It can take months, if not years to achieve real change in a sales organization. It’s a process that builds on many stages, and it can’t be achieved by a one-off training event that’s part of your sales kick-off.
Success depends on your active leadership and commitment, but also on leveraging four key motivators in your organization.
1. Culture
Culture is an often overlooked factor, but it greatly impacts any organization’s ability to achieve sales transformation. Your culture can either encourage or hinder individual empowerment, which drives a person’s capacity to take professional risks. The right culture can also create the environment that encourages people to adapt and change previously learned behaviors.
2. Leadership
Smart employees pay attention to how leadership behaves. They’re also pretty good at predicting the attention span that leaders have for any particular adoption initiative. True sales transformation demands committed leaders. Ensure consistent reinforcement by embedding key concepts into current tools and processes.
3. Front-Line Management
Your front-line managers have the ability to transform thinking and strategy into tactics and actions. They can reinforce concepts with sales reps who directly interface with your current and prospective customers. If sales managers aren’t aligned with the new selling methods being developed, they’ll lack motivation diminishing the odds for meaningful change
4. Sustained Level of Effort
Any successful sales transformation initiative not only demands a focused and sustained effort, but a reasonable set of expectations. Remember, people learn best in small increments rather than in large chunks. Limit the scope of what you roll out and launch it through a sustained level of effort. Your team will be more likely to absorb the information and you’ll be more successful at driving change.
Capitalizing on these motivators produces an action engine for change. Power that engine by (1) engaging your team throughout the development of the initiative and (2) empowering people to share their own success with the program.
During your sales transformation, expect changes. Motives may change. Conditions may change. Therefore; relevance will change. Refreshing your concepts and adapting to changes within your environment will help you maintain relevance throughout your initiative.
