How do we know that what we do works?

12.7.2009 von kirsten.

I am just reading an interesting book: “Spin Sales” by Neil Rackham. Apart from the selling techniques he talks about, I was impressed with how much energy he seems to have put into researching “what works in a sales conversation”. Is this something SF practitioners or coaches in general have overlooked? There must be a lot of research into the efficacy of sales conversations (because that is what will make money — so you spend money researching it).

The difference that I can see is that sales conversations might be seen to have a definite binary outcome: the prospect buys or does not buy whereas in coaching that might be different. So it might be easier to define whether a sales call was effective or not than a coaching session. On the other hand, even if you do not sell at this moment, you might have given a good impression, opened the door for a future sales call — that could be a parallel to the fact that sometimes in coaching the client will not perceive the usefulness of the coaching until weeks later.

In “Spin Sales” Rackham describes a very simple research set-up: Record or observe the sales calls of successful and not so successful sales people and compare (and of course, in sales, you have the numbers that will show you who is successful and who is not). Could one do something similar in coaching? Record coaching conversations, let the coachee scale how useful they thought this conversation was after the conversation and 3 weeks later and then look at what the more successful coaches did in comparison to what the not so successful coaches did (maybe by way of Microanalysis)? And then … who would fund this kind of research (maybe http://www.asfct.org when we have enough members)?

I am very interested in your views!

Kirsten

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