MT455 Unit 5 Discounting Habit Coaching Plan Example

The Discount at Minute Six: An MT455 Unit 5 Coaching Plan for One Observed Selling Habit

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT455: Strategic Management of Sales

Unit 5 Coaching Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Keystrand Access, the seller, the customers and every call are composite; the sources cited are real.

The Observed Call

Renee Castillo has been an inside seller at Keystrand Access for eight months, covering mid-market multi-site customers. On March 4 she held a thirty-minute video meeting with the operations director of a physical therapy group with 22 clinics, who had requested a quote for cloud access control. The call ran in this order. Renee introduced Keystrand and asked how many doors each clinic had. At minute five the director asked, "What does something like this cost?" At minute six Renee said that pricing depended on volume but that for a group this size she could probably take 15 percent off the subscription. The rest of the call covered reader models. It ended with Renee promising to send pricing. She did not learn who else would be involved in the decision, what problem had prompted the inquiry or when the group wanted to decide.

One Call or a Habit?

One call could be an off day, so before deciding anything the manager reviewed nine more of Renee's recorded first calls from the past two months. In six of the ten, Renee mentioned a discount before the customer's requirements were known. In four of those six, the customer had asked about price; in two, Renee offered the discount without being asked. Her average subscription discount on deals closed last quarter was 17 percent, against a team average of 11.

The manager concluded that early discounting is a habit, not an incident.

Letting Her Find It

In their next one-on-one, the manager played the March 4 recording and asked Renee what she noticed. She stopped it at minute six herself and said, "I gave it away before I knew anything about them." The plan records that she identified the habit herself, because that shapes everything after: the coaching is about practicing something she already wants to change, not about correcting something the manager found. Badrinarayanan et al. (2015) describe effective sales coaching as a collaborative process that develops the seller's own ability to diagnose performance, rather than a manager's instruction.

The seller stopped the recording at the discount herself, which made the plan a practice schedule rather than a correction.

The Behavior to Replace and the Behavior to Practice

Only one behavior is chosen, because sellers change more when coaching focuses on one thing at a time.

Behavior to replace: mentioning a discount, or any specific price reduction, before the customer's requirements, decision process and timeline are known.

Behavior to practice: when price comes up before discovery, acknowledge the question, give a typical price range without a discount and ask permission to learn more first. For example: "Fair question. Groups your size usually land between $18,000 and $24,000 a year, depending on doors and features. So I can give you a real number, can I ask a few questions about what prompted this?" Then ask at least three discovery questions before returning to price.

Both behaviors are written as observable actions, so that the manager and Renee can count them on recordings.

The Four-Week Plan

Weekly coaching session: thirty minutes every Tuesday. Renee and the manager listen to one of her recorded first calls from the previous week and she scores it against the practice behavior before the manager comments.

Role plays: two short role plays a week, ten minutes each, with the manager playing price-first buyers, including one who asks for a price in the first minute and one who says a competitor already offered 20 percent off. Renee practices the acknowledgment, the range and the permission question until it sounds like her own words.

Rackham (1988) found that in larger sales, early discussion of price and concessions before value is understood tends to reduce both the chance of closing and the price achieved, which is why the practice behavior delays price rather than refusing it.

The Manager's Own Limits

The plan also binds the manager. The manager will not join and take over Renee's calls during the four weeks, since that would teach nothing. The manager will not approve any discount above 10 percent on her deals without first asking what the customer received in return. And the manager will give feedback only on the one behavior, even when other things on a recording could be improved, so that Renee is not coached on five things at once.

Two Measures

The first measure tracks the behavior directly: discount mentions before discovery on recorded first calls, counted weekly. The baseline is six in ten. The target after four weeks is no more than two in ten.

The second measure tracks the business result: average subscription discount on deals Renee closes in the next quarter, compared with 17 percent last quarter. Weitz et al. (1986) found that sellers improve when they understand why an approach works and can adapt it, and the plan treats a lower discount as the evidence that she has.

After Four Weeks

If the first measure has reached its target, the weekly sessions continue for one more month at a lower intensity, then move to another skill Renee chooses. If it has not, the manager and Renee review together whether the practice behavior suits her style and adjust the wording rather than the goal.

References

Badrinarayanan, V., Dixon, A., West, V. L., & Zank, G. M. (2015). Professional sales coaching: An integrative review and research agenda. European Journal of Marketing, 49(7/8), 1087-1113. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-06-2014-0368

Rackham, N. (1988). SPIN selling. McGraw-Hill.

Weitz, B. A., Sujan, H., & Sujan, M. (1986). Knowledge, motivation, and adaptive behavior: A framework for improving selling effectiveness. Journal of Marketing, 50(4), 174-191. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298605000404