Using the power of the team
When you want to transform your sales to improve results it usually means doing something differently. So what’s the hardest thing about that?
When you’re about to make changes how do most people react?
- How do you get their buy in?
- And how do you know you’ve got it?
- When is the best time to get them involved?
Ian Thomas, a leading motivational speaker, observes that ‘the success of the team is because of the individual and the success of the individual is because of the team’, based on his work with the lion prides of Africa. When you use the strength of the individuals you harness the power of the team which is a powerful way to get their buy in to do things differently.
Successful sales transformation programmes are built on strong systems and processes and their development is often the responsibility of the project team. Working with a cross section of your business, not just sales can be instrumental in getting buy in to what you’re proposing. Adding in a ‘Think Tank’ to develop and test processes that will really work is an approach we’ve used and the ideas teams come up with are often surprisingly creative as well as pragmatic. And because they’ve come up with the ideas then they’ve got a real reason to do things differently. Involving your customers is critical too – thought leaders are saying that a customer centric approach is one of the keys to realising the true benefits of transformation.
Sales Team Transformation
However, systems and processes are only as good as how often and how well they are implemented. The strong individuals in your team are often better equipped to deliver change. So does that mean it’s easier or harder to change their behaviour? Something I frequently hear is that the hardest people to manage are the highest performers. So how about asking your top performers to champion your sales transformation?
Nominating two ‘Sales Champions’ with just the right mix of skills, experience and credibility breathed new life into a floundering CRM implementation project beset by database difficulties and errors. We worked with the super users and they worked with the pilot programme team. The champions were instrumental in getting the project back on track and as a result the new system was launched across the business three months later and the two Sales Champions said that they felt recognised and valued. Once we’d convinced two top performers they joined us in convincing the rest of the team.
This is the first in a series of articles on sales transformation sharing Vertical’s pragmatic approach to optimising sales performance.
If you’d like to discuss these and other approaches to improve your sales performance please call Cathy on 0118 9526993 or email her at cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk