My 10 Rules for Sales Transformation

In my time turning around, starting up and transforming various technology sales and business functions over the past 25+ years, these are the basic rules I apply when I get given a team to work with. Usually it is either a team that is not performing as it should or a function that needs to go through a major change in approach and go-to-market due to the market or product strategy changing radically.

Most of these should be part of sales management 101 and nothing new to seasoned sales leaders, but it is surprising how often the basics are missed.

Rule 1: The Sales Team is probably not the issue!

Whilst the presenting issue may be that the sales team is not performing, the root cause is often quite removed from the guys and gals out on the street. Many times I have seen organisations where the Execs come up with a simple and clear strategy, this strategy is understood by the field-force and makes sense, however there is a layer of treacle in between the execs and the field when it comes to execution.

This layer of treacle is usually made up of senior sales and operational leaders that have been with the organisation for many years and have had pretty successful careers – up until now – and see no reason to change. Or they do see a reason to change but they are not skilled or experienced in these new ways of selling or speaking to new stakeholders so don’t know how to lead and coach their teams in how to change.

I have seen this time and time again, when I have tried to coach them I get 1 of three responses:

1.      They admit they don’t understand it and step aside and allow me to directly coach their team, I find the ‘Quietly Competents’ (see rule 2) and use them to demonstrate the new approach to give the rest of the team (and the leader) a pattern to follow

2.      They want to learn and step into the new world, I coach them in training and leading their team and support them, it is a mutually supportive relationship and sets them up for their next career step as well as their team’s success.

3.      Don’t want help, they know best and they want to be left alone. What happens next is that they half-heartedly apply the new strategy, beat the field-force up when it doesn’t work, so that the good people leave, and then feedback up to the execs that the strategy isn’t working so it then gets chopped. Or they get exposed and have an assisted departure.

With type 3 what often happens is that individuals in their team will reach out directly to me for help without informing their management - until after they have won the deal…..

Understanding where the root cause of the underperformance lies is your first step to turning around the team.

The real challenge here is around politics and ego, and whilst most of the time a gentle, cautious, inclusive approach works, occasionally you just have to stick a rather large stick into the hornet’s nest and see what happens!

Don’t forget, you are there to be disruptive.

Rule 2: It’s all about the (sales)people

There are 3 types of people in a team when you take it over;

25% will perform no matter what, and just want a leader to set the direction and vision and send them on their way – Identify these people quickly, make sure they are supported and rewarded and get out of their way, these are the people that will not only lead the change, they will keep the lights on whilst you make the bigger transformation, I call this group the ‘Quietly Competents’

50% will be sat wondering what to do and won’t do anything until told, some will be able to step up into the new world with the right training and support and will respond to positive leadership with clear vision and goals, these are the ones to spend your energy on to determine who can step up into the top group and who might be better placed elsewhere.

25% These are often the most vocal group, the ones that will sit back and expect to be fed the good leads and customers and will expend the minimum of effort. These are the ones that will moan about how bad their customers are, complain about their com-plans and create dissent and uncertainty in the rest of the team. Quickly assess these ones and decide whether their moans are genuine, whether they are in the right team and if they can ever change, then make a plan of what to do with them.

I was once given a team of 10 sales people and was told I needed to fire 4 of them for under-performance. I quickly assessed the team and found that my lowest paid guy was the highest performer, my highest paid guy was the lowest performer (1 of the 4) and most of the rest were doing OK but not shining.

Of the 4 identified low performers; 2 had an assisted departure, I moved 1 into another area where he could shine and the 4th guy was new to sales but a great technician so I buddied him up with  a lady who was expert at the high-touch strategic stuff, but no technician. They coached and supported each other really well and started a real co-operational spirit in the team that was counter to the usual dog-eat-dog style of the company.

Rule 3: It is about leadership not Management

The last thing an under-performing sales team wants or needs is a new manager that stares at spreadsheets and then tells them that their numbers are too low – they already see and feel that in their commission cheque!

What they want and need is a leader, a leader who will provide a vision, outlines what their role and position is in the company, show them the impact they can make not only to the bottom line, but to the company leadership and how they can improve the lives of their customers (and customer’s customers).

They need a leader that will act and exhibit the behaviours he or she expects from their team, that will protect them from the frivolity of Corporate communications, shield them from pointless funnel inspections and give them the space and time to start performing at their best.

Some simple things I have done in the past:

1.      Instil the discipline of keeping the CRM system up to date – if it is up to date then Management can look at it safe in the knowledge it is accurate and won’t keep asking for spreadsheets – if the reps are creating spreadsheets, they are not selling! If they need special reports/spreadsheets they can be quickly created from the CRM without putting extra admin load on the team.

2.      Managing upwards – set realistic expectations of how quickly things will turn around and stick to it, if there are structural or political issues step outside of the chain of command

3.      Fix issues: if there are internal blockages, legacy issues or partnerships that are hindering progress be disruptive, upset a few people, expose the weak links and show to your team that you have the moral courage and belief in them to put your neck on the line for them -this is where you build your credibility with them.

4.      Coach and Support – encourage them to take risks, step out of the comfort zones and try new approaches. Attend meetings with them, but let them lead and drive them and never, ever dive in and heroically close a deal for them – there is nothing worse than having done all the hard work and have your manager steal the glory!

5.      Have regular face-face team meetings, but don’t spend this precious time all sat in a darkened room staring at Powerpoint slides - encourage discussions and interaction. This is where the team culture and tone is made, when they are helping each other with how to approach opportunities and structure deals. If one salesperson has tried something new and it worked it gives the rest of them confidence to try it, if something didn’t work discuss it and try and work out why? Leave the egos at the door.

Make sure there is an incentive to attend the meetings too, Bacon sandwiches on arrival if a morning meeting, or beers and/or meal afterwards if an afternoon one nearly always work and start building that relaxed camaraderie that will have the other teams looking over and wondering why your team is always the one with laughter coming from their meeting room….

Rule 4: It’s all about the people (Customers)

I am amazed by how many salespeople I come across who don’t like spending time with customers, and if they do it is only with 1 or 2 people that they sell directly to. This is great when those few people are regularly buying, but what happens when they leave or get promoted? All of a sudden you have to start again.

I encourage the team to broaden their contact patch in the customer, to try and spend time on site if they can get a badge and even a desk. By being there and growing the informal contact, speaking to a wider circle of people spreads the influence, comfort and most importantly; Trust. Twice I have managed to worm my way onto the CTO’s internal steering committee of large companies which gives massive access to all of their internal challenges and priorities – and head off any competitive FUD at source

It is a simple process, shown in this diagram below, the broader your relationship in the account the more possibilities appear that you can then convert into opportunities to take action against and win.

If you sit around waiting for an RFP to appear, it means the competition own the relationship, developed the possibility and created the opportunity….and you probably won’t stand a chance of winning.

I know that this approach is easier in the Enterprise space where a salesperson might only have 1-3 customers, but in a busier patch there will quickly emerge 1 or 2 clients out of the 20/30/50 where I encourage the team to invest a little more time and start developing a deeper relationship with.

Selling in a resident techie or operations person is a great way of gathering intel, gives early warning of any competitive activity and issues and gives the rep an excuse to go on site regularly, as well as giving nice annuity renewals!

One of my customers had a coffee bar in their head office, every day there was someone from my account team sat at table 5, the CTO’s strategy team knew that they could come and see us, get bought a coffee and Danish, and be able to talk through any new challenge or task facing them even if it wasn’t directly to do with our products – a great trust and relationship builder.

Rule 5: Propositions must be simple and outcome-based

I stepped into one sales function that was doing OK, but not growing at the rate needed. When I was handed the standard presentation deck it became very clear – 57 slides of opaque technical detail! Wow, even as an ex-techie I had glazed over by slide 4, so my first job was to pull out the core messages and condense that down into 2 slides and then turn it into a simple story that the Account Managers could draw on the whiteboard or their notebooks.

The ideal proposition is one that draws a straight and simple line from technology change to business improvement, and having some customer stories that backs this up is extremely powerful. By the way “The customer bought 15 new servers” is not a business outcome for them!!!

This is particularly important for new start-ups – be it a whole new company or a new direction in an established company. It is easy to get swept up in the excitement and innovation and make the proposition either so technical or nebulus that the customer can’t see what you are actually selling!

The simple rule is, if the Salespeople can understand and believe in it then they can articulate it to the customer with enthusiasm and enjoyment, and in turn they can sell it internally.

Rule 6: There are 4 objectives to every Proposal

Every time I go into a new business turnaround situation I assess all activities and propositions against these 4 simple objectives:

1.      Cost Reduction

2.      Service Improvement

3.      Risk Mitigation/Reduction

4.      Business/Revenue Growth

If your proposition does not address any of those it won’t sell.

When I was an IT Director in the ‘90s everything I proposed into the Boardroom easily covered the first 3, but the 4th was always a tricky one to prove, but now CIO/CTOs are expected to be the ones creating propositions to the Board that will drive Revenue and deepen the interactions with the customer.

What taking this approach also does is equip your sponsor to take your proposal and sell it internally, to link the Basement Data Centre to Boardroom Initiatives. Drive the team to think about this with every campaign and proposal.

As the Line of Business departments are getting more tech-savvy, they are siphoning off budget from IT. CIOs are desparate to stop and reverse this trend and taking the above approach will help them get/stay established at the vanguard of Digital transformation in their organisations.

If you are not selling directly to CxOs, the person you are selling to will be, so help them to do so!

 Rule 7: You are not selling things, solutions or services, you are selling change!

No Matter what products or services you are selling, you are actually selling change to the customer and that means risk and disruption. Business doesn’t like change and disruption unless it is going to mean a leap forward in terms of revenue generation or service to the customer- and in the latter case change management needs to be taken even more seriously.

As technology is driving change deeper into the business process and customer interaction, there are more stakeholders and potential dissenters for every deal, so understanding the roles and characters outside of the data centre becomes ever more important.

I had a situation recently where the level of change and disruption between the incumbent upgrading their solution and the customer switching to ours was about the same, however, the business owners’ view was that changing to our solution was a much bigger change because the logo on the box (that they would never see) changed and therefore needed more acceptance testing. Our Win Strategy was then focussed on addressing the concerns of those business owners to neutralise the perceived increased risk and by doing this not only did we level the playing field, we demonstrated that we had a deeper understanding and appreciation of the business risks. (and we won it!)

Another approach is to include a prototype of the new world for the end users/customers to try, I did this with an Employee Experience Transformation by creating a ‘Future Office’ in their head office complete with iPads and thin clients that employees could drop in and try, I have also seen a ‘Future Ward’ created in two Digital Hospital transformations that the clinicians could experience in their own context. Both are also great at garnering feedback to tweak the end solution.

Rule 8: Before you pitch you must receive

Salespeople are not good listeners usually, they go into a meeting brimming with excitement and enthusiasm for their product and will launch into their pitch without thinking about what the customer actually wants.

The old adage being that if you are selling Hammers then every customer needs a nail knocking in, rather than spending the time to listen to what their wider materials fastening challenges are.

I was with an Account Manager on a first call with the VP of IT purchasing in a global company, before my bum had even nestled in the chair he was excitedly expounding the virtues of the new generation of server we had just launched, so I had to elbow him and switch the conversation to my simple first meeting process I call ‘PrODUCTS’

Prepare: Understand the company, strategy and challenges. Look up the person, do you know anyone who knows them? What’s their professional background?

Opening: Observe where they are in the building – basement or exec floor? Do they come and get you from reception or send their PA? have a short sentence prepared to outline the goals for the meeting

Discover: based on your preparation asked some open questions about them as a company and a person, without being too harsh try and tease out their real priorities.

Understand: summarise and play back the key challenges and objectives to check your understanding and have them acknowledge them

Credibility: outline where you have helped customers like them in a similar situation and the outcomes (this is where good story-telling helps)

Test: try closing for progress, something like: “So, if your top priority is this, why don’t we set up a follow-on meeting where I can bring in my expert to talk to your folks to see if we can help?” or something similar, if the requirements have been clear it might be to go away and write the first draft of the proposal, but it needs to be something that moves the conversation forward

Summarise: Go back and summarise the key challenges and objectives, review the actions and make sure you leave with actions on both sides so it provides a reason to continue communications

In the example above I knew that the company had a new CEO, the VP sent her PA to get us and her office was in a nice part of the building, this told me where she was in the company hierarchy and that she probably wasn’t that bothered about server speeds and feeds. In questioning it turned out that there was also a new CIO and he was planning an offsite in 2 weeks with the senior IT team to pull together the new strategy, but that the CEO had laid out a ‘journey to the cloud’ initiative.

So we proposed to re-convene the week after the offsite when she would know the IT strategy and in the meantime we would gather some examples of where we had helped similar companies to the cloud. We then cut the meeting short which she appreciated. This approach then set a great foundation for the relationship going forward as she knew we weren’t going to waste her time, but that we were interested in helping her. If I had let the server pitch continue that would have been our only meeting with her. Ever.

Rule 9: Hope is not a Sales Strategy

This was the mantra of one of my old Sales Managers and it rings true, leave as little as possible to chance! Sales people seem reluctant to write Account Plans, Campaign Plans and Close Plans. Whilst I believe in keeping the administrative overhead to a minimum, there are a few good practices that should be enforced and the level of detail appropriate to the size of customer/deal.

Account Plans are self-explanatory and I won’t go into detail here, I have seen many hulking great documents that are completed once a year and then ignored, they should be simple, agile and updated at least quarterly by the whole account team – gives a good excuse for an account team meeting!

Campaign plans should link what you want to sell with a particular customer initiative and are useful for gaining internal buy-in and support before taking to the customer, these tend to be short-sharp in-quarter or half year campaigns. One format I have used for these is a single A3 sheet that maps CEO initiatives on the left with the business outcomes from your solutions on the right and a simple timeline along the bottom showing the next steps and early wins. Not only does it show that the rep understands how to link technology to outcomes, but they can put it in front of the customer to test their view as well

Close Plans are simple and take little time to do but doing so makes you think about what needs to happen both within the customer and your own organisations. It is often worth working backwards from the deal signature.

Simple things like, who needs to sign this deal? When do you want/need it signed? Are they in the office on that day? Do they have a slot in their diary to sign it? What is the approval trail to get to that? When and how do I get it to the customer? Who needs to approve the deal internally? Who do I need to put this deal together? And so on

It is a simple thing but I rarely see it done properly. I had a customer CTO that liked playing sport with sales people and would ask for changes or disappear on signature day, so built into my close plan was always keeping his PA on side so she could get me a slot in his diary (and check he was in) and also warming up internal approvers that I would likely need a quick turnaround on a last-minute change on end of quarter day which meant I could land the deal when I said I would.

These are great disciplines to encourage in the team, gives you a clear window on their thought process and behaviours and really helps in the strive for forecast predictability

Rule 10: Be Innovative, Be Brave, Be Fun!

You will only be successful in leading a team through turnaround if you do something different from what has gone before, if you demonstrate conviction and commitment and if you create an atmosphere and culture that the team want to be part of.

Think carefully about the culture you want to create and the type of people you want and need in your team. Think about how your team fits in with the rest of the company, and at the same time stands out!

I have seen too many heads of sales teams who seem to think that the only way to get the best out of the team is to give them a hard time, and this is often cascaded from the top of the organisation. Being nice to your team is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of personal strength and security in yourself as a leader and this can be a bit threatening to the other Management around you.

I’ll never forget sitting in front of a Country VP whilst he frowned at me and said: “ You seem to be good at this team leader stuff, your team like working for you and are happy and you are blowing your number…..but I don’t understand how?” - I took that as a compliment!

Summary

Hopefully the above makes sense and whilst not much is new or earth-shattering, it will act as a bit of a memory jogger or cause to think through your own approach to Sales Leadership.

I would welcome other people’s thoughts and suggestions for other rules, either drop me a line on Linkedin or directly to [email protected]

I would like to finish by saying thank you to all those Managers I have worked for and the people I have worked with for helping me gain the above experience, I will have shamelessly stolen the good behaviours I have observed and watched in awe at the bad and truly shocking, either way it is all good experience!

Thank you for reading.