the role of sales leadership in leading sales force change

Leaders Leading Change:Communication and Verification

Presenter: Harry Dunklin, SVP, Sales Enablement Practice, Richardson

A New Process?

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No, it’s a big organizational change!

SAMA has identified that one of the key barriers/obstacles to success in implementing a key account management process is failure to engage

senior leaders.

Strategic Account Management Matrix

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Environmenta

l Factors

Information and Feedback Resources and Tools Rewards and Incentives

• Clear expectations• Measureable standards• Specific, timely

feedback• Access to information• Meaningful data

• Proper procedures• Easy to follow process• Easy to use tools• Adequate time• Expert support• Safe environment

• Financial, non-financial

rewards• Recognition, praise• Promotions• Lack of performance

punishment• Presence of consequences

Individual

Factors

Knowledge and Skills

Talent and Innate Capabilities Motivations and Preferences

• Formal learning• Informal learning• Developmental

rotations• E-learning• Mobile learning

• Predictive competencies• Personality traits• Physical, emotional, or

mental limits• Lifestyle constraints

• Value attributed to the role or

an aspect of it by the organization

• Level of confidence• Sense of efficacy• Mood created by the

workplace

Based on the work of Dr. Thomas Gilbert.

Change Management Messaging to create awareness

and urgency Implementing processes,

programs and directives Following a plan to meet

milestones of measurement and achievement

Engaging the entire workforce with “what to do and how to do it”

Change Management/Change Leadership

Change Leadership Developing the vision Making the connection between

the vision, strategy, critical business initiatives and people’s roles

Changing the conversation at all levels to motivate and inspect the change

Applying consistent discipline in modeling and reinforcing

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Defining Change Leadership

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Change Leadership — The ability to (1) inspire people to move from a current state to a future state by creating urgency to change and (2) enable people to successfully own their piece of the change on a personal level.

— John KotterProfessor at Harvard Business School and Author of Leading

Change

Kotter’s Model for Organizational Level Change


Build commitment with stakeholders with a two-phase, seven-step approach.

Align Engage

Based on the work of Dr. John Kotter. Graphic provided by Experience Point’s GlobalTech Experience Change Simulation.

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Scary Statistics

70% of change projects do not achieve desired outcomes – in fact, 52% fail with no evidence of change and in many cases, long term damage to the organization.

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The number 1 reason change initiatives fail is lack of leadership leading the change through vision, actions, and engagement.

The number 2 reason change initiatives fail is under communication. Kotter says that most organizations fail to communicate by a factor of 10.

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Change Leadership

Leaders of change typically experience three levels of engagement before they are ready to affect change. The three levels are: • Envisioning the Change• Owning the Change• Initiating the Change


Communication: Envisioning the Change


Change Story Framework

Explore Access Position Negotiate

GOALS & OBJECTIVES

Long-term and short-term results to achieve

CHALLENGING ISSUES

The obstacles to achieving the objectives and goals; challenging issues can

be:

n Competitive n Market/Client n Financial n Operational n Regulatory

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

High-level responses to solve the challenging issues

ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

Your own and your direct reports’ contributions to the strategic initiatives

VISION:

GOALS & OBJECTIVESCompany will achieve US$1Billion in annual revenue by 2018 through:

Net organic growth of +4% annually through achieving a target 50 new customers/year/rep and increasing revenue in current customers

Providing differentiated value added product and service solutions to customers through a complete understanding of their needs resulting in an increase in NPS by 50% in 2 years.

Being seen as the number one partner to both customers and a preferred employer for high quality candidates.

Attracting, developing, and retaining the highest caliber workforce. Our people will be our differentiator.

Developing a strong customer orientation – managing to a target of 70% of sales professional’s time being in front of customers in productive discussions.

CHALLENGING ISSUESBarriers to our achievement of our objectives include: Strong domestic competition not influenced by depreciation

of the ¥. Competitive disadvantage created due to our lack of

localization. Lack of integration resulting in perception that we do not

have a unified face to our customers. Our office based culture resulting in inefficient geographic

coverage. Skill gaps in our sales and sales management organization

that prevent us from being perceived as consultative and differentiating.

Territory inefficiencies that result in too few customer visits and not enough time with customers.

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

To achieve our objectives, we are implementing: A talent development strategy in our sales and service

organizations, focused on developing a customer orientation, creating differentiation, and completely understanding our customers’ needs.

Territory and account strategies designed to allow our sales force to focus on high value activities and maximum customer contact to increase productivity and yield the highest value returns for our customers and for our company.

An overall HR strategy that will drive (1) diversity and inclusion, (2) talent development across all of our company, and (3) a performance-based culture.

ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIESTo support our strategic initiatives, as a manager I will commit to:

Communication: Case Study/Multinational Japan Div.


Communication: Case Study/Multinational Japan Div.

Exercise – The role of the leader

• Discuss the role of the leader in leading change at your table.

• Identify the most important behavior you would expect leaders to exhibit to drive successful change.


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The role of the leader

The role of leaders in the organization is to: Model the behaviors expected of the teams Actively verify the consistency and frequency of adoption of

the new behaviors Provide feedback to peers and direct reports about driving

adoption Assess adoption, consistency of application, quality of

application and impact to the business Integrate these conversations into the business so they

become habits


Verification: Leadership Discipline Framework


Sales Executives and Sales Leaders

Sales Leaders and Sales Managers

Sales Managers and Salespeople

Asking Verification

Questions and Coaching

Verification

Feedback

Verification

Feedback

Asking Verification

Questions and Coaching

Asking about Verifiable

Outcomes and Developmental

Coaching

Verification

Feedback

Verification: How do you measure change?

Lagging Indicator — A metric that measures the outcome or result of a change

Leading Indicator — A metric that predicts or forecasts the probability of a specific outcome or result

Adoption Question — An open-ended question that asks for specific evidence that a behavior, signaling ownership of the change, is occurring


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Verification Questions at the Leader Level


What is the adoption rate of the AM’s following their account management process?

How do we know? What are the indicators? Give me an example of success stories of Sales Managers who have high

rates of adoption. What are they doing to encourage and support the adoption? How are business results being affected?

Give me an example of a Sales Manager who isn’t seeing high adoption. What are you doing to hold Sales Managers accountable for higher

adoption rates? Is it working? How do you know? What is the evidence? Are some of your Sales Managers more comfortable demanding the use of

the process and leading indicators as part of daily business than others? What are you doing to model the right behaviors? Give me some

examples.

Verification: Adoption Questions and Coaching

Ask adoption questions to gauge the depth, breadth,

and pace of change

If good evidence, coach with praise to positively reinforce

ongoing adoption efforts

If poor or non-specific evidence, engage in

developmental coaching to identify and remove barriers

to increased adoption


Case Study: Communicating and Verifying Change

• Issue: $7B distributor of maintenance repair and operations supplies growing rapidly with no unified selling process in place and need to increase sales force productivity to drive bottom line growth faster than top line growth.

• Action: worked with consulting partner to define a sales process for each go-to-market channel and to deploy the process integrated with skill models for rapid uptake by the field sales organizations.

• Risk: After significant investment in consulting and training, senior leadership realized all the focus was being placed on the front line managers and sales professionals – senior leadership were asking what they should be doing to support and reinforce adoption.

• Solution: Developed and implemented a Leaders Leading Change program designed to create a unified message and teach leaders of leaders how to reinforce and drive adoption of their investment in their people.

• Outcome: While early in the implementation process we can confirm that the entire senior team (RVP and above) can tell the same story of the reason for change and are having verification conversations with each other on a regular basis, driving adoption of the new behaviors and reinforcing the investment.


Lessons Leaders are Learning

1. Change leadership cannot be delegated

2. Less initiatives will actually create more change — be ruthless

3. Secure objective advice and guidance


Harry DunklinSVP, Sales Enablement Practice, Richardson

E-mail Contact via LinkedInPhone 215-940-9255

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