A salesperson is excited about closing a big deal. When they share the news with their manager, the manager’s first response is, “Great job! But what about the other deals in your pipeline that aren’t closing this quarter?”

Sound familiar? Managers are conditioned to search for, identify and eradicate problems—they love to fix things, because they believe that’s the value they bring to their team. But as a result, many are failing to recognize the most powerful coaching moments right in front of them.

When you only focus on what’s not working or what needs to change in order to achieve aggressive goals and business objectives, you’re like heat seeking missiles. In other words, you’re missing out on opportunities to coach people around their wins, further develop their talents and reinforce the positive behavior that led to success.

Think about how this affects the disposition, morale and focus of your team. If you’re always focused on what’s going wrong or what’s not good enough, then what are you modeling for your people? And what do you think they’ll focus on when speaking with you, their peers and your customers?

Shift Your Approach

A global vice president of sales was having an issue with a struggling sales manager. The manager felt discouraged and overwhelmed, and was seriously questioning her ability to effectively manage and lead her team to victory.

After I coached the VP on how to better handle this conversation, he asked his manager the following questions before diving into challenges and concerns:

• Let’s take a step back for a moment. Tell me what’s going well right now.
• What have you achieved this week?
• What are you most proud of accomplishing over the last month?
• Can you share with me just one win you’ve observed amongst your team?

These questions took the manager off guard. She wasn’t expecting to talk about what she was doing well, especially in the face of a looming problem that needed to be addressed. But this shift in focus resulted in one of the most productive and positive conversations the team had ever had. The manager walked out of the meeting feeling empowered, hopeful and supported, and armed with an action plan to achieve what she wanted most.

Reinforce Best Practices

To build a successful sales team and reinforce the behaviors you want your salespeople to engage in, turn your binoculars around. Start magnifying and focusing on what they’re doing right, more than what they’re doing wrong. 

Here’s an example of what a conversation might sound like when coaching a win.

Congratulations on that sale you just made. Great work here. Before we move on to discuss what’s next on our agenda for this meeting, I’d love to hear more about it. Can you walk me through what happened when you met with the prospect initially?

You mentioned they initially pushed back pretty hard. How did you turn them around? What did you do differently this time?

What did you do really well that you’re proud of?

How did you respond when the customer initially said they were happy with their current vendor and weren’t interested in talking with you?

What questions did you ask that you may not have typically asked before?

How was your disposition and state of mind at the time?

What (best practices, conversations, questions, activities, etc.) can we identify and embed into your sales process to ensure you use them during every customer interaction to consistently achieve the results you want?

How did you acknowledge yourself for a job well done?

In every conversation and interaction you have with your people, you’re either building trust and confidence, or you’re eroding it. The choice is yours.

Keith Rosen, CEO of Coachquest, has written several best-sellers, including “Own Your Day” and “Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions,” winner of five International Best Book awards and the No. 1 best-selling sales management coaching book on Amazon.