How to Get Your Sales Team to Embrace Change

Are you struggling to get your sales team to embrace change?

Enabling your sellers with the best strategies and tactics is critical to success. But, there is a fine line between not developing your team enough and overdoing it.

Remember, the key is implementation. If your team won’t implement your programs, you will fail.

8 Things to Consider if You Want Your Team to Embrace Change

1. Limit the changes: If your sellers are overwhelmed with the volume of changes you are requiring, they will revert back to what they know and do best. Too much change is not a good thing. Initiatives will be ignored, training will be blown off, and resources will not be used. Limit the changes you are implementing to 1-2 at a time.

2. Master a new skill: Let the team master a new skill before you implement something else. The pace and volume of change matters if you want to maximize implementation.

3. Measure results: Measure results and share them. Sellers love to hear about the success of others.

4. On-the-job training: Workshops are the least effective skill transfer mechanism. Instead, use on-the-job training or create immersive environments where sellers are learning by actually implementing the skill.

5. Coaching: It’s impossible to under-coach when rolling out change. And, coaching is the most important activity to ensure changes are implemented successfully.

6. Scale back: It’s okay to scale back if you’ve gone out too fast. Measure the temperature of your sellers constantly. If they are overwhelmed, slow down.

7. Independence: Don’t create a culture of co-dependence. Sellers must be able to master a skill and use it independent of help from you as quickly as possible.

8. Show: Show the sellers how each program builds on each other. If sellers don’t see how the new programs fit together, they will dismiss them as the new “distraction” or “bright shiny object.” When you show them how all the pieces fit together perfectly for sales and customer success, they will embrace the changes quickly and implement.

Done correctly, sales enablement teams have a dramatic effect on sales success because teams are implementing new skills and accelerating sales. However, if the enablement teams overwhelm sellers with too many new programs too quickly, sellers retreat, are demotivated, and stick to doing what they like to do best.

What’s one thing you do to ensure change is embraced and properly implemented on your team?

Connect with Colleen on LinkedIn about how to get your sales team to embrace change.

3 responses to “How to Get Your Sales Team to Embrace Change

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