When To Take Your Team Off the Field (A Note to the Sales Leader)

When you take your team off the field make sure it is achieve the right outcomes.

Too often sales organizations take their sales teams off the field to accomplish things that are better accomplished some other way. They take them off the field to cover administrative or compliance issues. And they’re important issues, too. But this kind of information transfer isn’t normally of a high enough value to make it worthwhile–even when you cover a lot of issues.

The best reason to take your sales team off the field is to improve their ability to sell, not to cover administrative issues. The goal is to put them back on the field better prepared to play the game and win.

Take Them Off the Field for Training

Take them off the field for training. Taking your team off the field to train them returns them to the field with new beliefs, new skills, and new ideas about how to succeed and win business. It’s an investment in better sales outcomes. The return on invested of time is greater than time invested in administrative and compliance issues.

Take Them Off the Field for Coaching

Take them off the field for individual and group coaching. There isn’t a better or more effective use of than coaching, especially individual coaching. Whether the coaching is for personal improvement, coaching the pipeline, coaching opportunities, or coaching time management, it’s the very best reason to take a salesperson off the field. It has the greatest direct impact on results.

It can often feel like you’re being productive by using the time you have with your sales force to cover everything you need–or want–to cover. But time taken away from improving the sales force’s ability is time that isn’t easily recovered. Ask yourself if the administrative and compliance stuff can’t be better handled in some other medium.