Jake Burhans explains how his sales coaching team picks one skill each month, then drills it intensively like a golf coach working on a single swing adjustment. The method beats trying to improve multiple things at once, and has driven measurable performance gains.
The most effective form of coaching that I have found with my team is focusing on the one single skill that is going to increase their results the most over the course of a month. There was this story I heard about how to effectively coach and it likened to a golf coach, right? You're giving a golf lesson and the golf coach comes up and says, "Take a swing." I take a swing and he says, "Okay, what I want you to do is I want you to adjust your grip." I want you to put your weight on your back foot. When you bring the club back, think 1 o'clock, not 2 o'clock. And then I want to make sure your head is down and not looking up when you swing the club. I'm like, uh, I can't focus, there's too many things to focus on. Whereas the good coach would come in, see me swing, say, okay, great, Jake, I want you to adjust your grip. Okay, now take 100 swings. Comes back, how does that feel? Oh, feels great. Okay, great. Next thing I want you to do is I want you to put your weight on your back foot. All right, great. Now take 100 swings. And that is the essence of effective coaching, focusing on the one skill and doing a ton of reps. So with our reps, what we do every single month, on the first day of the month, we identify the one single skill that is going to improve their results the most, and we coach on that for the entire month, then we move on to the next skill, right? And it's easy when you listen to someone's call and you're like, oh my gosh, there's 5, 6, 10 things I want to coach them on. You can't. You gotta focus on the one thing. It's been the most effective thing for my team over the past month.
