We have a chance to talk to quite a few sales ops and management teams here at SellingBrew. You’d be surprised at how many conversations end up including the phrase, “I just want my sales team to…”
Now, there’s a wide range of words that come next…to name just a few…
- Close deals faster
- Retain more customers
- Capture more revenue per deal
- Use this new tool we rolled out
- Follow the new process we’ve agreed on
The point is, there are lots of sales leaders out there that want their sales team to do things differently. And there tends to be a fair amount of frustration when salespeople are slow to change–or don’t change at all.
But, as we know, driving change is a challenge. It’s hard enough getting one sales person to change their ways–let alone a team of dozens, hundreds or thousands.
But there’s a good first step to keep in mind:
Resist the natural urge to blame the people–it’s just not productive.
Most of the time, the need for change is driven by ineffective systems or poor processes. Shifting the blame to that process or system gives the team a common enemy that everyone can rally behind.
After all, the road to changing a sales team requires that everyone admit there’s a problem. And it’s much easier for them to do that if they don’t have to admit they’re the problem.
Looking to make changes to your sales organization? We have a popular change management tutorial in the SellingBrew Playbook, Answering Three Questions to Enable Change.
