Top 10 Sales Coaching Myths Exposed

By Jeremy Ulmer

As I was doing research on the sales coaching industry, I discovered there is a great deal of garbage about sales coaching on the internet. People who are posing as sales experts are infiltrating minds with myths that are absolutely false! And, that’s exactly why I’ve written this article... To make some waves in my industry by debunking 10 of these myths right now.

Sales Coaching Myth #1: "Successful sales professionals and sales leaders do not need coaches."  Sales Coaching Fact: Professionals have coaches and amateurs do not. Coaching helps the best get better, the good to become great, and the struggling to breakthrough.

Sales Coaching Myth #2: "I can coach myself for free or talk to my peers or sales manager."  Sales Coaching Fact: Yes, you can and should talk to these people, but you will not get the same results you get from working with a professional sales coach. Your managers, peers, and friends will all have their own agenda, not be professionally trained in coaching skills, will be biased, and will not provide the same accountability or partnership that you receive from an external coach.

Sales Coaching Myth #3: "I get all the sales information I can possibly use right now from sales books, sales articles, and my sales manager."  Sales Coaching Fact: Information and knowledge is helpful only if you can translate it into action. Coaching will help translate your knowledge, ideas, goals, and intentions into reality.

Sales Coaching Myth #4: "A sales coach is the same as a sales mentor."  Sales Coaching Fact: Mentoring is important, but it is typically informal, open-ended, and the mentor is not professionally trained to best support you. Sales coaching provides clearly-defined goals that are created with you, learning, actions, professional support, motivation, focus, and on-going accountability.

Sales Coaching Myth #5: "Coaching is like going to therapy."  Sales Coaching Fact: Therapy deals with the past and present. Coaches work with the present and future.  A coach's role is to turbo charge your results, maximize your productivity and effectiveness. Coaching is based on partnership, goals, plans, and the alliance designed by the coach and client together. In therapy, the "treatment plan" is largely designed by the therapist.

Sales Coaching Myth #6: "Coaching fosters an unhealthy dependency on others."  Sales Coaching Fact: Coaching helps clients to better self manage themselves, grow, and feel empowered, not dependent.

Sales Coaching Myth #7: "We do not need on-going sales coaching, we have a sales training program."  Sales Coaching Fact: Most sales training has a very short-term effect on performance and less than 15% of the information is retained and implemented. Sales Coaching provides on-going support, on-going results, growth, changes in behavior, attitude, implementation of new skills, new actions, accountability, improved productivity, and a customized approach.

Sales Coaching Myth #8: "Coaching should only be a short-term solution."  Sales Coaching Fact: A long-term partnership with the right sales coach will continue to add value for many years.

Sales Coaching Myth #9: "Sales Coaching focuses strictly on your sales career and professional life only."  Sales Coaching Fact: The success in your professional life and personal life are all connected. The more balanced you are, the more energy you have, the more fulfillment you have in all areas, the more success you will experience. A good sales coach should be trained to support you holistically and ready to support you in all ways.

Sales Coaching Myth #10: "I need to be more organized or more successful before I hire a coach."  Sales Coaching Fact: Coaching will help you get more organized and achieve more success faster than you can ever create on your own.

If all of these myths were true, sales coaching would have failed a long time ago. The fact is, the industry is expanding rapidly as individuals and organizations are looking for new ways to create more sales success, faster. Sales coaching from a top level sales coach has proven to deliver remarkable sales results and my hope is that by debunking these myths, you can find the right sales coach for yourself or your organization.

Read other articles and learn more about Jeremy Ulmer.

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