Chapter 1: a sneak peek

Chapter One

Making the Identity Shift from Manager to Coach

The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.

—Harvey S. Firestone

In June 2015 I had a coaching call with a sales leader, who I will call Stan, that I will never forget. It was the day that I realized why sales leaders don’t get in the field to coach their teams. Prior to this call, I would have blamed lack of knowledge or perhaps lame meetings as the main culprit. But that day I realized sales leaders could have clear calendars and all the training on how to coach, but without this one thing, they won’t coach. What was it?

The belief that coaching is their primary job.

On the call, I asked Stan, “How is the team doing with the new content we covered in our live session last month?”

Stan hemmed and hawed by saying, “Oh, they’re doing pretty good.” I knew right in that moment that Stan had not coached one single person.

Rather than chastise Stan, I decided to ask him a few clarifying questions. I said, “Stan, how many one-on-one coaching sessions did you do in the last three weeks?”

He replied, “Well, I’ve had a couple of conversations with team members, and we had a really great sales rally!”

I paused and then said, “You didn’t do any coaching sessions, did you?”

Stan’s voice got quiet, and he replied, “Well . . . no, not really.” I could tell he was embarrassed, and I didn’t want him to feel like I was catching him doing something wrong. I asked him to share why he didn’t really get to any of the coaching sessions. His reply blew me away. He said, “Well, I’d love to coach people, but that’s not really my primary role.” When I asked him to share what he believed his primary role was, Stan said, “To manage processes, open new communities, hire and fire, and set up pricing.”

You see, Stan’s issue wasn’t an issue of capability or desire. His issue was that he believed his job was about the direction of managing processes more so than developing people. From that point on, our coaching calls were focused on changing his belief about what his job role was.

That’s the point of this chapter . . . to shift your belief, or your identity, to that of a coach.

Leader as Coach

I want you to think about who your best team member is. I don’t mean the one who makes the most sales alone. I’m talking about the one who hits sales quotas, is a problem-solver, is low maintenance, and is enjoyable to work with.

Now think about your worst team member. If you could duplicate one of them, which one would you duplicate? If you’re not a weirdo, you likely said you’d duplicate your easy, productive team member, right? It would be great to be able to hire a bunch of people who had all the right qualities and skills, but that’s just not reality. So, it’s fair to say that you are going to have to develop those skills and habits to have a team that operates on all cylinders.

In the following chapters, I am going to give you the tools and skills to develop your team, but you need to know, right here and now, that this is your primary job. As a leader, you are a coach first and foremost.

When you focus on developing your team’s skills, there are some inherent benefits:

• Fewer problems to have to handle

• More fun on the job

• A self-managing team

  Fewer late-night phone calls

But here are the two major benefits of developing your team:

• More sales

• More revenue

  
  Key Skills + Mastery = Additional Revenue Death by Meeting

Death by Meeting

I am a huge fan of Patrick Lencioni. In particular, his book Death by Meeting had a profound impact on me.

I recall in 2004, I was sitting in an all-day manager meeting (#punchmeintheface). I remember thinking, “Why the heck does this meeting take all freaking day long?” I knew that I could have been more productive out in the field. Instead, we were in an all-day meeting “talking” about how to make more sales instead of coaching our sales team to make more sales!

The meeting was led by our new VP of sales, Stacy. Stacy was from the South and had the twang in her voice to prove it. Lucky for me, Stacy was looking for ways to shake up the routine from the prior sales VP. This all-day meeting was a part of the old leader’s legacy. At the lunch break,

I pulled Stacy aside and told her I was going out to the field to go get some more sales. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. She said, “But we aren’t done with our meeting.”

I looked right at her, knowing I could lose my job, and said, “I know. Call me if you need me.” With that, I walked out of the building and headed to the field to get more revenue rather than talk about how to get more revenue.

That was the day I became a RevenueGetter. Frankly, it’s why my company, Impact Eighty- Eight, has the tag line “A Performance Improvement Company.” I truly believe that to get more revenue in the door, you must improve your team’s performance.

The Core Mindset of a RevenueGetter

The ultimate goal of this book isn’t just to give you strategies, tools, or scripts; it’s to help you take on a new professional identity.

In my sales seminars, I often say that management is not the direction of people, it’s the development of people.

That’s not just a clever line. It’s the foundation of everything you’ll read in this book.

The promise of RevenueGetter is simple: if you make this shift, you will learn to coach your team in a way that builds skills, drives sales, and creates lasting performance improvement. But that only happens if you decide . . . right here, right now . . . to embrace these nonnegotiable mindsets:

1. My job is to coach my team consistently, not when I have time, not when numbers dip, but as a daily discipline.

2. I will measure performance improvement relentlessly because what gets measured gets improved, and guessing is not a strategy.

3. I will inspire my team intentionally . . . knowing that my words, actions, and example set the emotional climate for the entire sales floor.

4. I will protect our culture fiercely, guarding against complacency, negativity, and anything else that erodes performance or morale.

These aren’t “nice to haves.” They are the DNA of a true RevenueGetter. If you adopt them, your team will feel it. Your results will reflect it. And your career will never be the same.

The Revenue Formula

Prior to Impact Eighty-Eight, I worked with Shore Consulting, led by Jeff Shore. In 2023, Jeff released a YouTube video where he taught what he calls the Revenue Formula.¹ Here is that formula:

Revenue = Price x Traffic x Conversion

I won’t reteach it here—you can find it easily online if you want to watch it in its entirety—but what I will say is that if you have a certain revenue goal and you aren’t hitting it, you have three options:

1. Increase your prices.

2. Increase your traffic.

3. Increase your conversion rate.

Perhaps you could do all three of these. My observation over the last twenty-five years is that you can only raise prices so much before you create a pricing barrier. As far as traffic goes, you could increase traffic to a certain extent, but there is likely a cap on that as well. But if I ask you if your sales team is maximizing every sales opportunity, odds are high that you would say, “We could be doing better.”

By focusing on increasing your conversion rates, you will increase your revenue by the greatest amount without more ad spend or discounting your product to win the sale.

Conversion Case Study

Let’s say you sell high-end luxury watches through an online and in-store retail model. Here are your current numbers:

• Price per watch: $10,000

• Monthly traffic: 1,000 qualified shoppers

• Conversion rate: 2 percent (20 sales per month)

Revenue: $10,000 x 20 sales = $200,000/month

Now let’s see what happens when you adjust each lever:

1. Increase Traffic by 20%

New Traffic = 1,200 shoppers Conversion Rate = still 2% = 24 sales Revenue: $10,000 x 24 = $240,000

Result: $40K gain

2. Increase Price by 5%

New Price = $10,500
Traffic = 1,000 shoppers
Conversion Rate = still 2% = 20 sales Revenue: $10,500 x 20 = $210,000

Result: $10K gain

3. Increase Conversion Rate by 2 Points (from 2% to 4%)

Traffic = 1,000 shoppers Conversion Rate = 4% = 40 sales Revenue: $10,000 x 40 = $400,000

Result: $200K gain

Summary

+20% more traffic = +$40K
+5% price increase = +$10K
+2% conversion rate increase = +$200K

Once again, improving conversion rate drives the largest revenue gain, without more marketing spend or risking customer resistance to higher prices.

Why does this matter so much? Well, if you have been in leadership for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the following typical conversation with a salesperson:

Steve the Sales Leader: “So John, we are down on sales and need to make something happen pretty quick. What do you need to make it happen?”

John: “Well, I feel that if I had a little more back-pocket money or a better incentive, that might get us a couple of deals. I know the Hinkley family would likely convert.”

Steve: “Okay. Let me see if I can make that happen. Anything else?”

John: “Yeah . . . the traffic has really sucked recently. It’s also been kinda slow. If you could tell marketing to change things up and get me more qualified traffic, that would totally help. These people I am talking to are a waste of time.”

Steve: “Roger that. I’ll see what I can do.”

Steve runs off to save the day by decreasing revenue with a larger incentive for John and convinces marketing to increase their efforts to make more sales. But Steve never stopped and looked at John’s conversion efforts. No skill development or coaching at any level. Steve is not a RevenueGetter. Steve is a RevenueLoser.

The point of this book is for you to look at increasing your team’s conversion efforts first! Believe me when I tell you there are sales that are left on the table because you aren’t converting at the highest levels possible. And if you are converting at the highest levels possible, I am curious as to why you are reading this book. Maybe your VP or company president is making you read it. In that case, sorry, not sorry.

¹Jeff Shore Real Estate Sales Training, “The Revenue Formula: Price x Traffic x Conversion – 5-Minute Sales Training,” YouTube, August 19, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzpkscjbSIU.

The Payoff

Reread the quote at the beginning of this chapter by Harvey S. Firestone. The payoff is fulfillment and legacy. Yes, getting more revenue is the immediate payoff, but it’s way more than that.

I cannot tell you how many people I have coached who are now division presidents, company owners, top salespeople, and more. Watching someone reach their full potential is what it’s all about.

Let me share a great example of this. In the spring of 2002, I was running a new-hire class for a Fortune 100 home builder. In that class was a young man by the name of Brian Raab. Brian was a bartender at a swanky club in the Biltmore area of Phoenix.

Brian had a dream of opening up a series of restaurants in the Phoenix area and was looking at selling homes as a way to create a little capital to get that dream started. I had many coaching sessions with Brian, and sure enough, he became a top producer at our company.

I am not one of those coaches who claims responsibility for someone’s success, but I know that I likely had an influence on Brian. Brian left our company in 2006 to chase his dream. Today, Brian owns and operates multiple award-winning restaurants in the Phoenix area, including The Mission and The Fat Ox. He also just launched his own tequila brand.

I am so proud of that dude. The fact that I might have influenced his success is worth more than any monetary reward I could imagine.

It’s true—growth and development of others is the highest calling.

How do you accomplish that? You become a coach and a RevenueGetter!

Summary

At the heart of this chapter is a simple but powerful truth: Sales leaders don’t avoid coaching because they’re too busy or lack training; they avoid it because they don’t believe it’s their primary role. Stan’s story made that point impossible to ignore. Until you shift your identity to “leader as coach,” all the tools, techniques, and free time in the world won’t get you into the field developing your people. The leaders who consistently drive revenue, prevent problems, and build high-performing teams are the ones who treat coaching not as an occasional activity but as the central focus of their role.

When you commit to coaching as your primary responsibility, your priorities become sharper and your impact grows. You stop relying on short-term fixes like discounts or more traffic and instead focus on improving the one factor with the biggest payoff . . . conversion! Over time, you’ll see your people achieve more than they thought possible, often surpassing even their own expectations. The reward is more than sales and revenue; it’s the legacy of having developed others into leaders, top performers, and success stories. That starts with a belief shift: You are not just a manager of processes; you are a coach and a RevenueGetter.

Questions to Ponder

• What percentage of your time each week is spent managing processes versus developing people? (Be honest. This is about self-awareness, not perfection.)

• If your team’s conversion rate improved by 10 percent, what impact would that have on your revenue and your leadership reputation?

• What limiting beliefs about your role as a leader might be holding you back from embracing the identity of a coach? (For example: “I’m too busy,” “Coaching is HR’s job,” “It’s faster to fix problems myself.”)

Before we dive into the skills and tools in the next chapters, take a moment to assess your current leadership identity. Are you operating as a manager or a coach? Go to RevenueGetter.com/tools to find out how you rank.