Changing an organization is hard, changing a sales organization is...
New sales initiatives present exciting opportunities for sales teams and individual sales reps who are looking for ways to be more successful. At the same time, whether you are:
Change Management 101
The first rule of change management is to get buy-in from the individuals impacted by the change. Change without buy-in requires significant commitment from leadership and front-line managers in order to overcome push back from fans of the status quo. In a sales context, changing rep behavior without their buy-in requires more commitment than most management teams are willing to spare.
Getting Rep Buy-in
To get buy-in, you are going to have to make a sale, just like any other sale. But now you are not asking for their money, you are asking them for their commitment, their energy and their patience. In order to obtain those things, you must demonstrate that the new sales initiative will benefit them personally despite any initial difficulties that come with change. This is no easy task, but here are some building blocks to start with:
How Prescott Sales Pilots can help
A Prescott Sales Pilot can help you think through, test, and demonstrate the value of a new sales process before you ask your sales team to buy in to the change.
- Rolling out a new product;
- Asking reps to sell higher in an organization; or
- Trying to implement and manage to a new sales process;
Change Management 101
The first rule of change management is to get buy-in from the individuals impacted by the change. Change without buy-in requires significant commitment from leadership and front-line managers in order to overcome push back from fans of the status quo. In a sales context, changing rep behavior without their buy-in requires more commitment than most management teams are willing to spare.
Getting Rep Buy-in
To get buy-in, you are going to have to make a sale, just like any other sale. But now you are not asking for their money, you are asking them for their commitment, their energy and their patience. In order to obtain those things, you must demonstrate that the new sales initiative will benefit them personally despite any initial difficulties that come with change. This is no easy task, but here are some building blocks to start with:
- Motivation. Is your attempt to implement the change driven at least partially by a genuine desire to make it easier for reps to be successful?
- Reflection of Reality. Do the steps in the sales process accurately reflect the realities of how your customers buy?
- Flexibility. If you have multiple customer bases and they buy in different ways, do you have multiple sales processes?
- Proven. Can you prove to reps (and their managers) that they will be more successful if they follow the sales process?
- Adaptable. Do you have a plan to collect, listen and react to input from reps that can be used to continuously improve the sales process?
How Prescott Sales Pilots can help
A Prescott Sales Pilot can help you think through, test, and demonstrate the value of a new sales process before you ask your sales team to buy in to the change.