Sales Strategies that support change

Organisations are a reflection of the way people think and interact. Typically, the wider organisational culture is not taken into account when changing the behaviours of a sales force. Training delivered to uplift sales skills is mostly focused on product, technical knowledge, and general behavioural change. In order to have a sales force become more successful and effective the behaviours that need changing must be done so within the context of the wider organisation.

It is not enough to change the organisations sales strategies, structures, practices and systems, unless the ‘thinking’ that produced those strategies, structures or systems also changes. It is important for any change approach to be inclusive of these strategies, embedding behaviours where possible and advocating positive change through the integration of activities.

The rate of adoption and the long term sustainability of new sales capabilities can be impacted or enhanced by discovering the change disabling or enabling behaviours. The goal is to identify the change enabling behaviours and drive those to the extent that benefits to be derived from the integration of new sales behaviours may be fully realized.

To identify change enabling an organisations sales strategies and behaviours, it is important to understand:

• What are the drivers for the change within the context of the 'vision' of the organisation?
  
• Are there any competiting agendas in the organisation that may impede the successful embedding of new sales behaviours?
  
• Is the organisational culture ready to accommodate and support this type of change?
  
• Who will champion this change in a way that enables success? Decision making and influencing are critical to the role of sponsor and all senior C Suite executives need to support the strategy for change. Without buy-in there will be limited, non-sustainable outcomes.
  
• How will the Sales force be engaged and involved enough to see the value inherent in new ways of doing things, when they believe that the current way of doing things works just fine?
  
• What value would it bring to the individual, the team, the business unit and the organisation to succesfully embed this change? Change always has multilayered outcomes.
• How will that value be tracked and measured to show real returns on the investment after the deployment of the change program? How will you achieve your ROI.
  
• How will the sales team successfully utilise any new skills when the training is over and the targets remain? What support plans are in place.
• What support mechanisms are in place to assist with embedding new behaviours? How often do sales people revert to the old way of doing things because they hit a glitch?
  
• What planning is in place to move the sales team to another level after the initial changes in behaviour become embedded, where to then?
  

It is critical to note that when an organisation determines a new vision or goal, the strategy follows, the behaviours of the sales force shift, but are the rewards and performance plans reflective of that?

What steps have you taken to enable and support change within your organisations sales strategies?

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