5 ways reflective feedback
can enhance your sales
coaching capabilities
Observe . Reflect . Improve
Contents
Introduction
Page 3
Step 1 - Self Reflection
Page 4
Step 2 - Soft Skills
Page 5
Step 3 - Emotional Intelligence
Page 6
Step 4 - Peer-to-Peer
Page 7
Step 5 - Documenting
Page 8
Conclusion
Page 9
Observe . Reflect . Improve
5 ways reflective feedback can enhance your sales coaching capabilities
Introduction
In the world of work, not all feedback is made equal. There is the kind of one-way feedback where you tell someone
something like ‘your pitch was a bit rubbish - do it better next time’ which leaves the employee gasping like guppy in
the first instance, and then confused as to what to do next, in the second.
Or (yay for or), there is the kind of feedback which encourages, enables or enhances your sale teams own journey of
self-development by getting them to look at themselves and their colleagues objectively and giving them the tools
they need to make long lasting changes.
This is kind of feedback is called reflective feedback and we’ve come up with the top five ways you can use it to
enhance your sales coaching capabilities.
Observe . Reflect . Improve
Step 1 - Observation + Feedback = Self-Reflection
Now we know you are all super busy (who isn’t?) and
you probably don’t need anything more piled onto your
workload (honestly, who does?), but in the long run,
taking some time out to really look at your team and
then help them to learn how to reflect on their own
skills, will be time well spent.
So first up, make like David Attenborough and observe
your subject in its natural habitat (as in, out in the sales
field, on the sales floor, or in the call centre).
For each member of your team look at:
• What they do
• How they do it
• Identify their strengths and weaknesses
Giving feedback
Document what you see while they are interacting with
their prey (customers) and then take them to one side
and give them immediate and direct feedback. Always
focus on the positive. But give examples of the areas
that they need to work on, and guide them on what
they actually need to do to make those changes.
It’s a two way street
Next up is to get the sales employee to delve deep into
their very soul (ok, that’s a little melodramatic) and start
asking themselves questions about their performance,
effectively getting them to start their own course of
self-reflective feedback. Boom.
The kind of questions you could encourage them to ask
themselves are:
• Why did I choose that process?
• Is that process the most effective or is there a
different way of doing things?
• Would different behaviour have led to a better
outcome?
Then get them to reflect on what it is that motivates
them. Drilling down in this way will help the sales
employee identify the goals that they want to achieve,
develop an action plan to achieve those aims, and create
strategies for managing problems or setbacks. Enabling
them to do all this self-reflection and self-feedback will
give them a greater sense of ownership of their own
development.
Over to you
Make sure you note down everything that’s been
agreed and what advice was given, noting goals and
timescales for making these changes.
Observe . Reflect . Improve
Step 2 - Developing soft skills for success
Soft skills are a set of capabilities which allow the
individual to interact successfully with others, and
these types of skills are becoming increasingly sought
after, sometimes even considered as important as hard
technical knowledge.
Results from research conducted by MacDonalds
shows that employee soft skills contribute £88 billion
(billion!) to the UK economy, and is set to increase to
£109 billion over the next five years.
That’s a lot of burgers in return for some pleases and
thank you’s!
Therefore coaches need to ask themselves:
• Is their team attracting customers but not retaining
them?
• Can they collaborate with each other on projects?
• Can they successfully communicate their ideas with
others?
By observing your team out in the wild you will be able
to quickly identify who lacks which skills, and address
those issues sharpish by giving your team constructive
and informative feedback, using examples taken
directly from their work.
However there is a widely acknowledged gap in soft
skills within the workforce, both in the UK and abroad,
with the report going on to state that by ‘2020, more
than half a million workers will be held back by a lack
of soft skills’.
Over to you
In the words of my two-year old niece, Uh Oh.
Ask your sales team to look at how other teams or
individuals communicate, what impression the clothes
they wear gives out, how their body language and
speech patterns indirectly show what they think about
the person they are speaking to. Then ask them if these
things have a positive or negative effect on that person
or team’s success?
How does this relate to my team?
To put it bluntly, it’s all very well for your sales
employee to know all the super fantastic stuff your
product can do, but if they can’t string a sentence
together or look the customer in the eye while they are
selling it, then that product is going to stay firmly on the
shop floor. Which means your company loses business,
you and the sales team are out of a job, the economy
fails and the world ends! (Again, a little melodramatic,
but you get the idea).
In the spirit of self-reflection it is a good idea to help
the individuals in the team understand for themselves
the power of soft skills.
Then turn the tables on them and get them to ask those
questions of themselves!
Observe . Reflect . Improve
Step 3 - Approaching emotional intelligence: What’s your EQ?
Emotional Intelligence, also known as EQ, also uses soft
skills in terms of communication, but it is more roundly
focused on our emotional response to situations and
how we manage our reactions.
So the long and the short of it is if you regularly find
yourself going all Incredible Hulk on your colleagues
for borrowing your stapler without asking, then it’s
likely that you are paddling in the shallow end of the
EQ pool.
The qualities that go towards a high EQ include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Empathy
Mood Management
Self-Motivation
Maintaining Positive Relationships
Social Skills
Self-Regulation
All of these attributes go towards better problem
solving skills, stress management and productivity,
with 90% of high performers at work possessing a high
EQ and 80% of under performers exhibiting low EQ
traits. - Talent Smart.
Some of the traits of a person with a lower EQ level are:
• Lack of control of emotions and responses to
situations that they perceive as negative
• Only seeing a situation from their own perspective
and in accordance with their needs and goals
• Failing to communicate successfully
• Lacks self-awareness and social skills
• Doesn’t take responsibility for own failings
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
EQ is developed as we mature and it is quite hard to
change negative patterns of behaviour that have been
in place for many years. However unlike IQ which is
fixed, EQ can be improved, but the individual has to be
really open to being honest about their response reflex
and be really, really ready to embrace change.
Over to you
As the saying goes you can’t get a leopard to change
its spots (even though stripes are infinitely more
fashionable) so not everyone is open to personal
change, but if you have managed to encourage (or
effectively trick) your team to be more self-reflective
then your team is already on the road to a higher EQ
level without even realising it. Neat, huh?
Observe . Reflect . Improve
Step 4 - Lead by example: The power of Peer-to-Peer
Managers are increasingly gaining more and more
direct reports, and although we said earlier that it is
important to set aside the time to understand each
individual on your team, we understand that this isn’t
always realistic and in some point you may need to
delegate.
Now we aren’t saying that you can just drop your
coaching responsibilities onto any poor fool and then
run away to the nearest arm chair with your laptop and
a cup of tea. Instead what we are saying is that if you
guide your team to collaborate and support each other
in terms of feedback and reflection, then it will help
take some of the pressure off you while simultaneously
increasing the success of the team. Win/Win.
‘Knowing me, knowing you’
Fostering self-reflection as a common practice amongst
your sales team will have a domino effect, starting with
those who take to the process the best and adapt their
behaviour with visible results. Those visible results
will then be observed by their peers who will then in
turn adapt their own behaviour to match that of their
successful colleague. Simples.
More interactive Peer-to-Peer reflection can work as
a kind of buddy system where two colleagues work
together to identify where their own strengths and
weaknesses lie, and it can provide a ‘safe space’ where
they can be more honest in what they say rather than
having to worry about saying what a manager wants to
hear!
They can then set up regular appointments with each
other to talk about how they are getting on and what
they have worked on since they last spoke, keeping the
momentum of their development going forwards.
The power of shared reflection
The team as a whole can get in on the reflective
feedback action by being given the opportunity and the
skills to work with each other for the good of the team.
This will help make them all responsible for each other
and enable them to work collaboratively for greater
success.
Over to you
For both peer-to-peer and group reflection note down
the aims of the process, what each person wants to
achieve, how they are going to do it and set a time
frame. Set up regular meetings which are documented
so that they can be referred back to and the arc of
the individuals or the team’s progress can be clearly
seen, to give a greater and more tangible sense of
accomplishment.
Observe . Reflect . Improve
Step 5 - Documenting reflective practice: Is digital best?
We’ve mentioned through-out this article documenting
your process and progress, but what is the best way to
do this? Journal or video diary?
The Pros and Cons of Journal vs. Digital Video diary
Journal
Pros
Using a traditional journal to record and measure
success has the benefits of allowing you to:
• Discreetly observe your sales guys and girls and
note down situations throughout the day
• Write down your own thoughts and how you felt
about a situation
• Make quick notes on specific thoughts and to do
lists
• A cheap and easy way to record situations and
archive
Cons
Writing down the details of post-event is really open to
personal interpretation of what happened and a
creative memory of how events played out, so the
longer you leave it to document it then the less reliable
it may be!
Digital Video
Pros
Record a situation for training purposes to see how a
member of the sales team deals with certain situations,
this will allow you to:
• See what social and soft skills they employ when
dealing with customers
• Be impartial and not reliant on false memory
• Pin point triggers for certain reactions and
behaviours
• Allows for playback so the individual can view for
themselves and reflect on their own responses and
behaviour from outside the situation.
Cons
If people know they are being recorded their behaviour
is likely to change!
Conclusion – For the best results use both technology
and traditional methods.
Over to you
Digitally record situations as they happen and use
them for individual, peer-to-peer or group reflection.
Rewind, pause, tag etc. Then using a journal to write
down what happened, what the triggers were, and how
the individual reacted and then devise your strategy.
Put the strategy into practice and record it using video
again. Use the video to show how successful any
changes were and use the video and the journal for
later reference. Both forms of documenting will
provide a full unbiased account that can be used for
reference and reflection, as well as showing a clear arc
of development.
Observe . Reflect . Improve
Conclusion
In the fast paced and demanding landscape of modern sales it is not good enough to just be able to do the job
day in day out, employees need to use a whole host of other skills and attributes such as soft skills and emotional
intelligence to get on in the work place.
Not everyone is a natural when it comes to using or developing these skills, so reflective feedback is a crucial element
of any sales coaching strategy.
Put in the time, observe each sales individual at work in the field, on calls or in meetings, give immediate feedback
and focus on the positive as much as possible.
Actively encourage personal development and enable them to find the strategies they need to improve, but
remember to record it all to measure the arc of development, refer back to see what learning has and hasn’t worked
and then adjust for the future.
The future of feedback is reflective, so look in the mirror and in the immortal words of Steve Jobs ‘are you being your
best self today’? (sorry, a cheesy finish but we couldn’t resist)
Observe . Reflect . Improve
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Observe . Reflect . Improve