Avoiding a Mutiny
Don Buttrey is the president of Sales Professional Training Inc., a company that offers in-depth skill development for sales professionals and sales support. He has trained thousands of salespeople over 25 years and clearly understands the selling environment of equipment dealers and manufacturers. His curriculum is comprehensive and proven! Don is also the author of “The SELL Process”, a foundational how-to book on effective sales interactions. He is able to negotiate restructuring while avoiding a mutiny.
Don can be reached at (937) 427-1717 or email donbuttrey@salesprofessionaltraining.com.
Check out this website link salesprofessionaltraining.com for more information – or to purchase online sales training.
Avoiding a Mutiny
QUESTION 3: How can I make some necessary territory changes and restructure the sales department without a mutiny? Also, how can we implement technology such as CRM when it seems to be resisted for numerous reasons?
Don Buttrey: Believe it or not, I suggest laying tough issues like this out on the table with your salespeople. Teach them the realities and the issues that you see and face as a leader – with a larger perspective. Sell to them the importance of changing. You are not the enemy – the competition is! I am a believer in getting the solution, buy-in and ownership from the salespeople themselves. If you jam it down their throat – they will not do it anyway – at least not with the heart that would be needed to succeed. My training is effective at showing them the disciplines and the activities that they must be doing as professionals. I am confident that once they see and learn the stuff of professional selling – they will be convicted about how far they are missing the mark. From there a ground level of support can help you restructure your sales department and make needed changes.
Then, to implement, it requires top leadership commitment with firm execution of necessary strategic changes. Change your system! Otherwise, if you show the slightest lack of authority or conviction – it will get overturned, ignored or “waited out”. Michael Gerber put it this way, “If you tell people to do the right things and your system tells them otherwise…the system will win every time.”
Leadership with a clear mission—along with persuasive “selling” (versus “telling”) of the required changes—are the keys to necessary restructuring.