Great salespeople aren’t born, they’re created. Formal training and continuous coaching are vital to developing the skills to thrive in B2B sales. A third leg of the developmental stool that gets less attention, less budget and less credit is mentorship.
The importance of mentorship is not a new concept, but it’s more critical to developing successful sales reps than ever, says Colleen Stanley, co-author of “Be the Mentor Who Mattered.”
Today’s tech-centric approach to sales, which has managers and their teams leaning on artificial intelligence to frame every aspect of the seller-buyer interaction, has resulted in a decline of the mentorship mindset, Stanley says.
“People are more intentional about sending one more email than making one more personal connection. Lone rangers used to be fine. They’re not anymore.
There is too much information flooding the business environment. If you don’t have good team players – people who are willing to share, help up, look around – I don’t think you’re going to make it,” Stanley adds.
Mentorship’s Unique Attributes
To understand why mentoring must accompany training and coaching
to fully develop salespeople, it’s necessary what mentoring is. The International Mentoring Center defines it as “a collaborative, dialogic and reflective learning relationship characterized by mutually inspirational learning agreements and shared responsibilities.”
Mentoring is less formal than training. Both can be about improving skills, but mentoring often doesn’t focus on a specific performance improvement objective or improvement on a specific skill. While training is typically provided in time-specific allotments – a day, a week, maybe once a week for four weeks – mentoring and coaching are more ongoing and integrated into the daily workflow.
What Matters Most Is Harder to Measure
Training typically has more measurable outcomes than mentoring, in part because companies treat training as a budget item while mentoring is often less structured and comes at no additional cost to a company. Stanley concedes that measuring the ROI of mentoring is more complicated than some aspects of training, but she buys into organizational consultant Simon Sinek’s belief that the contributions from workers that are hardest to measure are often the most important.
Inarguably, aspects of sales such as close ratios, length of sales cycle and revenue growth are critical to measure and important to improve upon. However, Stanley says, softer skills, which are frequently honed through mentoring – trust, empathy, meaningful connection, fulfillment – are the very things that lead to measurable improvement.
Gallup studies show that Millennial and Gen Z workers are more engaged and likely to stay at their jobs when they have a mentor. As Gallup reports, young workers want a coach instead of a boss. They thrive on the ongoing development that results from continual conversations and guidance on an as-needed basis.
In a 2016 TED talk on the gap between Millennials and their older managers, hospital administrator Lauren Hoebee, a Millennial herself, said, young professionals have been shaped by technology and a higher education system that is all about providing feedback. When they enter the work world, many are struck by the paucity of that feedback.
Mentees and Mentors Benefit
Hoebee emphasizes that both the mentor and the mentee need to work to produce a successful outcome. And there is a payoff for both parties. She credits a senior-level hospital official for helping her gain the confidence to create a position for herself once her internship ended. In turn, “being vocal about both of our needs and my growth in workplace mannerisms allowed my manager to advance in his own career,” Hoebee said.
In a recent Reddit discussion on mentoring vs. training, a participant who goes by the name “dumpsterfyr,” stated, “Mentorship is reciprocal; the mentor selects the mentee as much as the mentee selects the mentor. That selection is similar to dating; alignment, chemistry and shared direction determine the outcome. Without that alignment, mentoring thought process and decision-making becomes theoretical, like raising a child in isolation.”
Mentoring encourages experienced workers to reexamine processes and to be open to alternatives. Gen Z employees are entering the work force with advanced technological skills and creative ideas that deserve to be considered.
Mentoring can also improve communication skills of veteran workers, stretch their collaboration capabilities and extend their own professional network, both internally and outside the company.
And mentoring is proven to improve the mental health of mentors, offset the effects of stress and promote well-being.
