It may seem compelling to institute change management to deal with the challenges facing sales teams and sales managers nowadays, but this can actually add to the fatigue. The concept of change management is largely misunderstood. What is required is not change but transformation.
Here are 5 practical outlooks on transformation for you and your team:
- It’s all about your mindset. As much as change is inevitable, transformation is not. Questions to ask include: How can I grow? What changes can I make internally? How do I approach situations that are difficult to navigate and completely out of my comfort zone? By tackling these, you can adopt a powerful mindset that is geared for consistency rather than a stop-start mentality.
- Understand and empower your team to understand the difference between change and transformation. Change is external and completely out of our control. Transformation is internal and completely in our control.
- There is an old African proverb that states that if there is no enemy inside, the enemy outside can do you no harm. While declaring war on change might seem novel or even practical, consider the personal cost and wasted energy. Spending energy in resistance mode is counterproductive as that same energy could be spent being memorable and standing out. In sales you’re remembered for your energy – that is your competitive advantage.
- Evaluate your levels of comfort and what matters most. We often don’t want to change because we think what we’re doing works. But there is a difference between working with a tried and tested sales “recipe” versus the classic “comfort zone” enemy. Excuses like, “I don’t like virtual selling, I don’t like prospecting”, allow you to stay in your comfort zone. If you have a tested recipe for virtual selling or prospecting that really does work, you will naturally move out of your comfort zone.
- There is a difference between transform and surrender – it lies in the simple analysis of what is in and out of your control. Focusing on what is in your control and deciding to master that versus trying to control what you can’t is the difference between a productive day and a busy day. As a manager, you should be bringing attention to this concept all the time. To continue with the above example, discussing the pros and cons of virtual sales is not productive. What is productive is focusing on how you can improve your virtual selling techniques.
Remember, resilience is the presence of hope.
