Best Change Management Techniques to Drive Sales

Change isn’t easy. If it were, there wouldn’t be entire disciplines to help organizations make it happen! Sales can be affected by any number of factors, not the least of which has to do with organizational or technological changes in the workplace. Major changes to organizations will affect the bottom line for reasons such as teams not having the tools or the resources to close deals and make sales. That’s a big deal. 

So, why use change management to help drive sales? Here’s a closer look:

Why Change Management?

Change management is a discipline that focuses on people and how to help them through change.  While some organizations may simply make changes to the organization or implement an entirely new system and just hope employees will be on board, this results in failure much more often than it results in success. Prosci® is a best practice organization and the best-known change management knowledge, training, and tool provider in the world.  Prosci describes change management as “the people side of change,” which aptly describes the importance of it. 

When the people that will be affected by the change are taken into consideration, it ensures that everyone is involved from the beginning, which will help with the willingness to adopt the change.  Capacity 4 Health found that organizations often focus too much on the deadlines associated with implementations and forget about the people affected by it. With employees aware, willing, and able to accept and adopt major changes, it will ultimately put an organization in a better position with better structure and systems in place to drive more sales. 

Most importantly, in order to have the best software available for all of your sales team’s needs, you’ll be far more successful in getting them to adopt it and use it to its fullest potential if you use change management techniques to do so. 

Change Management Techniques to Drive Sales

Prosci’s process for managing change is:

1. Prepare for change
2. Manage change
3. Reinforce change

With this process in mind, let’s take a look at the change management techniques you can use in your organization in order to be successful with changes that will drive sales. 

Let Them Know in Advance

Simply letting your teams know that the change is going to happen and explaining to them why and how it will benefit them can make a very big difference in the long run. Springing a major change in the organization on your employees can send them into a tailspin wondering about their own job security and futures. Not letting them know about the plan to implement new software or systems can result in a great deal of resistance to using it, starting you off on the wrong foot from the beginning.

Get Them Excited About It

As you begin to make your staff aware of the change you plan to make, get them excited about it. Explain to them all of the possibilities the change will open up for them. If it’s an organizational change in your future, ease their worries about any possibility of eliminating their positions or giving them responsibilities that are out of their comfort zone (if these things are true). When your change is focused around a new and improved software or system, let them in on what the upgrade means for them.

Have a Plan

Have a plan to implement your change and involve your staff in the plan. This plan may go all the way back to gathering requirements, if your change involves technology.  This is an excellent place for your employees to begin being a part of the planning and ensuring it will meet their needs exactly. Then map out the timeline and make sure everyone knows what the timeline is so there are no surprises. Being involved from the beginning and throughout the planning process will, again, help employees feel more comfortable and less likely to resist the change.

Make Sure They Can Make the Change

You’ll surely set your teams up for failure if they aren’t able to do it. For instance, if your team is focused on marketing and part of the change has them doing sales, which is not their strong suit, the change will not go well.  If you want to implement new software that is difficult to use and doesn’t have any onboarding training involved, you’ll find that your employees aren’t able to use it and will be much more resistant to even try using it. Make sure you don’t set your teams up to fail.

Remind Them How the Change Helps 

Once changes have been implemented, it can be easy for your staff to forget why the changes were made to begin with and how they have benefited them compared to the old organization or software. This can be done subtly in a number of ways and will help make the changes permanent.

Celebrate Successes

Part of creating an environment for successful change is to make note of it when it’s working well. All along the way, make sure you mark milestones and celebrate successes. This will help with getting employees excited about it and be part of the process.

The Result

Following these change management techniques will be key when implementing a cutting-edge software solution that your sales team can use to do their jobs better.  CIO.com stated that the consequences of failed software rollouts are very serious because Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is so important to company operations. With a better, more intuitive software solution like Agile CRM and a well-thought-out implementation plan using change management, your sales team will be sure to find success. Plus, with its robust onboarding capabilities, you won’t need to worry about whether or not your staff will be able to use the new software. 

Sales teams are typically very busy. Agile CRM can help them do their jobs better with sales enablement features such as sales automation to create new tasks automatically. Implementing it by using some change management techniques will accelerate your team’s capabilities and your organization’s sales.