Journal of Selling
Developing Effective Habits of Self-Management:
Preparing the Salesforce for the Future
By Dawn R. Deeter-Schmelz and Cliff Sutton
The habits of self-management offer a method for improving all aspects of a salesperson’s activity. The sales manager
plays a critical role in the development of such habits. Accordingly, we describe and demonstrate an innovative
coaching approach designed to develop self-management habits. As part of this discussion, the challenges facing
sales organizations are reviewed, and the role of habits in addressing these challenges delineated. Next, a method
for coaching self-management is outlined, with examples of results presented. We end with potential obstacles
practitioners may wish to consider when contemplating the implementation of a self-management system.
Introduction
As noted in the call for papers for this special issue,
sales managers and organizational leaders have
undertaken numerous activities—ranging from various
reward schemes, e-mails, and pep-talks to training
and CRM systems—as a means to improve sales
force performance. These activities represent positive
initiatives with mixed results (Hunter & Perrault
2007; Zoltners, Sinha & Lorimer 2006). We propose
developing effective habits of self-management as a
method of improving all aspects of the salesperson’s
activity. We emphasize the manager’s role in coaching
for self-management.
Self-management, defined as a set of behavioral and
cognitive strategies that can assist the individual
salesperson in structuring his or her environment as
well as establishing self-motivation and facilitating the
behaviors needed to meet performance goals (Frayne
& Geringer 2000; Karoly 1993; Manz 1986), offers
an alternative to top-down behavioral control. Within
the context of self-management, the individual sales
representative exerts control over his or her own decisionmaking and behavior (Frayne & Geringer 2000).
As noted by Manz (1986), individuals possessing
good self-management skills can pursue and achieve
Dawn R. Deeter-Schmelz (Ph.D., University of South
Florida), Director, National Strategic Selling Institute, Kansas
State University, Manhattan, KS, ddeeter@k-state.edu
Cliff Sutton (B.S., Trent University), Sales Manager, SAIL
Communications Inc. Self Management Group, Toronto, ON,
csutton@selfmgmt.com
24
personal and organization goals through effective
planning, self-evaluation, self-motivation, and
determination/determined action. The development of
self-management habits helps salespeople manage their
work efforts, including such tasks as goal-setting, selfmonitoring, self-regulation, and maintenance (Boyer
et al. 2012). Broad support for the effectiveness of
self-management training has been established in the
management literature (e.g., Frayne & Geringer 2000;
Kanfer 1970; Karoly & Kanfer 1982; Frayne & Latham
1987). We argue that developing salespeople’s selfmanagement skills prepares salespeople for the future,
resulting in more effective training and development
and improved performance. The key for sales managers
is to know how to effectively coach sales representatives
to develop and use better self-management habits. The
purpose of this paper, therefore, is to describe and
demonstrate an innovative coaching approach that
improves the development of effective habits of selfmanagement in salespeople and how this action results
in improved overall performance.
The
Challenge
Organizations
Facing
Sales
Sales managers are charged with achieving results
through managing their team. Generally speaking,
the individual members of the sales force possess
a wide variety of selling skills. Some will be high
performers, whereas others will be poor performers.
One challenge arises when sales managers try to help
these poor performers improve. Often sales managers
spend time and energy trying to coax poor performers.
Although coaxing can lead to short-term adjustments
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on occasion, it rarely results in long-term behavioral
change (McHardy & Marshall 2003). Furthermore,
because the manager is focused on assisting poorperforming employees, high-performing employees are
not receiving appropriate coaching. Results can suffer
because poor performers are not achieving results, and
high-performers may not be reaching their full potential
(Cohen 2014). Turnover may occur as high performers
leave for environments more conducive to growing
and increasing their incomes (Aggarwal, Tanner &
Castleberry 2004).
Under these conditions, results may not be achieved.
Failure, combined with psychological and time costs,
result in stress for sales managers, particularly when
those managers become personally involved with the
salesperson’s outcomes (Sager 1990). Both managers
and reps are wasting their time and the wrong message
is sent, i.e., that coaxing is coaching. In reality, coaxing
is a symptom of a much larger problem; that is, sales
managers (a) may not have a practical and equitable
way to distribute their time with employees, and (b)
have no immediate way of measuring the effectiveness
of their coaching in real time. In turn, managers may
be perceived as “playing favorites” or failing to
respond to sales representatives’ needs (McHardy &
Marshall 2003).
Certainly other issues exist. Some representatives
become frustrated when they do not understand what
the manager is suggesting; often this situation results
when the manager takes a transactional leadership
approach, directing the rep rather than working
collaboratively with the rep to develop a solution
(Dubinsky, Yammarino, Jolson, & Spangler 1995).
Many managers do not know how to coach sales
representatives to think and use all resources to become
better at developing their own solutions, and/or they
do not know how to coach for internal motivation (cf.
Doyle & Roth 1992). The challenge, then, is the lack of
an effective core coaching approach the sales manager
can use to help the sales representative develop an
internal foundation of habits for development of critical
self-management performance attributes such as selfmotivation, commitment, accountability, responsibility,
innovation and relationships.
Developing the
Management
Habits
of
Self-
The foundation for self-management lies in social
cognitive theory (Bandura 1986). Social cognitive
theory is “...based on the premise that behavior is a
function of a continuous reciprocal interaction among
cognitive, behavioral, and environmental variables”
(Frayne & Geringer 2000, p. 362). A distinctive
feature of social cognitive theory is that individuals are
believed to possess the ability to self-regulate. As noted
by Bandura (1986), external rewards and punishment
do not adequately explain human behavior; rather,
individuals are also motivated and regulated by their
own internal standards and reactions to actions they
take, i.e., their habits.
Habits have been defined as “goal-directed automatic
behaviors that are mentally represented…and because
of frequent performance in similar situations in the past,
these mental representations and the resulting action
can be automatically activated by environmental cues”
(Aarts, Verplanken & van Knippenberg 1998, p. 1359).
Habit strength tends to increase when repetitions are
frequent and performed at a satisfactory level. Moreover,
when a behavior is performed frequently in the context
of a specific situation (e.g., a sales call), the mental
representation of that action will be activated more easily
(Aarts, Verplanken & van Knippenberg 1998). Habits,
in turn, are functional in attaining set goals (Holland,
Verplanken and Van Knippenberg 2002).
To address the aforementioned challenge, we argue
sales people must better manage themselves by focusing
on optimizing habits of effort; these habits result in
desired performance results (Frayne & Geringer 2000).
Because only the individual salesperson can manage his
or her own effort, he or she must be actively involved in
building habits that focus the daily activities committed
to and completed; the role of the sales manager is to
coach the salesperson to discover effective effort
activities, and to continually reinforce this process
(McHardy & Marshall 2003).
Successful Coaching to Build New
Self-Management Habits
How do we imbed new habits of self-management?
To begin the coaching process the sales manager
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Journal of Selling
shifts into a ‘learning’ mode and adopts the posture
of a guide. Essentially the sales manager is teaching
sales representatives to self-coach while at the same
time receive additional coaching from the manager.
The success of this type of coaching encompasses two
issues: (1) using a series of specific coaching questions,
and (2) requiring effort and commitment on the part of
the sales representative (cf. Downey 2003; McHardy &
Marshall 2003).
Coaching by Asking Specific Questions
Coaching through a dialogue based on specific
questioning is at the heart of building better habits of
self-management (McHardy & Marshall 2003). The
practice has similarities to that of coaching for creative
problem solving as described by McAlpine (2011).
Coaching questions can be viewed on a continuum
ranging from “tell” to “ask.” On the “tell” end of the
continuum, the coach attempts to solve the problems for
an individual salesperson via instructing, giving advice,
and offering guidance. On the “ask” end the coach helps
the individual solve his or her own problems through
such tactics as paraphrasing, summarizing, reflecting,
and listening to understand (Downey 2003). Within
the context of self-management, sales managers ask
specific coaching questions as a means to guide sales
representatives, such as “How did your activities go?”
or “What will you do?” (McHardy & Marshall 2003).
As a consequence of asking a series of specific coaching
questions, sales representatives are asked to participate
collaboratively in commitment to their efforts.
This collaborative effort, in turn, leads to enhanced
motivation and commitment to action because the
sales representatives are implementing their own ideas
(Bandura 1986). Research in psychology suggests that
when individuals explore possible options, they are in
fact building the foundation for new habits (Frayne &
Geringer 2000). Thus, through specific questioning, new
solutions to problems are more likely to be considered.
self-management, managers recognize their coaching
time is valuable. The sales manager provides in-depth
coaching when the representative commits to delivering
effort on commitments the sales representative makes.
If the sales rep’s commitment is kept, the manager
coaches for further development. If the commitment is
not kept, the manager coaches for re-commitment. In
short, in-depth coaching is provided to those who put
forth effort and are thus prepared and able to profit from
the coaching the manager provides; when the sales rep
does not invest effort in the activity, coaching is strictly
for re-commitment to effort. Each sales representative
receives individualized coaching which is dependent
on that representative’s willingness to put forth effort
toward commitments. More specifically, it is not
performance alone that separates sales representatives,
but rather a willingness to put forth effort as well.
The coaching strategy is non-threatening and invites
meaningful discourse for actions that make a difference.
Putting the Self-Management Coaching System to
Work
Consider, for example, a manager working with new
sales representatives to develop the habit of customer
relationship management (CRM) data entry. To develop
this habit, the following steps would occur:
1. The manager and the new representative reach
agreement on open communication.
2. The manager shares the value of using the CRM
and discusses with the new representative how he
or she can implement it; this ensures agreement
on the benefit of the activity.
3. During the first week the manager uses the CRM,
i.e., showing the new rep how to use the CRM
and then getting him or her to do the data entry.
Requiring Effort and Commitment for Coaching
4. After the first week the manager asks and gets
commitment from the sales rep to use the CRM
now and for the rest of that rep’s working career
with this organization.
Traditionally, managers have been tempted to spend
the bulk of their time with all poor performers, coaxing
them to improve. Managers may see this as helping
them to succeed (cf. McHardy & Marshall 2003). Under
5. If at any time the representative comes to the
weekly meeting with the sales manager without
his or her CRM up to date, the meeting is rebooked.
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Volume 15, Number 2
6. As a result, new representatives use the CRM
because from day one it is part of the job and
also because they took part in how they will use
it (McHardy 2015).
The previous example highlights the role of effort in
the self-management system, and the reinforcement of
effort to create habits. If the rep has kept commitments,
coaching is provided to continue improving the rep’s
skills. If the rep has not kept commitments, the only
coaching that takes place is for re-commitment to the
original task.
Importantly, developing habits such as those described in
the previous example can lead to organizational change
(Denison & Nieminen 2014). Sutton (2015) describes
a pharmaceutical company that introduced the selfmanagement system into the sales management team of
the patient care division. During the first year both sales
managers and sales representatives were trained in selfmanagement, with follow-up sessions conducted. The
following year the program was expanded to include
marketing administration and human resources. The
company experienced a double digit sales rise in a flat
market (i.e., no new product releases over a three year
period). During the third year, sales managers took a
‘trainer’ program to increase their self-management
effectiveness. As a result of these efforts the culture
at this company shifted; even the language began to
include expressions such as “admission ticket” to
represent keeping a commitment.
The two examples presented here provide some
evidence of the effectiveness of self-management
training. Further evidence can be found in the work of
Frayne & Geringer (2000). In a field experiment, these
authors compared the results of 30 insurance salespeople
who had received self-management training to 30
insurance salespeople who had not received training.
The comparison took place 12 months after the training
had been received. The results were impressive. As
noted by Boyer et al. (2012) regarding the Frayne and
Geringer (2000) study, “[t]hose who received the selfmanagement training, on average, made 50 percent
more calls, sold twice as many policies, generated 150
percent more in sales revenues, and scored much higher
on performance appraisals than those who did not
receive the training” (p. 65). Moreover, the knowledge
acquired through the self-management training did not
decrease over time (Frayne & Geringer 2000). These
findings support our argument that self-management
coaching leads to improved performance. Additionally,
and perhaps more importantly, because habits are
developed these performance improvements remain
steady over time.
Potential Obstacles and Strategies
for Overcoming
Clearly self-management offers sales managers and
representative multiple benefits. Still, obstacles do
occur. One of the most common obstacles experienced
during the implementation of a self-management
system occurs because managers are reluctant to limit
coaching time for poor performers who do not keep
their commitments to effort. Frequently, this situation
is a result of the manager’s perceived need to ‘help’
this individual and ‘do something’ about his or her
performance. An adjustment in coaching style, and a
willingness to be consistent with that style, is needed to
overcome this obstacle. Sales managers must recognize
that the sales rep is responsible for his or her effort, and
hold that rep to the standards of self-management.
Another obstacle occurs when managers see nondirective coaching as a loss of power; these managers
prefer “telling” over “asking.” Successful coaching for
self-management requires a shift from a position of
perceived command and control to one of collaboration
(Downey 2003). Managers must make a choice
to overcome this obstacle; that is, they are willing
and devote practice time to making and keeping
commitments, and they have a full understanding of
self-management. Practicing in a safe environment (e.g.,
training department, colleagues, friends and family)
can help develop a level of competency. Managers
not willing to make this choice will be incapable of
coaching for self-management.
Natural resistance to change can represent an obstacle,
as can the belief that self-management represents the
‘flavor of the month’ in sales training. Buy-in from toplevel managers is critical, as managers must live by the
same results as the reps if the innovation is to succeed.
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Journal of Selling
Practice can help demonstrate the results attainable.
One frequently employed strategy to conduct a pilot
study in a particular region and evaluate this experience
prior to a full corporate launch (Sutton 2015).
It is important to note that the self-management
approach may be too much for some organizational
cultures, particularly those where a command and
control leadership style is firmly imbedded. If sales
people prefer to be told what to do and sales leaders
believe that is the most effective strategy for their
company and themselves (such as a traditional unionenvironment), the self-management approach will not
be effective.
Conclusion
As sales representatives continue to increase their
competencies and their ability to self-manage, results
improve and coaching continues to develop critical
skills and production capability in sales reps (Frayne &
Geringer 2000). As such, self-management represents
an innovation that directly and effectively addresses the
challenge of focusing and harnessing the talents of the
salesforce to achieve high performance.
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