88 percent of executives say that strategy implementation is important to their organizations – 61 percent acknowledge that their firms often struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation1.
The staggering failure rates associated with major change initiatives are well known.
Change management experts themselves repeatedly cite failure rates of up to 70% in the implementation and execution of new strategies.
This research spans across many industries and countries and the nature of the change initiative studied varied widely—CRM, ERP, shared services endeavors, mergers and acquisitions, cost reduction initiatives, restructuring/reorganization efforts, customer experience initiatives, etc. Any way you examine the findings, there is ample evidence that the change efforts are far more likely to fall short of their stated objectives than to reach their promised outcomes.
But why is this? It is not that the designers weren’t smart enough. The initiatives are often built and managed by some of the most advanced minds in the organization. It is not that the planning was efforts were wrong or insufficiently monitored. Today these programs are controlled in minute detail and closely managed with advanced analytics and tools that report their performance in real time to company management.
In a 2008 IBM Global Business Services study of over 1500 change management professionals – people who have been specifically trained to drive organizational change – those surveyed cited changing mindsets and attitudes and corporate culture as presenting the greatest challenges to successful strategic change.
Leading Sales in Changing Times™ is a collaborative learning experience designed specifically to help the leadership of your sales organization to more effectively and efficiently issues such as mindset and culture that face those in one of the most critical roles in the company during times of change– the revenue producers.
Leading Sales in Changing Times takes the position that while change happens continually throughout our organizations, change in the sales organization is different. Today, the amount of focus and discretionary energy required of a person to effectively compete in the age of the self-educated customer who is halfway down their decision path before they meet with your sales team is at an all-time high.
Simply put, sales people and teams who are themselves distracted and struggling their way through change do not have the energy available to them that is required to impact the customer’s point of view and then attach that new perspective to the unique advantages of your solutions.
Outcomes
- Develop an understanding of some of the reasons why change management efforts often fall short of their mark all together
- Understand the range of natural, normal human responses to change
- Appreciate the distinction between change and transition
- Learn the 3 processes that people need to progress through in their own transitions
- Understand that different team members land in different places and sales leadership’s job is to help them through the transitions efficiently and engage the new beginnings
- Develop new strategies and tactics for helping your own sales team members manage through their current and upcoming transitions
- Work together on real, current, and important upcoming changes in your organization and develop specific recommendations in for leading the teams more effectively through them.
At the very time when rapid strategic change requires sales people to focus and be at their best, increasing demands and confusing messages may cause their energy to disperse and/or be consumed in unproductive ways. In other words, when the company needs the sales organization to be at their best, they are often at their worst.
The chances that a change in strategy directly impacts the sales team, perhaps even disrupts the team, are likely close to 100% in any given period. Sales leaders need to be world-class at moving their people through their transitions and engaging successfully in the new reality.
1. Project Management Institute: Economist Intelligence Unit. Why Good Strategies Fail: Lessons for the C-Suite. July 2013