Crushing Quota (book summary & review)

Crushing Quota: Proven Sales Coaching Tactics for Breakthrough Performance by Michelle Vazzana & Jason Jordan

Key Takeaways

Focus coaching on specific sales activities (which link to objectives which link to results)
High performing managers:
- Schedule coaching conversations (rather than allowing them to happen ad-hoc)
- Hold fewer but longer & more in-depth coaching conversations
- Use written agendas for coaching sessions (with fewer items covered in more depth) that at least include: (a) review of action items from prior meetings (b) focused discussion (c) next steps =summary of action items by the AE
- Prioritize to adapt the necessity & formality of coaching to the specific situation at hand
- Spend less time in the field
- Focus more on early-stage than late-stageopportunity coaching
- Proactively engage in call planning coaching basedon the importance on the call and regardless of whether the manager will attend.Moreover, high performers attend more early-stage calls than their lowperforming peers.
- Hold updates with the following frequencies& durations:
  - Territory plans = tactical monthly for 1 hour +strategic quarterly for 1 hour
  - Account coaching = monthly
  - Opportunity coaching = monthly (though dependson sales cycle) for 1 hour
  - Call coaching = weekly as-needed for 30 to 60minutes
For processes and associated coaching to workthey must be:
- Well-defined, with standards for what good lookslike
- Measured on quantity/completion as well asquality to ensure people do well what they say they are going to do
- Viable in the sense that they can be done bynormal humans in the time they have available
- Executed with a consistent rhythm

Overall Review

Bottom line: Current and aspiring sales managers should buy and read this book. It starts off very, very slowly then progressively becomes valuable.

What I liked:

The recommendations in the book are based on research survey rather than on opinion.
The book is a practical guide to implementing the recommendations from their prior book – “Cracking the Sales Management Code” – which is one of my favorite sales books of all time.
There are realistic, well-written examples ofcoaching dialogues.

What I did not like:

Part I of the book is very slow and tedious. I almost gave up but I’m glad I persevered. My advice – just skip Part I.
While the authors say they “collected data from over 1000 managers,” they do not provide sample sizes for each of their findings. For instance, 45% and 55% are not statistically different if a question was responded to by 100 managers whereas it would be if responded to by all 1000.
The book becomes a bit more self-promotional as it moves on.
While there are deeply valuable insights on coaching, the book is highly inefficient in the sense that you need to read a lot of words to extract each nugget.

PART I COACHING: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT ISN’T, AND WHAT IT COULD BE

CHAPTER 1: THE CASE FOR BETTER SALES COACHING

(no key highlights from this chapter)

CHAPTER 2: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE: THE SCARY REALITY OF SALES MANAGEMENT

Effective coaching is concrete and laser focused on discrete behaviors.

CHAPTER 3: SALES COACHING: HOW IT’S WRONG AND WHY IT FAILS

Lower-performing managers reported spending more time in the field compared to their high-performing counterparts
Sales coaching is equipping salespeople to execute activities consistently well. The best sales coaching involves collaborative dialogue between manager and seller about the activities necessary to get that salesperson to quota.
How many times would the salespeople be willing to pay for the coaching they received?
An effective pre-call plan includes the following items:
- An objective for the call
- An agenda with timings
- Key questions the seller should ask
- Possible solutions to discuss
- An actionable next step
Managers need to coach what they can affect. Our research has revealed that the only things managers can directly manage are sales activities.

PART II THE GROUNDWORK FOR GREATNESS

CHAPTER 4 DECIDING WHAT TO COACH

We coach because we want certain outcomes, but we can’t coach those outcomes directly.
Incentive compensation, need for achievement, and clarity of the sales task were the only three things that significantly influenced salesperson motivation.
- Clarity of task is the degree to which the activities you ask sellers to perform are directly aligned with the results they are held accountable to achieve.
Results-Objective-Activities (ROA) framework:
- Business results are organizational targets or outcomes that are used to measure the health of the organization such as Revenue; Profit; Market share
- Sales objectives are interim guideposts, or key performance indicators, that organizations establish to provide directional guidance for seller effort such as Product penetration per account; Sales by customer type; Close rate
- Sales activities are things sellers do to make sales such as Product demonstrations conducted; Proposals delivered; Call plan usage
Four distinct groups of activities
- Territory Management Activities: Warranted when a salesperson’s assignment includes a large number of customers and prospects. Tasks include developing a prioritization scheme, prioritizing customers, designing call patterns according to the prioritization scheme, and executing calls.
- Account Management Activities: Necessary when a single account is large and important enough to warrant significant attention and effort. Account management activities revolve around the development, execution, and continual refinement of account plans to help salespeople penetrate, retain, and grow large accounts. The most important strategic activity within account management is the development of an account plan.
- Opportunity Management Activities: Necessary when winning individual deals is complex, requires multiple interactions, and often involves multiple decision-makers.
  - Activities in the early stage of opportunity pursuit are oriented toward understanding buyer needs and qualifying the opportunity.
  - Once a salesperson decides to pursue an opportunity, activities revolve around the identification and shaping of buying criteria.
- Call Management Activities: Call management activities involve planning, conducting, and capturing individual customer interactions.
As a sales manager, it is your job to connect the dots between these three levels of metrics [results, objectives, andactivities] to ensure that salespeople focus their effort on the right things.
Deploying a new process does not necessarilylead to adoption of that process.
It doesn’t matter how much of an activitysalespeople perform if they are not executing the activity correctly. Qualitativestandards to ensure that sellers know how to execute activities effectively andquantitative standards to clarify when and how much of an activity is expected.

CHAPTER 5 STRUCTURING COACHING CONVERSATIONS

One of the most important, and often overlooked, elements of effective coaching is the use of an agenda.
Establishing a written agenda, agreeing to it at the beginning of the coaching discussion, and then reviewing it at the end of the meeting is a best practice of high-performing sales managers.
Have fewer agenda items and cover those items in more depth.
High-performing managers spend almost as much time preparing for coaching as they spend coaching.
Diego expected each of his salespeople to come prepared to discuss three current opportunities. Diego had criteria for his sellers to use to help them select the three opportunities. Diego also required that each salesperson communicate their selected opportunities ahead time so that he could go into the customer relationship management (CRM) system and review the notes.
Accountability means the salesperson owns the commitments made during coaching discussions.
Managers always take notes during coaching discussions.
Managers must ensure that their salespeople take detailed notes.
A critical part of an effective agenda should involve a review of action items, status, and progress from prior meetings.
Good coaching conversations follow a similar pattern. The coach and the seller are prepared. An agenda is agreed upon. There is a balance of give-and-take on the part of the manager and the seller. They are highly collaborative, incorporate powerful questions, and result in actionable next steps.
The best sales coaches make recommendations in the form of questions. This gives the salesperson the opportunity to own the idea.
Meeting structure:
- Opening: includes an agenda, agreement on time frame, and desired outcome.
- Seeking Information
  - When the coach does not prepare good questions prior to the coaching conversation, the tendency is to give too much information — to tell the seller what to do.
  - Open-ended questions are useful early in the dialogue because they tend to be more general in nature
  - Empathy is a very powerful coaching behavior, and it helps create a welcoming environment, one in which sellers feel free to be open and share real information.
  - Most managers in her analysis also failed to gain salesperson feedback on the effectiveness of the coaching they provided. A few final questions to consider are, “What was most valuable or helpful about this conversation? What could have been improved?
- Giving Information
- Summarizing
- Closing: Effective coaching discussions end with actionable next steps. Having the salesperson summarize the decisions and theagreed-upon actions is a best practice.

CHAPTER 6 FORMALIZING SALES COACHING INTO YOUR DAY-TO-DAY JOB

For a coaching plan to be viable, it must be realistic and fit into the job you have.
Formality is never an all-or-nothing proposition because different types of coaching interactions warrant different levels of formality.
Ad hoc conversations feel efficient, but they are just not effective.
Managers who incorporate even a minimal amount of formality into their coaching dramatically improve the quality, and perceived quantity, of their sales coaching.
Typical Scheduled Recurring CoachingInteractions: Pipeline reviews; Territory reviews; Account plans and reviews
Top sales managers: schedule coaching conversations; keep their scheduled coaching sessions a higher percentage of the time; conduct coaching conversations less frequently; conduct longer, more in-depth discussions.
We found a direct negative correlation between inspection and performance.
We found that the most successful sales managersprovided a moderate amount of coaching whereas the low performers tended togravitate toward the extremes.
The least successful managers reported thehighest amount of time in the field.

PART II COACHING TO ACTIVITIES: THE ITTY BITTY NITTY GRITTY

CHAPTER 7 TERRITORY AND ACCOUNT COACHING

Territory management is designed to help salespeople properly apply effort across many accounts, whereas account management is about applying effort most effectively within an account.
Prioritization schemes do not have to be complicated, but they must be specific. Helping coach your salespeople to focus on the customers with the highest potential pays off.
High-performing managers required monthly updates to (tactical) territory plans. Average and low-performing managers were more likely to require quarterly updates.
Hold strategic territory discussions quarterly
High performers who focused their discussions on call patterns had those coaching discussion weekly.
All managers in our study, regardless of performance level, spent roughly one hour in each territory coaching discussion.
The most prevalent topics for territory coaching were account prioritization, followed by call patterns, and finally targeted messaging to gain new customers.
Managers who formally scheduled their territory coaching discussions were over three times as likely to discuss targeted messaging
The last and most important aspect of territory management and coaching is ensuring that salespeople do what they say they will do.
The strategic elements of account management, and associated coaching, typically include some sort of account assessment or analysis.
It is vital to ensure that your salespeople understand client goals and objectives, as well as any associated initiatives, because these initiatives will be top of mind for key contacts within the account.
Salespeople must also identify key decision-makers and influencers within the account.
The tactical aspect of account coaching involves execution of an action plan. Action plans include specific types of activities that must be accomplished, time frames for the execution of those activities, and resources needed to support those activities
The percentage of managers who require plans for all accounts is higher for high performers than for their lower-performing peers. This makes sense because salespeople who handle large, important accounts typically have very few of them.
The most typical frequency of account coaching discussions was monthly.
The agenda for the formal client meetingscontained the following items:
- Performance survey feedback from the client,with specific areas of suggested improvements
- Discussion of potential client needs
- Agreement with client on which products andservices to pursue further
The highest-performing managers focus onstrategic account coaching (assess the customer’s business needs; align yourneeds with the customer’s; develop a plan to create mutual value). The lower performers focus on tactical accountcoaching (Execute tasks according to plan; measure and course correct).

CHAPTER 8 OPPORTUNITY COACHING

The goal of opportunity coaching is to help salespeople qualify, pursue, and win deals.
The initial goal of opportunity coaching is to determine whether an opportunity is worthy of pursuit.
Selling in the identify needs stage is oriented toward effective opportunity qualification. Typical sales activities at this stage include
- Identify the steps of the customers’ buying process.
- Identify key decision-makers and influencers.
- Uncover and assess buyer and/or business needs.
- Identify project budget.
Lack of established buying criteria is a telling sign that a buyer is not serious about making a buying decision.
Selling in the establish criteria stage is oriented toward understanding and shaping the criteria buyers will use to make their purchase decision. Coaching in this stage can help the salespeople determine how to establish value and set themselves up for differentiation in later stages of the buying process.
Coaching to ensure that sellers find out which competitors are being considered is also vital.
The only way salespeople can gain a true picture of the perceived strength or weakness of their solution is by getting this information from the buyers.
Coaching in the assess solutions stage is oriented toward helping salespeople position their solution in the most attractive light based on established buying criteria.
Salespeople must vet the buyers’ perception of their solution, as well as the buyers’ perception of other solutions under consideration.
It is shocking how many tenured salespeople don’t ask buyers how they rate the different solutions under consideration. Selling in the mitigate risks stage involves the surfacing of buyer concerns, negotiation of terms, and development of implementation plans.
It is also important for salespeople to hold off on any type of negotiation until all buyer concerns have been addressed. Negotiation is not a substitute for good selling and should not be considered until all buyer risks and concerns have been mitigated.
Coaching during the mitigate risks stage is oriented toward helping salespeople build buyer confidence.
Counter to conventional wisdom, these late stages are not the ones that benefit most from coaching.
The top-performing managers in our study overwhelmingly orient their coaching toward the early stage of opportunity pursuit.
If salespeople have not been involved at all in the shaping of the buyers’ criteria, it is highly unlikely they will win the deal.
Just because the buyer has received a proposal, it doesn’t mean that the buyer is at the assess solutions stage.
In our experience, we’ve found that two or three opportunities is about the limit of what can realistically be covered in a one-hour coaching conversation.
Not all opportunities salespeople pursue are equally complex enough to warrant a formal plan.
High-performing managers were more likely to require formal plans for only a subset of opportunities versus all opportunities.
High-performing managers tend to conduct these meetings as scheduled a higher percentage of the time.
The longer the sales cycles, the less frequentlymanagers conducted opportunity coaching discussions.
The most common frequency for high-performingmanagers was monthly opportunity coaching discussions.
Salespeople were required to update their CRMsystem prior to the coaching meeting, come prepared to discuss progress oncurrent opportunities, and provide updates on action items from previouscoaching discussions.
Sales managers needed to be held accountable forconducting the coaching sessions effectively and using the tools provided.
Sales directors should observe their managerscoaching AEs and provide feedback.

CHAPTER 9 CALL COACHING

We will explore call coaching via call planning, call observation, and feedback of observed calls
The number one reason high performers help their salespeople plan a sales call is because of the importance of the sales call.
High performers are strongly oriented to proactive call planning regardless of whether they attend those calls.
Buyers’ interests change as an opportunity progresses, and so must the salesperson’s approach to individual interactions within that opportunity.
Good call coaching helps equip salespeople to question their buyers about the cost of inaction
Focus your call coaching efforts to help your salesperson shape those needs and quantify them into criteria that will best position your solutions.
Sellers who are most effective find out with whom they are competing, the solutions their competitors are providing, and the buyers’ perception of each solution.
Call coaching prior to a solution presentation is primarily geared toward ensuring that the salesperson has clarified the criteria buyers will use to make their decision and that the salesperson has gained information about competitors under consideration.
Call coaching in this late mitigate risks stage of the buying process is designed to help salespeople build buyer confidence.
High-performing managers were twice as likely as their lower-performing peers to spend time in their scheduled opportunity coaching discussions planning upcoming calls.
Begin with the end. The first step in helping your salespeople plan an upcoming sales call is to determine their desired outcome for that interaction.
Anticipate buyer interests. Anticipate objections. Plan the opening.
Not all calls are complex enough to warrant comprehensive planning
High-performing managers are significantly more likely to require plans for only a subset of sales calls as compared to their lowest-performing peers. Be mindful of setting realistic expectations with your salespeople. Be clear about the set of conditions that must exist to warrant in-depth call planning.
Attending sales calls for purposes of observation and feedback is best done at the early stages of an opportunity.
High performers are 15 percent more likely than their lower-performing peers to attend sales calls in the early stages of an opportunity.
Most call coaching is as needed because of the natureof sales calls.
The most frequently selected time allocation forhigh-performing managers is between 30 and 60 minutes.

CHAPTER 10 REALITY IS MESSY: ADAPTING COACHING TO A FEW SPECIAL SITUATIONS

Those who are able to set a rhythm and execute it consistently, exhibit the following tendencies:
- Schedule coaching sessions on different days of the week, say, Monday and Fridays — days least likely to conflict with urgent business demands.
- Schedule different salespeople for different weeks — meet with some salespeople midmonth, meet with other salespeople at the beginning or end of the month — allowing more flexibility to meet business demands.
- Schedule breaks in between coaching discussions— allowing them to address urgent tasks and reduce stress.