HOW DO WE TRANSITION THE SALES ORGANIZATION FROM WHERE WE ARE NOW? HOW TO SWITCH TO INSIGHT SELLING.

Transitioning from current state to the sales force of the future (SFF) will require operational excellence. In order to prevent revenue/margin risk scenarios, a migration plan will need to be developed to protect current revenue streams and systematically convert to the new methodologies mentioned above. One way to accelerate the changes is to implement a company-wide change management initiative. This will help the incumbent sales team adapt.

Sales teams have typically been a unique group, full of energy, enthusiasm and culture. Because of these traditions, it can be a difficult entity to change. Care must be taken to help sales organizations understand the changes and see “how we win”. Companies may want to help the sales force by stepping into changes incrementally, in order to lessen the psychological distance to the future. Defining and deploying more focused sales roles through team structures could help, and also would enable companies to generate relatively efficient coverage models.

In implementing a Sales Force of the Future model with Insight Selling, there are several strategies that must best implemented to meet the overall objectives:

• Recognize that reps are ‘coin operated’. It’s not a bad thing. For companies introducing change – the compensation and rewards structures need to align with the ‘new schema’. Otherwise there will be daily resistance.
• Similar to the first bullet here - it's important to "integrate" the sales compensation reporting system with any new changes. It's surprising how adept and often the sales employees use the comp system - Integrating it over to the 'new' approaches can make a significant difference in daily adoption of portals, tech tools, apps, CRM, MAPs, etc.
• Initiate a change management initiative across the organization to encourage employees to make personal changes, adopt a high standard for customer satisfaction. And to uplift sales force morale if in an environment of deep cost cutting
• Establish shared goals and results quotas across sales, marketing and operational/fulfillment specialists.
• Set up a governance structure/team to identify and transfer best practices across the organization
• Gather and push meaningful relevant insight to the customer and to sales – in formats that are easy to digest and understand.
• If you are using salesforce.com – there are ways to enhance this approach by coupling the right approaches and tools with salesforce. Ask CEVOH how to best do this.
• Organize customer engagement teams around segments and stand-up segment specialists within the organization.
• Establish easy to use dynamic analytic dashboards to clarify results to goal. Organize the sales force near the customer and localize for optimal benefit. Shift accountability and decision making to regional sales managers to promote stronger relationships with customers
• Develop simpler product and servicing offerings that can be customized in the field.
• Align sales messaging to different stages in the sales process to increase success.
• Make sure New Product Introduction material and training is relevant to the sales opportunity and is in front of sellers when they are most receptive.
• Provide sales materials and tools well in advance of new product launches so that sales can become comfortable in using them.
• Utilize technology to scale for efficiency, integrate messages and cohesively bond the customer engagement teams with the SMB.Maintain sales materials in a centralized, structured digital environment that allows automatic updates.