A Coaching Model Created by Yong Sun Terrence Ho
(Sales, Business and Leadership Coach, MALAYSIA)
My coaching model is heavily inspired by my passion for sales. I have been involved in sales as a practitioner, manager, and leader for over 20 years and when I was introduced to coaching after discovering training unexpectedly in 2017, I knew wanted to be a Sales Coach.
A Sales Model that I have often used in training for my clients who sell on a B2C (Business to customer) basis is:
C – Captivate
A – Ask
P – Present
E – Execute
Besides being an easy acronym to remember; when the word CAPE is mentioned, most people think of a superhero e.g. Batman, Supergirl, etc. and in most organizations, the salesperson is often thought of as the superhero – the one who will beat all obstacles to achieve challenging targets given to them.
Captivate:
Imagine yourself as a salesperson at a clothing retail store or car showroom … when a customer walks in; you only have a few minutes or sometimes just seconds to capture the attention of the customer. Therefore, step 1 is to CAPTIVATE the customer. How can you achieve that? Here are the steps:
Ask:
Now that you have captured the attention of the customer, it is now time to ASK questions:
Present:
Next is to PRESENT and strike when the iron is hot i.e: when there is a buying signal:
Execute:
Finally, EXECUTE the sale:
I believe that C-A-P-E can also be used for Sales Coaching as follows:
C –Challenge
A – Action
P – Perspective
E – Execute
Challenge:
In my experience working with salespeople, the target or budget is usually clear e.g. to hit a revenue growth of 10% from last year or to sell $1,000 worth of product each month. Therefore, the first thing to do is to know what the CHALLENGE is. The following questions are useful for this:
Action:
Next, would be to identify what action(s) can be taken to overcome the challenge:
Perspective:
At this step, we would want to acknowledge the client (salesperson)’s work and now enquire about the PERSPECTIVE that they have gained:
Execute:
Finally, to execute the action(s):
In summary, for my blended practice which offers sales training and coaching, C-A-P-E can be used as a model to train and also coach my target clients who are salespeople with titles such as account managers, store supervisors, relationship managers, business development executives, client coverage executives, and even business owners. Having the same acronym for training and coaching allows me and the client to remember and apply it easily in the field.
