Coaching Champions: How to get the absolute best out of your salespeople

By Frank Salisbury, Cariona Neary and Karl O'Connor Oak Tree Press, £18.95

The book opens with a quote from Nick Faldo - "No one's so good, they can't get better" - proving that sport has become the template for success, supplanting the flogged-to-death military analogies.

Instead of platoon leaders marshalling their troops to do battle, we have coaches training and inspiring the team to greater heights, with the midterm review doubling for the table-thumping half-time talks.

This book is built on the premise of not only talking the talk but also walking the walk.

It is simply and cleanly produced with each chapter broken down into its component parts, backed up by research and further reading. It defines coaching as "the release of latent talent and skills, previously untapped by training, through a process of self-awareness initiated by the coach". And it also defines what it is not, counselling. Coaching focuses on individual and ultimately organisational performance, while counselling is focused on the individual alone.

It then embarks on a step-by-step approach to enhancing the coach/manager's skills so the best can be drawn out of the staff.

The book identifies the behaviour pattern common to all successful salespeople - self-motivation, acceptance of responsibility and identifying with the customer - and argues that these traits can be developed using proper coaching techniques.

It then focuses on what makes a good coach and exposes some widely held beliefs about coaching, such as giving it your best shot is all that really counts. According to Coaching Champions, too many people substitute effort for accomplishment. Hard-fighting plucky losers are just that - losers. There are some extremely useful exercises to determine your approach to such knotty coaching problems.

We then journey into the world of acronyms beloved of such books. This one's is POWER - Purpose, Objectives, What is happening now?, Empowering and Review.

Coaching Champions works its way through each element of the acronym, breaking it down and explaining each one to the nth degree. There are extensive exercises in this section and there is no excuse for not understanding what is going on.

The book concludes with a call to arms on behalf of the Power model. It does not say that it is the best thing since sliced bread but rather maintains that it is the best thing the writers have come across. It is this type of honesty and self-awareness that characterises the book and makes it such a useful tool for managers seeking a new way to get results.

Conncomidheach@irish-times-ie