pro-active behaviors that will help lead to the results they want. That might seem like something salespeople wouldn’t love. However, executed properly, by a sales manager that has embraced the huddle, sees the value in it, and wouldn’t live without it, the salespeople in turn, also love it. And here are the top reasons:

Top Three Reasons Why Salespeople Love the Huddle

1. Gets everyone feeling like they a part of something bigger.
2. Creates a team spirit.
3. Leaves them uplifted and energized 

And here are the Top Three Reasons Why Sales Managers Love the Huddle

1. Creates peer-oriented accountability
2. Builds bonds and energizes the group
3. Provides a daily conduit to provide strategy, direction, and clarity to the team

Of course, this assumes it is done right. On the flip side, can you imagine that it doesn't always go this way? It’s probably not hard to believe that there are some real time-wasting huddles out there. Welcome to the land of Dilbert, where the manager drones on and everyone is checking their emails. Okay, when I hear about how much people don’t like it, these are the usual reasons:

Top Three Reasons Why Salespeople Hate the Huddle

1. Too much criticism or too negative
2. Always runs long so cannot plan around it
3. Types of activities reported are inconsistent with stated goals
4. Boring waste of time

When the Huddle has been commanded from above because of something an executive read about online or learned at a conference, and the manager herself is not bought in, the results are predictable.

For the past 30 years starting with my first introduction to huddles from a coating manufacturer, I have found this tool to be one of the most indispensible for the well rounded sales manager who shapes their environment and gets results; the same kind of manager who has mastered coaching. For more on coaching, read this article. I consistently hear that huddles are the one thing they would never give up. 

If doctors and nurses in a busy emergency room put saving lives on hold to have their daily huddle, we can certainly take 10 minutes a day from our 50-plus-hour weeks to make sure all those hours are used in such a way that success is unavoidable.

In a coaching call early this week, my client asked me a marketing question that I hear quite often but never wrote about until now. To answer their question, I am going to divulge research results from a study we did here at Kurlan & Associates that up to this point, has not been widely shared by Dave Kurlan, who conducted the study.

We get a lot of marketing questions but it should be noted that our primary area of expertise is sales and not marketing. We are concerned with the “top of funnel” hand-off from marketing to sales, however. And we are also concerned with the role that marketing can play to position products and services in alignment with sales messaging so salespeople will have better conversations. That's why we tend to get questions related to this crucial hand-off period.

So what was the question? It was this: “Would it help our cold-calling efforts to send out a brochure to prospects prior to calling them?” Have you ever asked that question? Have you tried it? Did it work? I bet it did. But I bet you’ll be surprised by the results of our study.

Here’s how the study worked. We divided prospects randomly into three groups. Let’s call them Group A, Group B, and Group C. To each group, we either sent a brochure ahead of the cold call or we didn’t, according to this schedule:

Group A
To Group A, we instructed our client to make a normal cold call. We did not send a brochure prior to this call. This was our “Control” group.

Group B
To Group B, we sent out a brochure to prospects. We then followed up with a call that started with, “Hi, this is so-and-so from such-and-such. Did you receive the brochure I sent you last week?”

Group C
To Group C, similar to Group A, we did not send a brochure, but we made a cold call and instructed our client to start the conversation with, “Hi, this is so-and-so from such-and-such. Did you receive the brochure I sent you last week?” If you noticed that Group B and Group C said the same thing, then you are one very astute reader.

So Here’s the Summary
Group A: No brochure sent. Cold-called the prospect.
Group B: Brochure sent. Followed up with a call asking if they got the brochure.
Group C: No brochure sent. Followed up with a call asking if they got the brochure.

Photo Credit: ©blotty/123RF.COM and Dennis Connelly

And Here’s the Results
Group A, the cold-callers, were able to convert the call into a meeting one out of 10 times. 1 in 10.

Group B, the folks who sent the brochure out first and then followed up with a call, did much better, converting twice as many calls into meetings. 2 in 10. So now you know the answer to at least one question. It’s better to send out a brochure first and then call. You will have a much better conversation rate than simply cold calling by itself.

Putting ethics aside for a moment, there are two reasons why you might want to try what Group C did – either you are pressed for time and don’t want to wait for a mailing, or you are short on stamps and don’t want all that return mail clogging your actual brick and mortar (or aluminum) mailbox. There’s a third reason I should mention that you might want to try what Group C did, which is that their conversion rate was three out of 10 calls. 3 in 10. This is 50% more than group B and 200% more than Group A. This result surprised us. We were expecting it to be the same as Group A and certainly no better than Group B.

How can this be? There are a few explanations that appear to be at work in Group C and not in the other two. 

• Group C knew in advance that the prospect hadn’t seen the brochure so there was no worry about their opinion of it
• They had a useful conversation starter
• The prospect, feeling a little guilty for not seeing it, might have given them a little extra consideration
• Knowing the prospect’s answer ahead of time gave the salesperson more confidence

So now let’s get back to ethics. Do you really want to start off your relationship with your prospect with a lie, acting as if you did something you didn’t do? Keep in mind that with Group C, there was no brochure sent at all. What made the difference was the mindset of the salesperson.

So how can we learn to bring the more successful, Group C mindset to the call every time without dishing all the bullcrap? Which skills and what hidden weaknesses might be holding us back?

• Do your salespeople develop early rapport?
• Are they confident and credible?
• Do they ask questions easily, and listen carefully?
• Are their positioning statements aligned with prospects real issues?
• Can they create urgency?
• Do they recover from rejection quickly?
• Do they have excellent sales posturing?

How many of your salespeople can be developed to hunt and close new business effectively? How well does management coach them and hold them accountable? How motivated are they and what actually motivates them? Are you training the right people? How many cannot be trained? If these are top of mind questions for you, a sales force evaluation will answer them. Click here if you would like to learn more about that.

By getting salesperson selection right, training and coaching existing salespeople, and ensuring alignment with leadership and corporate goals, you will improve the quality of your sales organization. You will improve sales efficiency, preserve margins, and create more success for you and your people.

 

Photo Credit (Top): ©MarinaGallud/123RF.COM

Note: This article was extensively revised and republished on December 4, 2018. Click here to read Five Steps to Frictionless Feedback. I revised it to add new research, reflect fresh experience, and most importantly to share the topic with a wider audience than my necessarily finite list of clients. I hope you find it useful. The key research cited in the article below was included in the revised version.

--

What if you ordered a deli sandwich and after they thought about it for a moment, carefully made the perfect specimen, handed it to you with pride and suddenly took back the bread?  After the initial shock of such odd behavior, I’m guessing you might feel a little unsatisfied and hungry for more.  When coaching your staff, feedback is an important tool.  However, we often use the same idea as the sandwich. We give useful criticism but sandwich it between two pieces of positive encouragement.  Recent research has shown that this approach is surprisingly ineffective.  It turns out it’s a bit like handing out a thoughtful criticism sandwich and then taking back the two pieces of bread.  It’s more like “foodback” than feedback.  Let’s find out why.

This practice was studied by Clifford Nass and described in his book, The Man Who Lied to His Computer.  The brain goes into full alert when hearing negative criticism and enters a state called “retroactive interference” which results in nearly total memory loss of anything prior to the criticism.  It might take minutes, hours or a couple days for the memory to disappear, but your brain simply forgets those previous words of praise.  If asked later if there was any positive feedback in the discussion, one simply can’t remember.  Oops!  There goes one slice of bread from your sandwich.

But another interesting phenomenon occurs when giving criticism.  In that same heightened alert state, one also experiences a new sense of awareness that Nass calls “proactive enhancement.”  You’ve got their attention, so now they are ready to listen and absorb whatever you say next.  This is where the opportunity is often wasted.  Most managers provide what they regard as a soft landing by giving positive-sounding generalities.  That’s the bread slice on the other side of the sandwich.  Generalities, by their very nature, are hard to remember.  So, we soon miss that slice as well.  With the bread missing, what remains might leave us a little unsatisfied and hungry for more.

How can we improve on this model?  When coaching your sales force, the goal is improving sales effectiveness with honest, useful feedback.  Criticism is important if you want to improve a specific behavior.  And positive comments are also important to ensure you get more of the behaviors that are already working.  When both forms of feedback are delivered in the same conversation and you want both to be remembered, you need a better strategy.

Here are three crucial steps for effective criticism:

1. Tone – How you say it is more important than what you say.  Your tone provides the signal for how you feel about someone. Is the person the problem or is it just their behaviors? If we stick to the behaviors, then we can still smile at them, be filled with gratitude for them and remain firm that the behavior needs to change. Keep the list of negatives short and specific. Too many criticisms will feel like a barrage which can be depressing rather than instructive. A few helpful points will provide focus.
2. Order – Negative first, positive second.  Order matters. Tell them the positive comments after the negative ones and make the list of positives long and specific, rather than general. “You’re basically doing a great job.” can be replaced by, “You’ve been growing the front end of your pipeline by making more calls, which is really going to help you in the last quarter.” [Note: This assumes that it's important to deliver negative criticism in the first place. The revised article makes the argument that setting up a culture of coaching, with proper framing, eliminates the need to simply deliver criticism.]
3. Actionable – We handle criticism better when given the recipe for improvement.  Always provide actionable feedback alongside the criticism so that they understand how to correct the problem.  Don’t leave them hanging and wondering what it all means.  General negativity makes us anxious and frustrated.  Specific criticism, with the steps to make it better, leaves us empowered and provides a sense that someone is looking out for us. 

Is coaching an important part of your culture?  Do your people regularly come to you for help?  Do you look for advice and feedback in your own organization?  When it’s time to serve feedback to your staff, what steps do you take to keep all food on their plate?

 

--

Photo Credit: Dennis Connelly (Note: I fixed the sandwich before eating it.)