Baldness And Sales Coaching

I've always heard that baldness runs in your family. And consequently, healthy non-balding hair runs in your family, too. All my older relatives, male and female, have had a full head of hair. I've always had a certain delight in the fact that my healthy-hair genes will bless me with a full head of hair right up to the time I pass from mortal life! Yippee!

So maybe you can understand the shock -- no, the horror -- I felt when I looked in the mirror a few weeks ago and found that I had a small bald spot on the top of my head (you know, right in that spot where you see all those other guys going bald?). I do not know what possessed me to do this, but I took a handheld mirror and held it up to the top and back of my noggin while facing the mirror so I could see the top of my head. It was that fateful day when I learned I was balding (healthy-hair genes or not).

I've looked at the back of my head before, you know. My hair stylist Kim always shows me the back of my head after every haircut to see if I approve of her work. I always approve of her work. But with what I know now, I definitely don't approve of the fact that Kim has never held the mirror up higher so that I could see the top rear of my head - the bald area - after her haircuts. Isn't this a public service that hair stylists should provide for balding middle-aged guys like me? Shouldn't beauty schools teach budding hair stylists the importance of this public service?

When my wife got home, I shouted the news to her: "I JUST REALIZED THAT I HAVE A BALD SPOT ON THE TOP OF MY HEAD!!!"

"You've had that for years, love," she said. "You just realized that fact now?"

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" I inquired.

"I thought you knew about it," she announced.

Not only had my wife not told me about my bald spot, but my friends and other family members didn't either. How could this happen? How could I, with my full-head-of-hair older relatives, end up with a bald spot on the top of my head? And worse yet, nobody bothered to tell me about it? Argh...

So, what does baldness have to do with sales coaching?

Sales coaching is the process of having someone else find your bald spot and tell you about it so you can do something about it. Sales coaching, whether done by a sales manager or a mentor or a specialized sales coach, takes the blinders off a salesperson's sales performance and identifies areas of possible improvement so that sales performance can improve.

As salespeople, we get in ruts and we get used to selling the way that feels comfortable to us. We develop habits (some good, but some not so good) and they become part of our automatic way of selling without thinking about what we're doing. A sales coach helps a salesperson to see their sales performance from all different angles so that their bald spot - usually hidden from view - is revealed.

Different from sales training, sales coaching works the same way a golf pro works. A golf pro helps you to perfect your game by identifying problems and finding ways to help you fix them. A sales coach helps you perfect your presentation and your closing and your probing of your prospects by identifying problem areas that can be fixed. Without full knowledge and understanding of one's strengths and weaknesses in selling, salespeople will continue to sell on automatic pilot without the opportunity to refine their weaker performance areas.

The revelation of my bald spot quickly sent me to the pharmacy to buy medicine that may remedy my situation. Knowledge about my balding caused me to react, and this medicine will hopefully solve my balding problem before my bald spot expands to cover the majority of my head.

Sales coaching can do the same thing for a salesperson that my handheld mirror did for me. Selling is a behavior-based skill. It is our selling behaviors that makes us either successful or not successful. My mirror told me I needed to go to the pharmacy. My sales coach may tell me that I need to change this or change that. If you need to tweak your sales behaviors to achieve better sales performance, you'd better know which ones are in need of tweaking, and a good sales coach can help you do that.

So here's to Rogaine!

And here's to sales coaching!

Skip Anderson is a recognized expert on consumer selling. He is the founder of Selling to Consumers, a sales training and consulting firm in Minneapolis. He speaks frequently on sales issues. Get the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips Newsletter at http://www.SellingToConsumers.com

Read the Selling To Consumers Blog at http://blog.sellingtoconsumers.com

This article may be distributed or reproduced as long as an attribution to Selling to Consumers and Skip Anderson are included, along with either a link to http://www.SellingtoConsumers.com (if in electronic form) or a statement including the Selling to Consumers url (if in print).