We are in the middle of the first day of our 2-day Sales Leadership Intensive.  While most attendees admit that they must be more effective at coaching, many who said they have some kind of sales process in place didn't come to the same conclusion.  So, why is it so obvious to sales leaders that they need to improve their coaching, but so elusive that they need to improve their sales process?  

Change occurs in direct proportion to the availability of immediate feedback.  

You get instant feedback from coaching.  Your coaching either makes a profound difference - right here and now - and leads to an otherwise unobtainable sale; or it makes no difference, falls on deaf ears, gets an insincere thank you, and causes a salesperson to avoid future coaching.  

Of course, there is a gray area where coaching is sometimes or moderately effective, but even that provides some immediate feedback.  

With sales process, the feedback is either delayed - by months or years - or non-existent to the point where you can't determine whether your process had any impact on your success or failure.  Without feedback, you lose perspective on whether you have the right stages, steps, milestones, to-do's, or sequence. It might be even more important to get your sequence right than your steps and milestones.  

Here's the catch.  As crucial as it is to be more effective at coaching, coaching conducted outside of an effective sales process and without the context of a staged, optimized sales process may be far less effective than it should be.  [update - Frank just posted this related article]

So, how can you determine whether your existing process is any good?  There's an app for that.  Not really, but we do have a free tool that you can use to find out.  It will give you a score and that comes in the form of immediate feedback.