Sales Strategy Change - 7 Steps to Increase Your Chances of a Successful Outcome

We’re living in times of extreme change and global competition. In order to grow the business through new and existing customers, leaders need to create new sales strategies to cut through the noise. However, once your sales strategy is designed, how do you ensure proper execution?

When introducing change, expect resistance

As human beings, we’re programmed to work in systems and protect the status quo. We’ve worked hard to create the existing system and even if we understand that it needs to change and improve, it is familiar and we cling to it. Introducing a new sales strategy is no different. Going through a sales transformation project takes time and resources and can be painful. Here are seven thoughts on how to increase your chances of success.

1. Explain the why - the purpose

Like Simon Sinek preaches: start with the why. When you explain the overarching purpose of why change is needed, make sure to communicate how important the efforts will be in achieving the goals of the company and everyone in it. Explain the negative effects of maintaining status quo. In the best of worlds, you’ll combine the drive to get away from the current state with a desire to reach a new, more appealing, future one. You may need to explain that unless you get closer to your customer and truly co-create value, your margins will be eroded, you won’t be able to spend any money on R&D and the company will finally will go bankrupt, leaving your staff unemployed. When you get this initiative right, your sales efforts will outperform the competition, the company will flourish and your staff with it.

2. Break it down and make it easy to relate to

Your strategy may have received the intellectual buy-in from everyone. However, once you start breaking it down into changed tactics, adjusted goals and activities on an individual level, it becomes real in a hurry. People are likely to get defensive. Do we really need this change? Maybe it doesn’t apply to my team? Do I really need to attend that training? It’ll blow over… Your management team needs to stand firm, keep the vision clear and commit the resources needed to assist your people through the change.

3. Figure out and define your KPIs

Your new strategy is most probably going to require changed behaviors. Behaviors are made up of actions and you’ll likely need to adjust the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you follow to track progress. Make sure to define them and explain how they align with the new strategy and tactics. Operationally, your adjusted KPI’s need to be tracked and followed up in your sales effectiveness software.

4. Align targets and compensation

If you have a dynamic compensation plan to award behaviors, you may need to change its structure to support the new actions and behaviors you wish to promote. Adjusting compensation can stir up a lot of emotions, so make sure that the reason to the change has been well communicated and that you don’t introduce major issues that will trigger problems for the initiative.

5. Coach on behaviors

Breaking an old habit and introducing a new one is difficult. Your sales managers will need to be able to coach their people towards the new behaviors. This is not a skill all sales managers possess, so invest the time and resources needed to help your managers become better coaches.

6. Coach the coach

Often, frontlines sales managers and sales directors don’t get the level of training, coaching and support that they need to drive the change and truly support their people. This is unacceptable - they are the lever to truly make a change in the field. I highly recommend spending extra resources on coaching sales leaders. Bring in external sales development experts unless you already have the in-house expertise.

7. Use a sales effectiveness platform to enable new behaviors and track progress

Your sales software should be designed to reinforce new behaviors and serve as your sales performance and coaching platform. Over time, it will become the guiding companion that enables a successful outcome of your initiative. It will also make it apparent for sales people and their managers if they start sliding back to old routines and habits. 

When your sales effectiveness system includes the tools and resources to support the behavioral change, you can keep adjusting best practices to ensure your sales managers can coach more effectively.

Are you in the midst of a sales transformation project? Do you have a vision of where you want to go, but not sure what you need to get there? Have a look at our resources page for free tools on sales strategy execution, or contact us directly.