You will be able to run a call review where the rep does most of the analysis.
Most reps dread call reviews. The manager picks a call, usually one that went badly, plays it in front of them, stops at every mistake and explains what should have happened. The rep sits through it, defends a few moments, agrees to the rest and leaves feeling worse at their job than when they came in. Next time a review is scheduled, they suddenly have a client meeting.
A call review can work the other way. The rep chooses the moment, does most of the thinking and leaves with one thing to try. This lesson shows how to run it that way, using a simple structure called GROW.
Ask the rep to choose the call and the specific moment they want to discuss. Give them a prompt: a moment where they felt stuck, a question from the buyer they were not sure how to handle, or a point where the call changed direction.
This does two things. It gives the rep some control, which makes the session feel less like an inspection. And it tells you what the rep is already noticing about their own selling. A rep who picks the moment where the buyer went quiet after the price has spotted something. A rep who cannot think of any moment worth discussing is telling you something too.
If you already have a behaviour in mind from lesson 6.1, Coach one behaviour at a time, you can still let the rep choose. Often their moment and your behaviour turn out to be connected. If they are not, you can bring yours in later.
Play the moment, a minute or two either side of it. Then, before you say anything, ask what they noticed. What was happening there? What was the buyer thinking at that point? What did you want to happen?
Most reps can spot a good share of their own mistakes when they hear the call back with some distance. When they find the problem themselves, they remember it better and feel less defensive about it than when you point it out. Your job is to ask questions that help them see it, and to wait.
Wait longer than feels comfortable. The skill from Discovery: questions that find the real problem, lesson 6.2, Use silence instead of filling it, works in coaching just as it does with buyers.
The GROW model is a coaching structure in four parts: goal, reality, options and way forward. It moves the conversation from what happened towards what the rep will do next. Coaches in many fields use it, and you need no special training to run it in a call review.
Goal: what did you want from this moment? Wei Ming chose a moment from one of Raj's calls where the buyer mentioned that her payroll team spent "a couple of days" fixing errors every month. Raj's goal, when asked, was to show the buyer how the software prevented errors.
Reality: what actually happened? Raj listened again and said he had gone straight into explaining the error checks. The buyer had said "OK, interesting" and moved to asking about price.
Options: what else could you have done? Raj suggested asking how many errors there were. Wei Ming asked what else. Raj added asking who fixed them and what that took, and asking what happened when an error reached an employee's pay. Wei Ming offered one more, asking what a couple of days of the payroll team's time was worth to the business.
Way forward: what will you do on your next calls? Raj chose to ask at least one question about cost or frequency every time a buyer mentioned a problem, which matched the behaviour Wei Ming had already noted.
Notice that Raj did most of the talking. Wei Ming asked questions, offered one option, and agreed the way forward. The session took twenty minutes.
Call reviews depend on recordings, and recording a conversation with a buyer has rules. Tell the other party at the start that the call is being recorded and why. Follow your company's recording policy, including where recordings are stored, who can listen to them and how long they are kept. Treat the recordings as personal data under the PDPA, the Personal Data Protection Act, and check with your company's data protection officer if you are unsure what is allowed.
If the buyer does not want to be recorded, do not record. Ask the rep to write notes straight after the call instead, and review from those. They are less precise, but they still give you something to coach from.
Wei Ming's team uses a standard line at the start of video calls: "We record our calls so I can review my notes and so my manager can help me improve. Are you comfortable with that?" Most buyers say yes. A few do not, and that is fine.
Over a few weeks, reps start to notice that call reviews are where they get better, with a manager on their side. They choose harder calls. They come with questions. Some start listening to their own calls before the session.
That shift depends on a few habits staying constant. The rep picks the moment. You ask before you tell. Every session ends with one thing to try. And you never use a call review as evidence in a performance conversation without saying so first, because once that happens, reps stop bringing their difficult calls.
In the activity below you will write a call review script using GROW for the behaviour you chose in lesson 6.1. Write the questions for each of the four parts in your own words, so they sound like you when you ask them.
Write a call review script using GROW for one behaviour you chose in lesson 6.1.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).