Measurement is a critical component to the success of any sales iniative. Benchmarking throughout the process provides the critical line-of-sight needed to ensure your investments are providing the needed return.
Both behavioral and business measurements are integral to your initiative. When done well, these measurements provide key performance indicators of adoption success, providing insight into progress and challenges. A qualitative assessment will help gauge the fluency of desired behaviors throughout your sales transformation process. In order to achieve the future state, a closer look at your history is important.
As you consider your team’s readiness for sales transformation, it’s helpful to identify what you think your team’s main challenges will be during the process, and then develop a plan to address them. It may not be pleasant, but it’s necessary to acknowledge any “skeletons in your closet” that may be associated with lackluster results from previous change initiatives. Assessing the answers to these tough questions early in the process will help you identify conflicts and set priorities:
As a leader, you’ll make assumptions about who should lead the change effort, what needs to be changed and how it’s going to be done. If your organization has competing priorities, none of those assumptions will be correct. It’s critical to take time to assess where this initiative stands on the list of other organizational priorities.
The better the adoption plan is executed, the greater its effect on sales growth. From the word “go,” team members must un-derstand the desired behaviors expected of them and be given the tools and training to facilitate change. Examine these ele-ments to determine if the team has the ammunition they need:
Once trained, hands-on experience, trial and error, success, as well as failure will eventually lead your sales organization to a place of operational fluency and adaptation. You should begin to see most of your sales team experience a productive use of the new methodologies. Champions and mentors should surface during this phase and help continue the momentum. Assess the following questions to determine how your adoption efforts are progressing.
The purpose of change is to create an asset that did not exist before. Creating a long-term capacity for adoption success requires a new level of understanding, planning and persistence. Measurement is one critical component of an overall commitment to change. Leaders who know the way, go the way and show the way ultimately experience transformative success.