Consumers aren’t the only ones who may be overspending their bank accounts. A growing body of research from our sister program for Corporate Communicators (CEC) suggests that repeated organizational shuffling across the past few years may have exhausted the “Engagement Capital” many business leaders have to work with (think of engagement capital as the degree of optimism an employee holds about past, present, and future events at their company).

Simply put, many of us are pushing internal changes through on disgruntled workforces that no longer have the stomach for it. We are morale-ly bankrupt.

Here are some of the facts as they play out for Sales…

First, more than half of our reps have probably experienced multiple, major changes in the past year – such as a new manager, a different role, a merger with another company, a new sales process, or a restructured team.

Second, these changes are stressful, and stress costs money. In fact, more than 60% of salespeople say that their level of workplace stress has increased in the past two years, and this may be creating an overall drag of as much as 9% on performance.

But why is the stress of change having such a debilitating impact?  After all, change happens right? Salespeople should be able to deal with it. But it turns out that it’s not so much the magnitude, but rather the frequency of change that is a problem. Read More »

(This is a guest post by Kayleigh O’Keefe of the Communications Executive Council, our sister program for communications professionals.)

Organizations need to constantly adapt to meet the demands of continuously changing business environments. Communication teams are doing their part by driving employee support of change initiatives and keeping morale high. The most common tactics we’ve heard involve building the visibility and credibility of leaders.

We’re learning that companies can’t drive agility with inspiring words from the top. Instead, they need to build an environment that encourages action from the bottom up. That’s why the best communicators are knocking down barriers to communication and encouraging employees to embrace and share new ways of thinking and working.

Admittedly, Communications cannot build a change-ready organization on its own. It can, however, play a significant role by focusing on three key drivers of employee agility.   Read More »

In addition to the human impact of the tragic events unfolding in Japan, many companies are facing the potential of a disrupted supply chain as production slows and in some cases comes to a halt at factories affected by the earthquake.

To help our members respond to crises that have the potential of impacting customers, I interviewed Rick DeLisi, Senior Director with the Communications Executive Council, who has worked with members on responding to a crisis.

(If you would like to donate to the relief effort in Japan, please visit The Corporate Executive Board Giving Campaign to support the American Red Cross.)

According to Mr. DeLisi, for sales executives, the primary impact of a crisis is the “creation of a significant amount of uncertainty with customers.  Any crisis heightens the amount of the ‘unknown.’”  As a result, members should be asking themselves, “are customers likely to make poor decisions with the information that they currently have?”

In response to a crisis, DeLisi recommends that the “frequency of communications needs to be significantly higher.” The worst thing that a company can do is to “clam up and neither proactively reach out to customers nor respond to customer inquiries.”  For sales executives, this means proactive communications to customers, especially key accounts or other large customers. The key thing is to up the frequency of communications with customers.   Read More »

I’ve been getting a large number of M&A-related questions lately, specifically on how to integrate two different sales forces, the challenges posed by new or changing roles and responsibilities of reps and managers, as well as the shuffling of accounts that normally accompany a merger. To help, I’ve compiled here some key learnings gathered from members who have integrated two different sales forces into one.

There’s not much here regarding the HOW – and that is by design – the idea of this is to validate what you’re doing as well as identify some areas were you could be putting a little more rigor.  At that point, we have resources (tools, templates, processes, etc) we can share with you to help you execute more efficiently and effectively in all of these areas.

At the highest level, you should think of M&A challenges on three levels:  customer, rep, and manager. And interestingly, of those three levels, the place most companies struggle isn’t the rep level—where they focus all of their time and energy—it’s the manager level.

Let’s review some of the key considerations you must take into account for each level:   Read More »

(This post was originally written for the Communications Executive Council, our sister program for heads of communication).

Fear kills.

Think of all the phobias that are directly responsible for sub-optimal results at big companies.

The fear of making a decision (often described in government agencies as “paralysis by analysis”). Liticaphobia, the fear of getting sued (also known as “G.C. ya later”). And the one that afflicts far too many organizations — kakorrhaphiophobia.  Fear of the “F” word.  Failure.

Why are some companies more successful during times of change than others?  Why are some more adaptable, better able to adjust to their ever-changing environment?  What are the traits and qualities that make some companies more agile than others?

Here’s one hypothesis I’m really curious to get your reaction to:

Is it possible that one essential element of being great at change, is being unafraid of failure? Read More »

CSOs are trying to change their sales forces.   I’ve attended many national sales meetings, leadership meetings, strategy sessions and the like over the past several weeks, and the common theme that emerges from them is, simply, “change.”

Why?  Because sales leaders know that using past approaches – approaches that may have been successful before – will no longer work in today’s selling environment.  Given many factors (the economic slow recovery, anemic buying, customer risk aversion), sales people need to be working with customers in a new and different way.

But how confident are you that if you want change, you’re going to get it?  Read More »

Every couple of months, we get a call from a member who’s in the sticky situation of needing to make mid-quarter adjustments to quotas or compensation plans. There’s a variety of reasons why companies land in these situations. Sometimes a new product launch isn’t as well received by customers as hoped.  In other cases, the sales force lands upon an unanticipated spike in customer demand.  And sometimes an average performer unexpectedly becomes a superstar.

But regardless of the causes, goals and pay plans that are out of sync with rep performance can create big problems.  If adjustments aren’t made, someone’s bank account will be broken – either the rep’s or the company’s.  The adjustments may be messy, but the alternative is far worse.

But contrary to common belief, quota and comp plan adjustment don’t always have to be jarring. We’ve seen a number of companies navigate the process with minimal disruption. The key, they tell us, is to always focus on communicating two things to the sales force: Read More »

Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for the manager dive-n-catch. You know, the deal that is saved at the last minute or put back on track after a major derailment.

But at what point do heroics outweigh rep learning, especially those valuable learned-it-the-hard-way moments?

Even the most progressive coaching organizations struggle here. You have a perfect mix of conditions for the manager takeover to be the rule rather than the exception: former star reps as managers, high pressure conditions, variable comp on the line, a rep struggling through a new skill, a situation the training room didn’t seem to account for….

We recently profiled Siemens Water Technology for a really interesting approach they’ve put in place to get reps doing rapid-fire calls to learn new skills. In fact, SEC members can hear them tell the full story on December 1.

As part of that story, Siemens shared how they’ve created a clear distinction between typical manager ride-alongs and manager coaching trips. Check out the chart for the detail:  Read More »

No one ever said introducing and changing sales behaviors is easy work. For our latest study, we’ve been looking at better ways to get sales training to stick, and indeed, it’s tough business.

While the whole idea of grassroots change management is no secret, it’s tough to execute in a sales environment.  So it comes as no surprise when new sales training is rolled out, the top-down change management playbook is often used with heavy emphasis on the sales manager as the change agent.

Consider for a minute what needs to happen for a successful sales training rollout… It involves some degree of rep agreement with the new method, at least in principle. Next comes some degree of actually trying the new method. And finally, and at best, full adoption.

Now as you think about gaining buy-in at each of these steps, what are the greatest sources of influence you’ve seen in your organization? Sharing the results of a pilot, senior leadership visibly supporting the new method, manager coaching and reinforcement, best practice sharing sessions, right? We all know the usual change management paces.

But in thinking through how to actually change behaviors, our research has us considering other sources of influence.  One of the more intriguing ideas we’ve considered is the underbelly of the sales organization itself – rep to rep exchanges: the airport conversations, the emails, the general chatter.  These conversations are where your initiatives certainly make, or potentially break, themselves.

And yes, this should be thought of as a real channel that can be leveraged, even if it’s the same channel that’s responsible for spreading inappropriate jokes and YouTube videos around the office. Read More »

We’ve just finished talking with over a hundred members for our new study Building Managers for a Return to Growth, and one of the themes we saw was that there is an unprecedented amount of change happening in sales organizations.

Why?  Well, it’s not necessarily by choice.   Given a mandate to grow but faced with resistant customers, sales organizations realize they need a new playbook.  More companies than ever are re-examining value propositions, go-to-market models, territories and customer interactions.  And they’re recognizing the importance of new rep skills for selling in a complex environment.

But, of course, change is hard.  One of my favorite articles on the subject is from business magazine Fast Company, titled Change or Die.  In it, medical specialists talk about the challenge of getting patients to change behaviors – stop smoking, drinking, eating too much, reduce stresses, and exercise more.

It turns out those five behavioral issues account for 80% of the healthcare budget in the US.  Often, those bad habits lead to expensive heart procedures.  But these are generally only temporary measures; those who receive treatment are told to switch to a healthier lifestyle before heart disease kills them.  After two years, guess how many had changed habits?

10%.  That’s a pretty sad number.

But it shows that even when patients face a shorter life, old habits die hard.

Thankfully, the article provides some answers as well.  Some change efforts have been successful in the medical world.  What can we learn from them (both personally and professionally)?  Read More »