How to Achieve Change in Sales Environment

Change is an ever-present business theme, especially around sales. But, if you Google “what percentage of change initiatives fail?”, the answer is 70%. Many newly-appointed sales directors feel compelled to change strategy, and to do it quickly, but with a reported average time-in-role of 18 months, many are failing.

Over many years, I’ve learned that successful change is only achieved when the people it affects buy in to the programme and the outcomes. Sales is full of people with diverse opinions and strong wills, so buy-in is vital.

Sales leaders sometimes believe that buy-in is achieved by imposing the programme and outcomes they created in splendid isolation, without consultation with those affected. This can cause people to resist or disengage, driven by their lack of belief in the programme, or in the underlying reasons for the change.

HOW TO ACHIEVE BUY-IN For the past 20 years, every successful change initiative I’ve driven started by harnessing the collective wisdom of those likely to be affected by it. The act of asking for, acknowledging, and acting upon, their contribution clearly sent out the message, “We value your opinion and we value you,” creating that all-important buy-in, and delivering a surge in discretionary effort.

I first used this approach 20 years ago, when I inherited an “at risk” account and a team of more than 50 people. I immediately realised that we were not in good shape, and that urgent changes were needed, but was unsure where to start. I got all 50 people together for the evening (with free beer and food) and harnessed their collective wisdom, which added up to some 200 person-years on the account, to identify the issues and ways to turn the account around. This exercise highlighted that the customer didn’t recognise the value we were delivering, and that we had stopped listening to them. We had also become too subservient to them, afraid to push back on “opportunities” that represented bad business for us. We worked with the customer to agree better ways to communicate, pushed back on a few things, and undertook a marketing campaign that emphasised the positives in our relationship. Eighteen months later we won sole supplier status. None of this could have been achieved without the invaluable input and complete buy-in from the account team.

WHAT THIS APPROACH HIGHLIGHTS AND DELIVERS In the 17 years that I’ve delivered consultancy using this approach, a few themes have emerged – and remember, these themes are driven by the people involved, not my opinions. As you would expect, continual opportunity qualification is frequently in the top three “need to do better” list, as is a win strategy for must-win deals. The number one shortcoming is unsurprisingly “review, learn and adapt from success and failure”, which rarely scores better that 35%, accompanied by comments along the lines of “we lost on price, let’s move on” and “who cares why we won, let’s move on”. So many important lessons are lost forever. If just one significant win and loss were to be analysed annually, and the lessons applied, the savings made by losing quicker, and the revenue gained by just one more win, would make a big difference. “Successful change is only achieved

A prime example of this was a when the people it mobile services provider, whose affects buy in to the sales team collectively identified programme and the that deals won or lost were categorised as just that, and never outcomes” discussed again. I worked with the team to define the information needed to provide usable data, and its CRM system was changed with immediate effect. The new information was mandated for the previous six months of pipeline, and the weekly pipeline review started by spending the first 30 minutes considering all deals won and lost in the previous week. Within weeks, things that had previously been blockers were overcome (hindsight is 20/20 vision), and the ability to either qualify out or develop an informed win strategy was greatly improved. Revenue increased and cost of sale was reduced.

This approach also works in the indirect channel sales arena. A few years ago, we worked with McAfee to identify improvements that drove

86% growth in a single global reseller. This was achieved by asking the reseller (over 200 people globally) what it felt McAfee could do better across 20 aspects of partner engagement. The overall response was very positive, highlighting just three things per region (five globally) that needed addressing, mainly around joint value propositions and face time with local McAfee expertise. The investment needed to address these was easier to justify, as the need was proven, rather than by guesswork.

HARNESSING COLLECTIVE WISDOM These days, I can harness collective wisdom in just two weeks using an online “business 360” approach (like a personal 360, but about business). In most cases, it’s one I’ve previously developed, but sometimes I use a bespoke one for a specific situation. All 360s follow the 5-level capability maturity model (CMM) (see these links for background: bit.ly/2h0gp6Y, bit.ly/1Zsvqg2).

The pre-developed/off-the-shelf 360s are primarily focused on sales effectiveness, business growth, major accounts (supplier and customer perspective), alliances or partner engagement (both parties), and bidding. When a bespoke 360 is required, I work with the client to define and agree the scope and desired outcomes, then create a model that is fit for purpose, drawing on my library of existing questions and experience. The client sends the 360 to everyone in their business, stressing the importance of their individual (anonymous) contribution. To enable meaningful interpretation of the data when producing the outputs, the 360 captures the contributor’s job role, tenure, location (if relevant), and other agreed variables.

Primarily, the results of the 360 enable the identification of the elements that must be prioritised in the change initiative, and the reasons why, using both quantitative data (the levels of maturity measured as 0% to 100%) and the qualitative data (the contributor’s comments accompanying their scoring).

The next action is critical – communicating the findings, conclusions and next steps to the contributors, demonstrating that, “We’ve heard what you said and this is our response.” The level of buy-in and discretionary effort this delivers is immeasurable. By repeating the process every six months, everyone remains engaged in measuring progress, and is reminded that, “We value your opinion; we value you.”

CHRIS WHYATT is founder of Get to Great, a consultancy specialising in helping technology enterprises meet sales targets consistently by embedding business agility and continuous improvement. Email chris@gettogreat.co.uk or visit www.gettogreat.com