Coach a rep or practice partner on one behaviour, then check two weeks later whether it changed.
Most coaching stops at the session. The manager gives feedback, the rep agrees, and both go back to work. Coaching that is never checked feels like advice, and advice is easy to forget. A month later, neither person can say whether anything changed, and the next session starts over with a new point.
A full coaching cycle closes that gap. You run a session, agree one behaviour, check the rep's next three calls, and record what changed. The written result is your coaching record for the Module 6 capstone, and it also feeds the coaching record in your final project.
Use the GROW script you wrote in lesson 6.2, "Call reviews that reps look forward to". If you don't manage a team yet, run the session with a practice partner, such as a colleague or a friend in sales, on one of that person's recorded calls. Everyone on a recording must have been told it was being recorded, and the file must be handled according to company policy and the PDPA.
Before the session, read the note you made in lesson 6.1, "Coach one behaviour at a time". It holds the behaviour you think matters most for this rep, and you want it fresh in your mind when they start talking.
As lesson 6.2 described, the rep picks the call and the moment. You may have a different moment in mind, but a rep who chooses the part of the call they want to look at usually comes to the session ready to learn from it.
GROW is a four-part coaching structure: goal, reality, options and way forward. Work through all four. The way forward part should end with a single, specific behaviour the rep will try on their next three calls. Three calls is enough to see whether the behaviour shows up, and few enough that most reps will make them within a week or two.
The behaviour has to be a countable behaviour, meaning specific enough that you can count it on a call. "Ask better questions" cannot be checked. A checkable version is: when the buyer names a problem, ask at least one follow-up about its cost or frequency before moving on. You can count how many problems the buyer named and how many of them got a follow-up.
Before the session ends, agree how you will check. You have two options. If the calls are recorded, you can listen to all three yourself. Otherwise the rep sends you a short self-report after each call, giving how many problems the buyer mentioned, how many got a follow-up, and an example of what they asked.
Wei Ming, a sales manager, ran this session with Raj, a rep who sells to buyers with payroll problems. Wei Ming followed the GROW script closely. Raj picked a call with a logistics firm where the buyer went quiet after the price. Listening back, Raj noticed on his own that he never asked what the buyer's current payroll problems cost, which linked directly to the behaviour in Wei Ming's lesson 6.1 note. They agreed Raj would record his next three first meetings, with the buyers' agreement, and Wei Ming would listen to them within a week.
To know whether anything changed, you need a baseline: how often the behaviour happened before the coaching. Count it on two or three of the rep's recent calls, before the next three calls happen. If you are working from self-reports, the rep estimates the baseline from memory, and you note in your record that it is an estimate.
Wei Ming listened to three of Raj's calls from the previous fortnight. Buyers named 7 problems in total, and Raj asked a cost or frequency follow-up on 1 of them, which gave a baseline of one in seven.
After the three calls, count the same thing in the same way. In Raj's next three first meetings, buyers named 8 problems and Raj followed up on 5, so one in seven became five of eight.
Look beyond the count as well. Note whether the behaviour sounded natural or forced, and whether it changed anything about the rest of the call. On a call with a bakery chain, the buyer said fixing payroll errors took her assistant "most of two days a month". That gave Raj a number to come back to when he presented the price. On two of Raj's three calls, the follow-up question led to a second meeting being agreed. With only three calls you cannot claim the question caused those meetings, so record them as something that happened without drawing a conclusion about cause.
The before-and-after note should be short and factual. It covers the behaviour, the baseline, the result, an example and what you will coach next. Wei Ming's note for Raj read:
Behaviour: follow-up question on cost or frequency when the buyer names a problem. Before: 1 of 7 problems in three calls. After: 5 of 8 in three calls. Best example: the bakery chain's two days a month answer. Still missing: problems mentioned late in the call. Next: keep this going two more weeks, then move to asking for a specific next step, using the numbers he now gets.
Share the note with the rep. Seeing the change in writing shows them the coaching worked and that their effort was noticed.
The note also tells you what to do next. If the behaviour has stuck, move to a new one, often the next problem on your original list. If it has partly stuck, give it a little longer before adding something new. If nothing changed, go back to the session and find out whether the behaviour was unclear, uncomfortable, or simply forgotten during a busy week. Raj's behaviour had partly stuck, since he still missed problems raised late in the call, so Wei Ming gave it two more weeks before moving on.
Your coaching record should contain the call reviewed, the behaviour chosen and why, your GROW session notes, the baseline count, the count from the next three calls, and the before-and-after note. Finish it with your decision on what to coach next.
Now run the full cycle with a rep or a practice partner. When you book the coaching session, book the check date at the same time, so the follow-up is in both calendars before the coaching starts.
Run a coaching session and agree one behaviour. Then review the rep's next three calls and write a short before-and-after note.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).