Mark Roberge, the founder of the successful CRM company, Hubspot, said that although there are logically different ideal profiles of salespeople, from his actual experience in recruiting hundreds of them, there are 5 characteristics that successful salespeople share.
These characteristics are: curiosity as a genuine interest in knowing the context of the customer, previous success or demonstration of good performance in previous experiences or positions, intelligence as the ability to handle new and complex concepts especially if the sale is B2B, work ethic or high standards and importance of the work within the person’s values and, finally, coachability or a person’s ability to be coached.
I would like to focus on this competence because we may not have given it the importance it has in the selection and development of commercial teams or, as the title of the article says, in any other position, as long as we understand that, nowadays, the key functions of any job are constantly evolving, even going through moments of strong disruption, and the ability to adapt is fundamental.
If we follow Roberge’s teachings, Coachability is defined as the ability of a salesperson to receive feedback, coaching and subsequently apply it to improve our own performance. Roberge, unlike what other companies did by selecting sales representatives and demanding results from the first month, was looking for sales representatives who had the ability and interest in being better every day and to be very attentive to the recommendations for improvement from bosses, clients and colleagues.
A good way to find out if a sales person will be coachable is to role play the candidate in the selection interview itself. Once the role play is over, we ask the candidate to evaluate themselves and we give them constructive feedback through questions that allow them to take sides on our comments. Once this development conversation is over, we repeat the role play and observe the candidate’s willingness to incorporate the lessons learnt into his or her commercial technique. Obviously, it is not a question of measuring improvement in this second interview, but of measuring aspects such as receptiveness to feedback, listening skills and the way in which the person makes an effort to put what they have learnt into practice.
At the end of the day, these are the three behaviours that make us coachable. Now that Wimbledon has just ended and we have experienced another epic victory by Rafa Nadal in his victory over Fritz with injury included (what a pity he was unable to play in the semi-final), I have remembered many of the good and empirical reflections that Toni Nadal makes about Rafa.
Returning to some of the notes that Francisco Alcaide quoted about Toni Nadal in the book “Learning from the Best”, we can highlight the value of being coachable in one of his most paradigmatic examples.
Rafa has stood out for many things, but as Toni says, the most remarkable thing about Rafa has been his desire to learn and improve. Rafa has been willing to do whatever he had to do to improve. And this is perhaps one of the most difficult things to master. Human beings have a natural tendency to do what is most comfortable, what is easiest, the alternative that entails the least inconvenience, but personal growth and comfort are incompatible.
We tend to overestimate ourselves and if we do something wrong we blame it on someone else. When people don’t get what they want they love to blame and excuse themselves. To paraphrase Toni: “It’s amazing how little my nephew Rafa complains”.
Learning costs. To be coachable we must love effort. Effort is not a punishment. For ordinary people, the most effective way to achieve goals is to persevere. Toni once explained “Rafael has been a guy who has pushed himself hard, who has been mentally strong and who has the right attitude in life to achieve his goals. In tennis as in any other aspect of life, work is what can help you improve. Luck can win you a point, but not a tournament”.
Working with specific improvement objectives allows you to have parameters against which to measure results. It is the basis on which the work will be sustained and, above all, give meaning to the daily work. Without improvement objectives, everything is diluted; it is not possible to trace a route because we do not know where we are going.
And finally, in order to improve, you have to train your will, because not everything can always be achieved, especially not at the first attempt. Everything can be trained. We are creatures of habit and habits are built by repeating behaviour in a certain direction. I love what Toni says about willpower: “I have been a coach more concerned with the question of character than with the technical question. I understand that in life, character is fundamental, because in the end, getting a ball over a net is not very important in life, but mastering the will, mastering the effort, wanting to improve, that’s what has real value”.
As we said at the beginning of this post, perhaps coachability is one of the most relevant competences for a salesperson, a tennis player or any other position…
How coachable are you, do you consider this competence in your selection processes, do you work on a coachability culture in your organisation, what sales coaching methodology do you have in place in your sales force?
If the answer is low or negative, here are some guidelines to keep in mind and in the meantime, luckily, we will always have Nadal to remind us of the importance of wanting to be coached to improve!