Professional sports teams are big business. In the National Football League (NFL), the average salary for a head coach is $6,692,000, and quarterback coaches average $200K. A Major League Baseball (MLB) pitching coach makes between $200K-$360K a year. In both leagues, professional players bring significant experience and receive remarkably high salaries, yet they practice hard during training camps and the playing season. They are successful because, as talented as they are, they all have incredible coaches and constantly work to improve their performance.
Coaches create their game day plan before game day
NFL coaches analyze opponents’ game videos, and players study their opponents before game day. They invest tremendous time preparing for the game. In addition to pre-planning for game day, coaches are on the football field sidelines and in the dugouts coaching their players before every play on game day. Yet not one of those teams or players would set foot on a football field or baseball diamond without their head coach, the coaching staff, and a game day plan. Millions of people – and the media – are watching on game day. Talk about pressure. Professional sports teams and their coaches receive immediate performance reviews from fans and the press, who scrutinize every play and every action on the field. Feedback is instantaneous. But that kind of feedback is not valuable coaching.
Professional sports team owners depend on recruiting outstanding coaches who can develop strong relationships between coaches and players to produce winning seasons and championships. They pay big bucks for the best coaches and coaching staff. What would the results be if coaches stayed in their offices and watched the games on TV? What would happen if the coaching staff merely reported the stats to the owner after every game? What would happen if NFL or MLB head coaches walked into the team locker rooms and said, “You need to achieve this number of touchdowns and field goals this season, or “you need to hit this number of home runs this season,” then walked back out of the locker room and expected their teams to deliver the results. Just imagine that!
Learning from the big business of professional sports – beyond the playing field and training camps
It amazes me the number of companies that do not invest in leaders who are genuine revenue and business relationship management coaches. Consider your business. Do your Chief Revenue Officer and their sales management staff provide coaching in the field for individual members of the sales and account executive team? What coaching are they doing in the field to improve individual staff performance? Are they collaborating with staff to pre-plan each sales call with a customer? Does your company have a sustainable and consistent process for sales coaching, led by the sales and account management leadership, to increase the performance of your sales and account executive professionals? Are you invested in account management leadership coaching to drive revenue growth and retention of profitable business relationships?
Think about your Chief Revenue Officer and Account Management GM
Are your Chief Revenue Officer and account management leaders sitting in senior leadership meetings reporting stats that include trends, sales updates, and customer contract renewal numbers? Are they conducting staff meetings where they deliver the message and mandate annual sales and organic growth quotas from their teams? Or are they truly engaged in weekly field coaching with their highly skilled staff to enable them to increase performance and develop their teams into actual revenue and business relationship management champions? Is your senior leadership providing weekly reporting on their coaching progress? Are sales and account management leaders effective coaches?
Many companies invest in training salespeople and account executives assuming the leaders know what to do to provide effective coaching. The reality is the leaders often haven’t learned how to effectively coach, and even worse, we find that leaders from the same company disagree on a standard definition of a quality sales call. How can effective coaching occur without it? Imagine if professional sports coaches could not agree on how to coach and develop their teams or game day plan.
Do you need to invest in coaching? To be effective, make it about them.
Remember, it’s about leadership – It’s about you!
