1. Leadership Assessment

Using the most sophisticated diagnostic tools available, RJP begins the leadership coaching and development process by identifying the goals, skills, and behaviors of the current sales management team in order to determine if they have the right leadership necessary to transform your organization into a high-performance team.

2. We Predict Performance Improvement

There is a difference between claims and reality.  Richard James & Partners assists clients in building high-performance sales leadership teams that outperform their competition. Your sales leadership team is your competitive advantage regardless of economic circumstances or market challenges. Successful companies recognize the importance of sales coaching and leadership development and consistently invest in enhancing the skills of their sales managers, year after year.

There is a defined methodology to leadership coaching, and we believe there is none better than the program we provide with our strategic partner Integrity Solutions. RJP and Integrity Solutions have been providing breakthrough Integrity Coaching methodology that has improved the competence and confidence of sales managers around the world for more than 40 years. 

3. Sales Coaching and Leadership Development Is A Long Term Process, Not An Event

We at Richard James & Partners do not consider sales training to be a one-time “event,” but rather one that begins when a new person begins employment, is enhanced by the sales manager throughout the year, and is enhanced every year thereafter.

There are a lot of choices out there to select from when deciding on what approach to take for sales coaching and leadership development. Historically, sales executives sent their managers to one-day training programs, or utilized psychologists or “coaches” from outside their organizations that were high on promise but did not deliver the desired leadership behavior changes in their sales managers, or the sales revenue increases they desired. There is only one organization, Richard James & Partners, in collaboration with its clients, focused on coaching the sales manager to be a high-performance sales coach, establish a long-term, continuous improvement leadership development strategy, including metrics and accountability, that assists clients build a high-performance sales management organization that outperforms their competition.

4. Sales Coaching and Leadership Development Methodology

There is a defined methodology to leadership coaching, and we believe there is none better than the program we provide with our strategic partner Integrity Solutions. RJP, in a strategic partnership with Integrity Solutions, has been providing breakthrough Integrity Coaching methodology that has improved the competence and confidence of sales managers around the world for more than 40 years.

5. Managing Versus Coaching Skills

Managing and coaching are indeed two separate sets of skills. A manager’s time is often occupied with solving problems, managing budgets, and putting out fires. The RJP and Integrity Coaching methodology allows sales managers, responsible for a sales team who are generating revenue, to free up more of their time for coaching. Coaching is building people. It’s helping them set and achieve higher goals. It’s creating a positive, challenging environment where people motivate themselves and continually perform on higher and higher levels. It’s only when you develop sales people that you build your high-performing leadership and sales team. Long term, it can’t be otherwise.

6. Overcoming The Law of Limited Performance

There’s a natural law at work in every organization that, if allowed to express itself, will guarantee mediocrity. It’s the Law of Limited Performance. And here’s what it is. Sales people soon discover the level of performance their manager will settle for and gravitate to that level. Managers then assume that’s all their sales people are capable of achieving, so they accept it as fact and quit challenging their people to get better. So, both reinforce what the other believes. Eighty percent of sales people will perform below their potential unless encouraged and challenged by their sales manager. How do you break this natural law? Under the guidance of a RJP Coach, your managers, in weekly meetings set goals, report successes, and begin doing hands-on coaching with their sales team. This gets your managers and sales people setting higher and higher goals. The process also teaches the managers to hold themselves and their sales people accountable while achieving higher performance more quickly.

7. We Are Strategic Partners With Our Clients

A number of coaching and leadership development companies will sell you a program and leave the results up to you.

 At Richard James & Partners, we:

• Assess your current leadership skills to establish baseline data for development.
• Learn and understand your sales goals, the various types of customers and their unique purchasing needs, the mix of your current sales team, and the different kinds of leadership skills and behavior your managers may need to be effective.
• See ourselves as a member of your sales leadership team, not a vendor of coaching and leadership development.

• 360/720 Multi-Raters of Manager Performance

Traditionally, managers are evaluated by whether they hit their sales revenue and profit budgets. RJP recommends that evaluation also include how well managers are coaching their team. In addition to the traditional evaluation by the incumbent and the immediate supervisor, we suggest that evaluations also be done by peers, direct reports, key customers [if appropriate], and others in the organization who are impacted by this manager’s performance.

8. We Provide A Return On Investment From Coaching

Richard James & Partners delivers outcome. By using Integrity Coaching and the RJP strategy for continuous improvement, we will enhance the “coaching skills” of your current leadership team and assure they are doing the right activities needed to transform salespeople into a high-performance team. Measurements such as revenue growth, new customers, profitability, customer satisfaction, reduced turnover, etc. may be published each year to assure a high return on investment.

For more information about the RJP approach to sales coaching and leadership development, and why it is a critical component of a long-term, continuous improvement strategy to building a high-performance organization that outperforms your competition, contact Richard James & Partners.