Collaborative Coaching: Changing the Mind-Set

As a manager, when you’re planning for your field rides or one-off conversations with your team, how often do these events feel like a “have to” versus a “get to”? How does your team feel? If you had an opportunity to change that mind-set to a “get to” for both parties, how would that change your overall feeling as the coaching approached?

Imagine what a change of coaching mind-set could do for your team’s engagement and productivity. Simple changes to a leader’s approach to coaching sessions and field rides would change your employees’ mind-sets from “time with their manager” to an ongoing event that would result in goal achievement and increased productivity.

Collaborative Coaching is a new approach and mind-set that you can implement to strengthen your relationship with your team. Though there are multiple components to Collaborative Coaching, here a few actions you can take to get started. You may say, “I have done, or already do, these things,” which is wonderful. But take a moment and reflect on what you do to prepare for coaching sessions to see if you do them every day. And don’t forget to include your employees in the process.

• Review past coaching session documents as prework before the session. Both you and your employee should review past coaching session documents as part of the biweekly skill analysis. You should set the expectation that they will be initiating the conversation. Ask them to share this analysis when the coaching session begins. Then look to identify which new approach they’ve tried that was based on the previous coaching session. Ask them, "What else do you feel you need to do differently?”
• Assess how their actions have impacted their business. Look to see which actions they have implemented since the last coaching session. What was the impact on business results and were they correlated to your employee’s actions? Analyze the results they’ve seen as well as the business impact. This will generate a conversation that directly connects their actions to results as opposed to just checking the box that the action was completed.
• Mutually set goals for each coaching session. What are your employee’s goals for today and how will that impact the business now and throughout the year? Set the expectation that you will spend some time at the beginning of your session together discussing such goals. This means not starting by reviewing sales numbers, who you may be visiting today, and business plans. Rather, create time for having a two-way dialogue with your employee, focusing on them—their wants for achieving their goals—and gaining insight into their thoughts. 

This is how you kick off Collaborative Coaching and start transforming the mind-set from a “have-to” to a “get-to.” By including your employee as part of the experience, they’ll feel that you’re truly there for them—and not just because you have to be. The results? Hopefully you’ll have a more positive day, there will be less pressure on both of you, and give your employees increased accountability while they focus on bettering their performance.

About the Author

Marcy Lantzy, VP Sales and Marketing

In her current role with Proficient Learning, Marcy leads the sales and marketing team to bring innovative and strategic learning and technology solutions to help sales teams and leaders in the life sciences industry achieve their goals.

She has deep industry experience on a global scale, leading and designing training, creating sales models and curriculums, working with clients to create a strategy for effective training, and driving adoption of learning solutions to change behavior in a variety of different therapeutic areas. In her previous roles, she was responsible for leading client development efforts over a wide range of training practices including specialty sales, managed markets, hospital sales, and leadership training. Marcy is an experienced facilitator, trainer, manager, and executive who has successfully helped sales professionals and managers, at every level of tenure, develop their skills and improve their effectiveness.

Three Core Building Blocks of Coaching to Implement in 2017

Midway through my selling career I had a manager who I really didn’t get along with. Let’s call him Bob. I’d been in sales for about 10 years and had experienced some success working with Fortune 500 companies selling complex solutions and services. When I changed companies, I quickly learned that my work life had changed—and not for the better. Within 3 or 4 months I found myself dreading Bob’s “coaching” calls and was often left confused about where I stood and what exactly was expected, other than “sell more.” Ironically, I was consistently at or above quota and had a track record bringing in deals when it mattered. But none of this seemed to make any difference.

As I progressed in my sales career, both as a manager and informal coach, 3 core building blocks of my coaching process emerged as the keys to helping people perform to their full ability and developing engagement.

Trust: The first and most important element of coaching is building trust. Without trust, every recommendation, suggestion, or request will be viewed with skepticism. In a coaching situation lacking trust, your team members will constantly question your motives, making it exceedingly difficult to achieve the behavior changes that improve performance. Trust is built over time in many different ways such as backing your people with internal stakeholders, supporting their professional development and career aspirations, and course correcting when they’re not getting it right.

Consistency: One of the most challenging issues we see in most sales organizations is coaching consistency. This building block actually covers 3 different issues: planned, ongoing coaching; coaching different team members consistently; and coaching individuals consistently over a period of time. Sometimes coaching opportunities can be spontaneous, but top-performing managers make coaching a priority and devote time to coach their teams in a planned, sustained way.

While many companies have developed and implemented sales competencies and behaviors, they frequently read like they were written by a room full of consultants (which is often true). As a result, these competencies and behaviors do not fulfill the promise of creating consistency and equity across teams and in individual coaching conversations. The good news here is that there are now technology platforms available (like mCoach) that enable managers to ensure coaching consistency in a much more effective and efficient way. Tools like mCoach make complex competency and behavior models functional and actually make them high-powered coaching tools that help drive performance and enable constructive dialogue about personal and professional development.

Value: Let’s face it, coaching is not a completely altruistic endeavor. Coaching is a means to an end with the end being increased performance in terms of sales, efficiency, or some other measure. Sure, in theory you get better performance out of the process, but in order for coaching to stick and pay off, the team member has to see and derive value from coaching interactions. When we talk about planning and prepping for a coaching interaction, this should be a starting point to begin thinking about what you plan to focus on, how to react and provide feedback, and to think about what you’re likely to see or hear. If you’re able to reorient the coaching session in a way that puts you in service to your team, the likelihood of delivering actual value goes up considerably.

I ended up working for Bob only about 18 months, during which time I learned a lot about the pivotal role managers play (or don’t play) in motivating and developing team members. This chapter of my sales story happily ends at a hot technology company where I took a position that was challenging, exciting, and really propelled my career forward. Take a few minutes this week to evaluate your coaching building blocks and make sure these 3 are part of your foundation.

About the Author

For over 25 years Gary Marinko has worked in a consultative capacity with Fortune 500 companies solving complex business challenges with technology. More recently Gary has combined his expertise in technology with sales training in the life sciences industry to bring focused value creation to key Proficient Learning customers. In his current role, he leads the interactive business unit at Proficient Learning, which focuses on developing sales enablement software and mobile solutions that help sales teams and managers accelerate performance and efficiency.

Unlocking the Benefits of Digital Transformation by Utilizing Proper Data Management

In the current business landscape, the key to survival is being able to quickly adjust one’s approaches based on market conditions.  Knowing how a business is performing requires timely information, so the digital transformation movement--with its reliance on digital and database solutions that are faster and more efficient than paper-based solutions–has become increasingly popular.

To capitalize on this movement toward digital transformation, the research firm NuoDB collected data to understand organizations’ reactions to the changes in data collection and management. The firm found that database and data management was viewed as one of the most important factors, with 92% of respondents stating it to be “critical” or “very important” in the digitization journeys.¹

In 2017, many businesses still find themselves utilizing paper-based solutions to gather input from users and customers. These solutions require a lengthy, cumbersome process when moving from data collection to information analysis; there are many steps involved in converting the answers written on paper to a centralized tool that can only be managed and seen by one business department at a time. This requires that department to build a specialized report every time the data needs to be analyzed. In essence, this creates business silos, which prohibit stakeholders from making timely business decisions.

A database approach is the best way to collect, store, and manage data because it provides some of the following advantages:

• Improved decision making--The timeliness of business data, combined with business intelligence tools empowers businesses to make quick, informed decisions
• Increased information sharing--Critical business data is housed in a centralized digital environment, improving user access to information. Information can be more easily shared, which improves communication and increasing productivity
• Improved data security–Database solutions provide a better framework for enforcing data privacy and security policies. Critical business data in  HR or sales can be limited by audience or user group
• Enhanced reporting and data integration—Integrating systems is easier when data already exists in a structured format, so the ability to view standard reports or to create ad-hoc reports is crucial when making key business decisions
• Minimized data consistency--A properly designed database will decrease the amount of data inconsistencies, which will inspire more confidence in the final output

Harnessing the power of data–along with the appropriate tools to transform that data into information--enables companies to make timely, informed decisions. This approach can make the difference between success and failure. Transitioning to a digital transformation mindset can unlock numerous opportunities for companies to engage with customers and increase business opportunities. 

¹ http://www.readitquik.com/articles/storage/database-is-the-key-to-unlock-digital-transformation/

About the Author

Lori Schoenhard, PMP, CSM, CSPO–Software Development Manager at Proficient Learning, LLC

As the Software Development Manager, Lori is responsible for the technical delivery of Proficient Learning’s mobile and Web development projects. She manages the entire application life cycle including concept development for new product enhancements; leading technical teams to execute on technical delivery, developing documentation; and implementing user feedback. Lori has extensive experience in digital and software project management, technical account management, business analysis, quality assurance, and software development. Lori is a graduate of Luther College and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems with a concentration in IT Project Management from Boston University. Lori is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute and is also a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Product Owner (CSPO) from Scrum Alliance.

5 Key Tips to Building Stakeholder Trust and Loyalty

As we kick off 2017 and plan ahead for all of our exciting upcoming initiatives, we embark on new projects with valued stakeholders. From the perspective of being a new client vendor, we have to approach this as a test of trust. The client trusts us to be experts in our field and guide them through a successful implementation and rollout of a project. We are the experts, and now is our time to shine. You will also encounter this as you begin new initiatives with internal or external stakeholders. Here are a few key tips to gain stakeholders’ trust as we build these new relationships.

Getting to Know You

This may seem like an obvious way to kick things off, but the best approach in getting to know your stakeholder is to learn their work habits. They are busy and may be part of many projects in addition to their own workload. Understanding your stakeholder and adapting to their needs is the best way to maximize their efforts and time. A few examples are as follows:

• Does your stakeholder get into the office early or stay late? Schedule necessary calls around their most available times. This means being flexible outside of normal business hours as needed
• Does your stakeholder prefer email communication to phone calls?

Create Timelines

Each project always has a deadline and deliverables. As you get to know your stakeholder, make sure you have a high-level timeline you can update and provide them throughout the project. This will give them a clear understanding of what needs to get done and when. A few suggestions to get this in full swing are:

• Create a timeline with stages. It’s easier to break down a project in major stages such as pre-launch, launch, and post-launch
• Keep it to 1 page and in a table format for an easy read
• Don’t forget to include milestones

Stay Organized

Anyone who has worked on a project knows that organization is a key factor for success. Multiple events happen through the duration of any project and as the project manager/project lead it is your responsibility to stay organized and keep the project moving. Great examples of this are:

• Take detailed meeting minutes and send them out to the project team. Identify all action items for both sides and make them easy to reference when the stakeholder reviews
• Utilize project management tools to create to-do lists with due dates and descriptive deliverables. This creates a central place for everyone on the project to stay in the loop and see what is expected of them and by which deadlines 

How Can I Help?  

As you develop a trusting relationship with your project team and the stakeholders they work with to successfully complete a project, offer extra support! Though any email support should always involve you copying the stakeholder, this effort takes the responsibility of 1 task off their plate. You could to this by:

• Drafting mass emails to send to the organization
• Reaching out to coordinate with their internal teams to accomplish information sharing

Communication, Communication, Communication!

Communication is a key asset for success in any project involving a team. There is a balance that you as a project manager have to maintain to communicate as effectively as possible. Some good tips to follow:

• Never flood your stakeholders inboxes with multiple emails when they can all be condensed into 1 bulleted email that is concise and to the point
• Provide your stakeholders with project updates. There are times when the project is being worked on but no visible action items are required of the team. Even so, you should provide them a weekly update and report the progress. This assures the team that expectations are being met

These may seem like common sense concepts, but with the increase of busy schedules and deadlines, stakeholder experience can get lost in the project process. The work that you provide a stakeholder isn’t just the finished product, but the experience you provided before, during, and after that implementation. For me, these key elements can make or break a client relationship.

About the Author

MeeAe Strosnider–Technical Account Manager

As the Technical Account Manager at Proficient Learning, MeeAe Strosnider is responsible for managing the implementation of mCoach solutions with a diverse range of companies, coordinating end-user training that drives solution adoptions and satisfactions, and managing customer expectations to ensure full utilization of the mCoach solution. MeeAe collaborates with Product Management, Sales, and Development to support customer implementations and produce high-quality deliverables that meet Proficient Learning’s expectations for excellence. MeeAe previously held various management positions in different fields from pharmacy to retail sales and her background includes extensive sales, customer service, and implementation experience.  She brings her enthusiasm for process and new development to her role at Proficient Learning. MeeAe graduated from Richmond, The American International University in London, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and Media.  

4 Ways Stakeholders are Important to a Project

Whether internal or external, all of the projects that you manage have stakeholders. One of the main reasons projects fail is because the deliverables were not what the customer wanted or they did not meet the customer’s needs. To ensure project success, it helps that you know all of the key stakeholders on your project, how they prefer to communicate, what their needs are, and what the acceptable end results are. 

Engaging stakeholders during—and especially at the beginning of—your project will help reduce and uncover risks and increase their "buy-in." When stakeholders are adequately engaged, their influence spreads far and wide. Some of the ways stakeholders are important to a project are as follows. 

1. Providing Expertise
Stakeholders are a wealth of knowledge about current processes, historical information, and industry insight. Many times these team members will have been at the company or on the project longer than the project manager or project team. It’s important to involve all key stakeholders when gathering and documenting requirements to avoid missing major deliverables of the project. Project managers, or others who are in charge of deliverables, may not be experts on every project. Key stakeholders can provide requirements or constraints based on information from their industry that will be important to have when understanding project constraints and risks. 

2. Reducing and Uncovering Risk
The more you engage and involve stakeholders, the more you will reduce and uncover risks on your project. When discussing initial requirements, project needs, and constraints, stakeholders may bring up issues or concerns about meeting those things. Uncovering risks and then discussing a plan to mitigate them before issues arise will dramatically increase the success of your project. Involving knowledgeable stakeholders during this process will help. 

3. Increasing Project Success
By gathering and reviewing project requirements with stakeholders, you will get their "buy-in," which will in turn help increase project success. If you can't meet stakeholders’ needs, due to conflicting needs or priorities, set expectations early in the project life cycle. This will help you manage the relationship throughout the project instead of there being surprises at the end. Stakeholders should always be aware of the project scope, key milestones, and when they will be expected to review any deliverables prior to final acceptance. 

4. Granting Project Acceptance
The more regularly you engage and involve stakeholders from the start, the more likely you will have a positive project conclusion. By the end of the project, the team members should have already been aware of delivery expectations, risks, and how to mitigate the risks. They also should have reviewed draft deliverables along the way. This process should help avoid any surprises at the end of your project. The final acceptance is just their final stamp of approval during the project closure phase. 

Make sure that you consider all key stakeholders as a part of your project team. They all will bring value and expertise to help ensure your project is a success!

About the Author
Lori Schoenhard, PMP, CSM, CSPO–Software Development Manager at Proficient Learning, LLC

As the Software Development Manager, Lori is responsible for the technical delivery of Proficient Learning’s mobile and web development projects. She manages the entire application life cycle including concept development for new product enhancements, leading technical teams to execute on technical delivery, developing documentation, and implementing user feedback. Lori has extensive experience in digital and software project management, technical account management, business analysis, quality assurance, and software development. Lori is a graduate of Luther College and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems with a concentration in IT Project Management from Boston University. Lori is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute and is also a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Product Owner (CSPO) from Scrum Alliance.

Which Comes First—Enabling Technology or Skill Development? Four must-ask questions for this classic “chicken or the egg” situation

About a year ago I was in one of those meetings with our team that we’ve all been in, discussing how to make a critical process more efficient, increase customer service levels and transparency, and give our team better tools so they could do a better job. In the room were sales, marketing, and development leadership, along with a few other stakeholders who had an interest in the outcome of the discussion. 

Our team did a great job deconstructing the challenges and getting to the core issues: communication, enabling technology, and team member skills. One of the approaches we used was to create a “solution cascade” by which we prioritized the things that have to happen in the best order so that we achieve the target outcome. We faced the same question each time we created the cascade: Do we first upskill our team and then deploy the enabling technology? Or do we instead first deploy the technology designed to enable the team to better execute their new skills? Communication in this case turned out to be a byproduct of better skill execution, and got incorporated into the training component. 

If you’re facing a similar situation, here are 4 questions to ask your team that may help bring some clarity to the discussion. 

1. Do we need to make the intended change faster than we can implement the technology? If yes, then you may not have a choice other than to train or intervene in the current processes
2. Is deploying the technology first going to overtax our team’s ability to learn or function in their job roles? You want to ensure the technology is seen as a resource versus a distraction. Taking the time to learn technology is to be expected and is part of the process
3. Are we likely to uncover better approaches and processes as we deploy the technology? The technology may change the way we’re thinking about our current processes
4. Is it possible that the training will actually be more efficient when we include the technology on the front end? 

As we were deciding which route to take, we created a couple of different scenarios—one that deployed the training first in order to give the technology a “home” when it was deployed, and another in which we deployed the technology first and built the training around how to use the tool to execute. 

• Training first: People need to understand expectations and have solid business practices in place. Otherwise, technology will simply accelerate problems and poor decisions. Underlying job skills are critical to effective implementation of any new enabling technology
• Technology first: The enabling technology will function as the glue that holds the skill development together. It will help accelerate adoption of new business processes and make them more sustainable in the long run by increasing efficiency for the people who are responsible for implementing them. This option increases the learning load by layering the technology on top of the skill learning. So a discussion on knowledge retention and time availability must happen 

In the end, we opted to implement technology first and upskill around the platform. Six months in, it appears to have been a good decision. It turned out that if we had implemented the skill side first, we would have uncovered a lot of processes that would have had to be reworked and retrained simply because we didn’t have enough knowledge about different ways the platform would help our team streamline this aspect of their work—we didn’t know what we didn’t know. The other significant benefit that came out during training was that if we had opted to train in advance of deploying the technology, we never would have been able to sustain the business processes we were asking our team to adopt. We never could have gotten to the level of efficiency and service without the technology being in place. The technology allowed us to do more and do it faster. 

About the author: 

For over 25 years Gary Marinko has worked in a consultative capacity with Fortune 500 companies solving complex business challenges with technology. More recently Gary has combined his expertise in technology with sales training in the life sciences industry to bring focused value creation to key Proficient Learning customers. In his current role, he leads the interactive business unit at Proficient Learning, which focuses on developing sales enablement software and mobile solutions that help sales teams and managers accelerate performance and efficiency. 

Crafting a Software Release Management Process That Provides a Positive Client Experience

Software development projects require a great deal of planning, dedication, and attention to detail. But what about when the work is complete and needs to be released to the client? That's why we are ultimately all here—to best serve the needs of our clients.

Effective release management practices ensure that once the software is built, it is successfully released to the people who want to use it. Those who manage this process have a strong ability to positively influence the relationship with their clients. Part of this process includes providing both a consistent experience in every release and excellent communication.

Establish a consistent release cycle

One thing that many of my clients have appreciated is a consistent and reliable release cycle for updates. They know exactly when they are expected to be available for user acceptance testing and when they should expect production updates to occur. If working as an outside vendor, this helps provide your client contacts the support they need with their teams to establish better methods of communication and to set expectations.

When creating a schedule, here are some items that are beneficial to consider in the process.

1. Compile a list of all of your clients that would benefit from a release cycle and pencil them into a deployment schedule, considering the frequency of updates that they require. This process is perfect for an Agile/Scrum approach as you can tie this into Sprint Release Management
2. Look for release date conflicts in your schedule. Try not to schedule 2 or more major clients on the same day. This will assist with mitigating resource constraints and allow time for troubleshooting and support if needed  
3. Consider your clients in your schedule. Add adequate time for them to perform user acceptance testing on their updates and to provide feedback, and allow a buffer to make any quick bug fixes as needed. Major changes or scope additions should be considered for the next release cycle
4. Once this process is completed, provide this schedule to your clients

Submit release notes and testing information to clients once a build is available

As part of the software release process, you should compile information on the updates that will be included in that release and craft a non-technical document for your clients. This document should outline the version number they are receiving and what updates are included. Add screenshots or other explanatory information, such as related future updates. To speed up the user acceptance testing process, consider creating and providing test cases that can be performed on the updates.

Take inventory of your current client communications and make adjustments as necessary

Outstanding communication is one of the major parts of any successful client experience. Consider all the ways you are currently communicating to your clients regarding when and how they receive software updates and ways it can be improved. These communication pieces can range from describing the release process or proposed scheduling, to monthly release communications, deployment window notifications, or warranty information. Try and create boilerplate documents that can be reused by all clients so that everyone has the same user release communication experience. A consistent user communication experience is beneficial if management changes from one staff member to another or if new employees need to be briefed.

Provide outstanding customer service

Deployments hardly ever go 100% right. Many times schedules are at the mercy of resources or bugs are unexpectedly introduced during the code deployment process. One of the most important things is to communicate and work together as a team to resolve issues. Offer to provide clients a walk-through or documentation on new features. Providing an outstanding customer experience is key every step of the way.

About the Author

Lori Schoenhard, PMP, CSM, CSPO–Software Development Manager at Proficient Learning, LLC

As the Software Development Manager, Lori is responsible for the technical delivery of Proficient Learning’s mobile and web development projects. She manages the entire application life cycle including concept development for new product enhancements, leading technical teams to execute on technical delivery, developing documentation, and implementing user feedback. Lori has extensive experience in digital and software project management, technical account management, business analysis, quality assurance, and software development. Lori is a graduate of Luther College and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems with a concentration in IT Project Management from Boston University. Lori is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute and is also a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Product Owner (CSPO) from Scrum Alliance.