Cash In With a Coaching Culture

Adam Arnett, the CEO and president of the outsourcing company Element Personal Training, shares how using these “Six C’s” of coaching will increase production.

Often the difference-maker between an underperforming team and one that excels boils down to one reason only: Who’s coaching them.

If you have ever been part of a sales team, at some point you have witnessed the following scenario: A change in leadership is made and the production of the team immediately goes up. How could that be? How can a new manager get better results than their predecessor while overseeing the exact same employees selling the exact same products?

We have found it’s directly linked to the quantity and quality of their coaching.

Many companies wrongly believe all a new recruit needs to succeed is the entire sales manual thrown at them. Their process usually includes a one-week period where the employee does some combination of watching learning videos, spending time shadowing a seasoned vet in the field, and classroom learning doing role play situations and memorizing scripts. Then once the onboarding is over, they are given a sales goal to hit, and set loose to sink or swim.

The cycle remains the same. A majority of those employees ultimately fail to meet their goals, and the leadership explains it away as that person not “having enough drive” or “lacking the right personality.”

For employees to be successful and consistently meet their goals, the coaching must last beyond their first weeks and be consistent and persistent. All employees need ongoing assessments, feedback and skills practice no matter how seasoned and successful they are in their position.

With this in mind, improve your coaching quality using the “Six C’s:”

CALENDAR: Set this in stone and never cancel your coaching sessions. We recommend a 15-minute session as a pre-game warm up to start each day, and a deep-dive, 60-minute session once weekly.

CRITICALS: You need to decide what they are for your gym goals, then track the stats and actions most important to achieve them. For personal training we recommend: Sets made per 100 members; show percentage; close percentage; average gross and down payment collected per sale. Knowing these will guide your daily and weekly session agendas.

CURIOUS: Start every session with questions. Ask them to analyze their stats and explain their reasons for the good and bad. If you start off by telling them what you think is wrong, it conditions them to rely on you. It’s more empowering for them to be able to self-evaluate and self-correct.

CARING: Follow the questions with how their “bad” stats affect them, their trainers and members. Show them “what ifs” such as, “What if you double your sets, what could you earn?”

COACH: Their three worst criticals should be the focus. Role playing is most effective. For example, if their closing percentage is low, you can role play objection handling.

CHART: Between weekly sessions, you should track changes in the criticals you’ve been coaching them on. This provides valuable feedback on how effective your coaching is.