Which one does the company need from the sales team?

I had a client early in my consulting career who sat me down at the beginning – during our first meeting before moving forward with a sizable commitment for the engagement, and he said to me “I want an evolution, not a revolution.”

Meaning he wanted slow change and nothing so drastic or dramatic that it:

a) caused the salespeople to generate less revenue

b) caused salespeople to get frustrated and leave.

He had taken over ownership of the company and spent most of his time in Europe, while focusing on his main businesses over there and having this business as well. He was set to leave for three months out of the country. He would be accessible but not in the office every day like he was when I met him.

There were a few salespeople performing very well, but most of the rest were not. Classic Order Taker mode, with very little business development being done. They brought me in to help with architecting a Salesforce.com build-out and launch, as well as find ways to help the team improve their selling effectiveness.

Changing to a new CRM is always a big project and always a significant change management exercise. Even with that, the owner wanted evolution and not a revolution. My mission: avoid the team coming at leadership with pitchforks and torches.

Understanding Your Change Management Needs

For your change management initiative, it’s important to understand what you need.

Do You Need Evolution?

Do you want to boil the frog?

[If you aren’t familiar with it…its terrible and gross to think about it, but if you take a frog and put it into a pot with room temp water, you can slowly turn up the heat and boil the frog without it trying to escape, because the change is so slow. If you turn up the heat quickly, the frog will hop out to escape the change. Not sure why this is a thing we reference in change management, but it’s an interesting – and somewhat terrible – visual.]

If you want to keep (most of) your current team, then the keys to evolution are:

1. Making sure everyone understands the mission, vision, and core values
2. Give the team the WHY behind changes that are to be made
3. Apply changes in small reasonable doses – you may want or need to change everything, but you can’t
4. Prioritize the change initiatives at the intersection of [What will make the biggest impact to the business] + [What the team will handle well]
5. Ask for insights, ideas, and feedback before and during the roll out

So, avoid things like changing compensation plans, compliance requirements, lead sources/flow – anything that will either make it harder for the team to close deals or make them less motivated to do it.

When a Revolution Is Needed

But of course, there could be a time when you need to change those above items I mentioned. In that case, you can do all you can to encourage evolution but be prepared to incite a revolution.

For the sake of the business, you may be faced with doing hard things, changing areas of the sales operation that are generally unchangeable (at least, easily). Be ready for a revolution.

Preparing for a Revolution

Ways to prepare for a revolution:

• Create the plan for ‘what if we lose most or all of our reps?’ – should you ramp up the recruiting of new salespeople? What can you do to ensure that you have a plan for replacing the team members that you lose (or need to get rid of)?
• Then follow Steps 1 through 4 above (Key is that step 5 – not always a good idea to get ideas and feedback if it’s a big, disruptive change)

The biggest key is that leadership needs to be clear internally about what they want and be prepared for what may occur.

Conclusion

At times evolution will work, and the company can handle slower amounts of change. Other times a dramatic change is needed asap, which could trigger a revolt. It doesn’t have to. There are ways to roll out a new comp plan, new CRM, new compliance rules, new structure, different lead source (or lack of inbound leads), without triggering a mass exodus.

It’s all about what the company needs short and long term and what leadership will need to do with various levels of change-resistant salespeople.