Coaching To Keep Your Best Employees
On October 19 Kerry will conduct a webinar on Coaching Skills To Keep Your Customer Service Reps From Leaving. (For more details, please click here). We hope you’ll join her. But we think the title may be a bit misleading. Although every organization desperately wants to retain its best employees, most organizations have some employees that they’d rather not keep. Ironically, those are the same employees who are least likely to leave on their own.
In today’s challenging economy, many front-line employees are worried about losing their jobs. Only the most capable employees have the confidence – and the skills – to proactively seek new opportunities. The vast majority of front-line sales and service people are content to hunker down and stay where they are. This poses an enormous challenge to managers and supervisors. How do you keep people engaged, willing to change, and ready to perform at their best?
Effective coaching is the key. The best managers and supervisors don’t take a “one size fits all” approach to coaching their sales and service employees. They take the time to get to know their people and tailor their coaching strategies and activities to meet their individual needs and goals. Here are some questions to help you assess the coaching approach in your organization.
How are you coaching to keep your top performers?
Top performing sales and service representatives fall into two groups. Some want to continue to excel as individual contributors, while others want to move up to positions with management responsibility. In either case, these are the employees you most want to keep. How well do your coaches adjust their approach to support their top performers’ goals and motivations? How are they recognizing and rewarding results while they challenge and support the top performers and learn from their best practices?
How are you coaching to move the middle?
Mid-level performers are the backbone of every sales and service organization. They tend to represent the highest percentage of people on the team and they are already doing a good job. But they may want to do their jobs the same way they always have – especially if they’re long-term employees. Meanwhile, the world is changing and the demands of the business are increasing. How are your managers coaching to get their buy-in to changing the game? How are they coaching to move the middle from what they’re comfortable with to what they’re capable of?
How are you coaching poor performers up or out?
When new representatives join a service or sales team, managers and supervisors need to make an extra investment to help them get up to speed. And from time to time, any employee might experience some performance problems and need some additional coaching support. But chronic poor performers can have a huge negative impact on results, and they can sap the morale and energy of any organization. What are your coaches doing to drive accountability for improvement? How are they helping poor performers increase their effectiveness or seek other employment opportunities that may be better suited to them?
For more information, please join us.
Learn about the powerful coaching strategies that leading organizations are using to retain their top performers, move the middle, and help poor performers step up or move out. If you’re looking to improve the performance of your sales and service team, please join Kerry on October 19 from 1:00-2:00 EDT. To register or get more details, please click here.