How to Improve Yourself Through Coaching with Danny Brown The ValuePros Podcast

“When it comes to learning as a salesperson, one essential function is opening up to coaching and feedback. This episode looks at why professional feedback matters and what you can do to become open to self-improvement.”
 
Episode Overview
In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Danny Brown about how seeking coaching and feedback can lead to more effective sales and stronger professional relationships. Danny is the Head of Business Development and Alliances at SherWeb, a cloud management service that focuses on helping businesses increase efficiency and improve user experience. Additionally, Danny is an experienced speaker and sales coach who focuses on developing companies and organizations through a culture of continuous improvement.
Becoming Better Salespeople Through the Power of Coaching
The ever-evolving world of sales demands an ever-evolving salesperson. Drawing on his experience in athletics, Danny Brown argues that all salespeople need to learn to appreciate coaching as a tool for maximizing their success. Coaching refers to the immediate professional feedback provided by peers, managers, and actual sales coaches. The goal of coaches is simple:  they want you to improve.
Coaching and feedback are essential to sales success. Those who seek coaching advice are three times more likely to achieve their sales quotas. Overall, seeking out coaching can help reduce your close rate (i.e., the time it takes to close a sale) and maximize your success rate.
How should you prepare for receiving coaching?
According to Danny Brown, there are three key ingredients that every salesperson must have for successful coaching:
The desire to improve The willingness to receive continuous feedback The ability to hone your craft through practice The success of coaching always comes down to you. Just like athletes who are driven by the constant desire to improve themselves, salespeople must have that same drive. Ask yourself:  Are you ready to accept feedback from others? If not, how can you change your mindset to be more open? If you don’t have the desire to improve, you are less likely to take the steps necessary to make adjustments to your sales strategies.
In addition to a desire to improve, salespeople must adjust their mindset to be open to continuous feedback and improvement. One successful sale or one successful adjustment is not a good reason to stop improving. Instead, you should treat successes as doors to additional improvements. After all, sales can vary from client to client, and the same strategy may not work the same way in each situation.
Lastly, practice is essential for honing your craft. Without it, you may fall back on faulty practices, regularly change sales strategies, or stagnate as a salesperson. Danny Brown suggests that salespeople need to turn back to the cadence of sales and to “practice perfect” to fine-tune their sales strategies. More importantly, “practice perfect” requires a mindset of readiness-to-learn to make practice effective and useful.
One way to make practice more meaningful is to self-analyze both yourself and a successful sales story. For yourself, you should ask:
Who are you as a salesperson? What do you do as a professional? What does your company do? What are the implications of feedback for you as a seller? What things do you need to think about when approaching each sale? What pitfalls do you need to watch out for both in approaching a sales conversation and in soliciting feedback from a coach? When analyzing successful sales stories, consider these questions:
What makes the success story a “success”? What worked? How do you repeat that sales story over and over again so it becomes a kind of sales muscle memory? Answering these questions for yourself will serve as a strong starting point before you approach a colleague or manager for coaching advice.
When should you seek feedback?
Most salespeople receive feedback through annual or quarterly performan