The transition from leading a team of operations managers of one SBU to the position of Lead Sales director for a major customer was a double challenge. It was part of a new restructuring process to provide a senior level single point contact to a major customer for all SBUs of the company, while the Lead Sales director required to coordinate with operations team without any authority.

Coaching Context

Shenoy, VP HR of Sure Inc met me at a social meeting. As we started talking about our professions, Shenoy showed interest in my work on executive coaching. We exchanged our contact details and agreed to meet two days later in his office.

We met in Shenoy's sea-facing large office. Shenoy explained that Sure, Inc. is organised under 5 Strategic business units (SBUs). Each SBU offers speciality products. A senior leader of each SBU supervise the operations team and are also responsible for business development. This worked well as it was relatively easier for the SBU specialist to promote its products to customers. However, the company recognised that the SBU focused approach created silos, and the company was not able to leverage its collective strengths when a customer has the potential to buy products of more than one SBU.

Shenoy also mentioned that they had identified 30 top customers where they could see potential company sales opportunity for INR 200 million and above. They had also identified the person who has the best customer relationship with any of the top 30 and assigned him additional responsibility to lead this initiative, as well as the sales efforts for that customer. To be explicit, the Lead sales director will continue to be responsible for his speciality SBU and leverage customer relationship to develop business for other SBUs.

Shenoy told me that this Lead sales director would need a coach to help him so that he can be effective. He felt that he has been in his SBU for a long time and will need help to break the silos. He made a conference call with John, the lead sales director and discussed the coaching program. Shenoy agreed with my terms, and we signed the contract.

The story behind the story and the real story

John flew down to Mumbai for our meeting. I first met John and his reporting boss Kamal. Kamal shared some background around John first. He mentioned that John has been with the company for over 25 years. He did a very good job of growing the business for several years. Unfortunately, in the last two years, there has been some operations issue under him, and his performance has fallen. They have given him feedback. They also feel he has an excellent relationship with their major customer MEGA. They believed that MEGA can be INR 200 million customer in the next 3 years. Hence, they wanted him to focus on MEGA. “John is good with his customer; he will need to get other SBU teams to work with him.” John kept quiet and just agreed with whatever Kamal said.

John was very happy that the company has decided to engage an executive coach for him. He was looking forward to connecting with someone who can give adequate time and understand his viewpoints impartially. He mentioned that he has been doing a good job, and yet his head of SBU did not rate him well during a performance. Unwittingly, he felt that this additional responsibility of Lead sales director is a way to reduce his work from the SBU. He was also not sure if he will succeed in this role as other SBU team members do not report to him. Besides, each team works under the guidance of their SBU head and may not give him the time to develop the mandated business.

Cheering up for a better future

I assured John that I would give him all the time he needs. I shared with him, “My mission in life is to help executives to unlock their potential. I have a long business experience, and I have coached several senior executives. I understand your difficulties. Your biggest strength is customer relationship. You have only to find out how to get other SBUs to work with you even though you do not have direct authority on them.” John said to me that I made it sound so simple. And so, I shared an objective observation, “You have to master the art and science to influence people over whom you have no authority. Yes, you are already doing that. You can influence customers, and customers do not report to you.” John smiled and said, “You have cheered me up. Thank you.”

I informed John that I would like to validate his strengths using VIA 24 signature strength assessment independently. John said that he has a recent 360 feedback report which he will also send it to me.

Developing an action plan

In the next session, we discussed his VIA 24 Strength and 360 feedback assessment reports. His top 5 strengths were Hope, Honesty, Love, Gratitude, Perspective. His 360-feedback report indicated that on most competencies, his own rating was significantly higher than the ratings of peers and seniors. John felt that he had achieved the agreed numbers. He, however, has not been communicating his success adequately within the company.

It was important that I also helped John reframe his focus from the past to his future. We agreed that history could not be changed and agreed to now focus onward on what we can do to create a new history of success. We discussed his dreams and aspirations for the next 3-5 years. John said, "I want to achieve revenue of INR 200 Million from Mega and be a role model for other Lead sales directors."

The next session was devoted to brainstorming on how to leverage John's own and collective strength of the organisation to achieve the target set for revenue from MEGA. John identified that

1. He has a good connection with the Chairman and CFO of Mega.

2. He does not know much about the expertise available with other SBUs. He will need to convince the sales directors of these SBUs to allocate their resources for business development on a sustaining basis.

3. He must help them to get what they need so that they will give me help for his needs.

4. Every Sales director has a revenue target to achieve. He must find a way so that all sale directors can achieve and exceed their targets.

Suddenly John got a spark, he wrote on the whiteboard in bold.

  "Help from each one, Helps everyone".

In turn, I felt there was a unique opportunity to use a new version of appreciative inquiry that could help him in to ground his ‘spark’. From my corporate experience, it would be unique to look at the "Best case" for each sales director and extend that to all SBUs. I explained some of the basics of appreciative inquiry and asked John to look at the "Best customer" for every SBU and consider how each one can get additional business when they have a head start in the customer relationship.

After listening and engaging in the brainstorm together, John said that he has now found a master key to involve sales directors of all SBUs. Just as John has a good rapport with MEGA, other sales directors have a good rapport with some of their customers.

John drew a matrix to explain his concept. Number of + in each cell will indicate strength of relationship of sales director with customers

He could now create a new platform for meeting all sales directors every month. He would explain that if they all work together and help each other, they will be able to achieve our targets very easily, “Each one of us is experts in our specialised field at the same time each one of us has limited connect with some customers. If we can leverage our customer relationship with each other, we can get business very quickly.” This matrix shows opportunities for collaboration. I will present it as collaboration matrix.

In the next session, John came back with a big smile. He had arranged a meeting with sales directors of all SBUs in his region and explained: Help from each one Helps everyone as a "Collaborative matrix" between their customers and SBUs. Collectively, they identified the SBU with Best Customer rapport. Everyone agreed to help each other in sharing their Best customer relationship

After John shared his achievements, I then asked John, does he see any obstacle to the implementation of the action plan? As we drilled further into his plan, John identified that a potential obstacle might be in resource allocation by Head of SBUs (bosses of Sales directors). We brainstormed on ideas for involving SBU heads in this process.

John soon said he had a bright idea. MEGA is a large business house with several companies. I can request the MEGA's Chairman Sheth to have a half-day workshop with all his CEOs on potential partnering opportunities for MEGA with Sure Inc. I am sure Chairman of Sure Inc Desai will be happy to meet Seth. Once Desai agrees heads of other SBUs will join this workshop.

Implementation and results

1. John arranged a meeting with the Sales directors every month. All the sales directors were happy that they are able to get help from each other in their business development. Everyone was happy to share. The monthly share and help meetings provide a platform to learn new approaches from each other. There were suggestions given by everyone to each other. The overall sales performance of everyone improved.

2. The half-day workshop with MEGA's top management team was a big success. It opened up dialogues for each SBU to showcase their portfolio of products and how all of them will help MEGA. Sure, Inc Chairman Desai's participation was a big booster for Heads of SBUs. Budget support was available for business developments to all the sales directors.

3. John saw value in bonding with everyone. He started a quarterly dinner meeting with sales directors and their family. By rotation, each one became the host for the family dinner meeting. Overall friendship and trust among all of them increased.

4. At the next annual sales conference, Chairman Desai presented the Top award for business development to John and invited John to present the success story of developing business at MEGA.

5. Kamal congratulated John for outstanding performance and thanked me or being with John in this transition.

What worked well in this assignment.

• John was keen to succeed in the new assignment. He wanted to prove that his previous appraisal was not correct.

• I cheered up John by saying that he has all the strengths necessary to succeed. Further, I assure him to help him on this journey.

• Clear articulation of solution: “I must help them to get what they need so they will give me help for my need”.

• Innovative extension of basics of appreciative inquiry. Developing a collaborative matrix made it easier for every to see opportunities.

• John continuously evolved ideas to get everyone to collaborate.

My learnings and reflections

• Get the coachee to look at the biggest assets, strengths and use them to find a solution to a challenge.

• Partnering and participating in the brain storming enabled the coachee to find their bright or sparkling ideas.

• Sharing ways of how to get to their solution is useful, especially when they don’t know the latest techniques in positive behavioural engagement.

• Addressing the underlying concerns and anxieties to build a trusting relationship.

• Passionately sharing my work in various social settings can lead to unexpected business opportunities.

Connect with Pradip Shroff on Linkedin

Pradip is a certified CEO Coach based in Mumbai, India. In last 9 years as CEO Coach, He has completed 55 Senior level Executive coaching assignments. He has done 4 Leadership Team coaching Programs. He has guided 30 Coach Interns of PG program in Executive coaching.

Pradip Shroff brings over 40 years of business experience, with 25 years at CEO level. He brings a strong business acumen and strategic thinking. He is very analytical and innovative in developing solutions. Pradip uses his corporate experience in his coaching assignment. He is a Case author in CFI's book "Are you ready for the corner office”.