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Leadership Skills: Feedback Model
An Introduction to Providing Effective Feedback
Copyright 1999-2009 Michael Markette
People won't get great at their jobs unless you do a great job of giving them feedback. Whether you manage a sales team or an entire company of sales professionals, giving feedback needs to be part of the ongoing processes that make up your culture. And feedback is no different from any other business process in that you get out of it only what you put into it. Before a sales manager ever gives feedback to any of their reps, they need to first instill feedback lesson number one upon their team:
Feedback provides an individual with information that can be used in performing personal evaluation. It is the job of that individual to seek out feedback, to accept it, use it, and improve themselves everyday.
Too often sales managers feel compelled to provide feedback, sometimes called "curbside critiques", to their team members without first establishing a healthy culture that expects feedback and understands the rules for giving and receiving it. Feedback without a culture that supports it tends to become criticism, which is evaluative and subjective. These elements rarely help individuals to improve themselves.
The feedback model should be shared with everyone within your sales organization and adopted universally to be used downstream, between peers and upstream as well.
Feedback Model
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Be Timely In Providing Feedback
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Focus on Controllable Areas of Interest to the Individual
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Ask If The Individual Is Open For Feedback
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Be Descriptive and Site Examples
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Describe How The Behavior Impacted the Situation
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Check to Insure Clear Communication
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Summarize
Provide Timely Feedback
Give feedback as soon as possible after an incident occurs. The sooner your team member receives feedback from you, the easier it is for them to recall the actions you described to them. The purpose of giving feedback is so the recipient can clearly reflect upon their behavior and draw conclusions on how a change in their behavior may have impacted the situation differently. Timing is especially important if you are providing feedback on an area or skill that the individual was not aware they had a deficiency in. Should you wait until some later point in time to discuss the situation, the recipient may not recall any particulars.
Pick the Right Place
The worst thing you can do is to give negative feedback to a salesperson within earshot of someone else. Be sensitive to the discomfort or embarrassment such a situation can create for the employee.
Don't Allow Interruptions
Don't take phone calls or let people walk in and out of your meeting. Taking the worker aside to give him or her feedback, and having a conversation in a calm and businesslike setting, sends the message that you want to create a climate for better understanding, and that the employee's job performance and success really matter to you.
Prepare Yourself
How you say things is as important as when you say things. If you are upset or angry about a situation, don't give feedback until you have cooled down.
Focus on Controllable Areas of Interest to the Individual
We do not want to overwhelm our sales staff or try to hard to steer them in a specific direction. Effective feedback takes into account the needs of the receiver of the feedback. Feedback can be destructive when it serves only your own needs and fails to consider the needs of the person on the receiving end. It should be given to help, not to hurt. Be sure and focus on an area that can be controlled or one that the individual is prepared to tackle at this stage in their career.
Ask If The Individual Is Open For Feedback
We want to instill this principle in all of our team members: feedback is solicited, rather than imposed. Even if a sales manager wants to give unsolicited feedback, they should ask if the recipient is open to receive it prior to delivering it. On occasion, individuals may not be in the right frame of mind to hear feedback. If they felt the sales call did not go well and are a bit emotional about it, feedback will go in one ear and out the other. A good sales manager recognizes this and accepts a "no" response to the question, "Are you open to some feedback?" Certainly, sale s rep have to open up sometime, hopefully sooner than later.
Be Descriptive and Site Examples
Your job first step in giving effective feedback is to replay the event that you are providing feedback about. You want a clear picture in the mind of the recipient to help them recall every word said and action taken. For example, rather than telling a sales person that they were "dominating the call" relive the situation by saying, "When the prospect threw out objections, you did not explore them and instead spoke strongly about how the objection was not an issue." At this point you may want to share a specific example about one actual objection that the prospect threw out. At this stage in giving feedback you need the provider and recipient of the feedback to agree on the facts of the situation.
Describe How The Behavior Impacted the Situation
We are now in the crucial step. It is here that the recipient will really hear what we are saying and make internal decisions about the validity of the feedback and how to use it to improve themselves.
To continue the above example, we might want to add a piece about how the sales rep's behavior impacted the situation. For example, "When the prospect threw out objections, you did not explore them and instead spoke strongly about how the objection was not an issue. After the third objection, I think the it was the one about delivery time, the prospect sat back in her chair and folded her arms and did not give any more objections. In fact, she asked very few questions the remainder of the call. Because you did not fully address her concerns, she withdrew for the call. I believe you will have a tough time closing this opportunity because of that."
Everything we said in this statement was objective including most of the impact portion. We added our subjective view only after we carefully described why we are taking that view. It will be tough to close this opportunity because the buyer withdrew form conversation. Most salespeople will agree and accept this type of feedback.
Check to Insure Clear Communication
Feedback only works if we understand one another clearly. One way of achieving clear communication is to have the receiver try to rephrase the feedback received to see if it corresponds to what the sender has in mind. No matter what the intent, feedback is often threatening and thus subject to considerable distortion or misinterpretation. Discuss the scenario to make sure that both parties agree on the behavior and the impact it had.
Summarize
During this step you and the recipient should decide what course of action should be taken. Sometimes, you don't take any action but simply agree not to make the same mistake twice. Other times you may want to conduct training around a skill, objection handling in this example. Other times a coaching session may be warranted to hone a skill. Regardless, a feedback summary involves sharing of information rather than giving advice. By sharing information, we leave a person free to decide in accordance with goals, needs, etc. When we give advice we tell a person what to do and to some degree take away the person's freedom to decide for himself.
Feedback Model Conclusion
In order to put feedback to work, individuals need to choose just one two behaviors to work on. May objection handling skills, and patience in this example. That is a lot. In order to be successful, you should continuously give feedback on these areas before moving on to others if possible. Also, agree with the sales rep to track and measure changes in their skill. You may want to use graphics or other visuals to chart progress, otherwise we often to fail to the out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem.
Finally, part of instilling feedback into your culture is for you to solicit feedback on your feedback style. Make sure you are benefiting your team. <<
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