Coaching
Coaching via webcam
16/04/2020
We are in April 2020, in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Social life is heavily disrupted. Businesses are as well.
We were in the middle of some coaching projects with newly promoted marketing leads and medical affairs leads. Since non-essential travel was not allowed and physical distancing was in place, we pivoted to Zoom sessions with our coachees.
It felt a bit awkward at first, and it came with some technical challenges, but quickly it became an effective method to continue the coaching interactions.
It would not have worked we think, in the absence of an existing rapport between the coach and coachee created in real live thanks to some earlier face-to-face meetings.
So, the future of coaching is definitely not 100% online. But it could play an important role to gain some efficiency halfway the coaching session (less travel, no office rental). Start and end, in our opinion, will require physical presence in the same room in order to be really effective.
We were in the middle of some coaching projects with newly promoted marketing leads and medical affairs leads. Since non-essential travel was not allowed and physical distancing was in place, we pivoted to Zoom sessions with our coachees.
It felt a bit awkward at first, and it came with some technical challenges, but quickly it became an effective method to continue the coaching interactions.
It would not have worked we think, in the absence of an existing rapport between the coach and coachee created in real live thanks to some earlier face-to-face meetings.
So, the future of coaching is definitely not 100% online. But it could play an important role to gain some efficiency halfway the coaching session (less travel, no office rental). Start and end, in our opinion, will require physical presence in the same room in order to be really effective.
From Super Rep to Sales Manager
01/09/2015
We all know how it goes: A Super Rep gets promoted to the position of first line Sales Manager. Of course, "if you know how to sell, you know how to lead a Sales team", no? (Sarcasm). This is the biggest mistake many medical companies make: promoting the high potential Key Account Manager to Sales Manager without offering support. What people tend to forget is that this is a ENTIRELY DIFFERENT JOB! The skills of a successful Sales Manager may not be present at the start of this new role. This creates frustration in the newly promoted Sales Expert. On top of that, she now has her peers reporting into her! She can't make the difference anymore by selling, she needs to do it THROUGH other people. Quite challenging. It should be standard practice for companies promoting former reps to offer them a coach for 6 months. This will serve as a shock absorber. We enjoyed greatly to accompany a newly appointed Sales Manager on her new trajectory. We started by making sure the person understood her default leadership style, became very mindful about this, before she could start working on her rapport with peers, the team and her manager.