Wanted: Sales Leaders to Embed Change

Implementing anything new successfully requires acknowledging the need for change, creating a plan and strategy for the change, implementing the plan, and embedding the shift in the company’s culture.

The latter task is what most companies struggle with. And with Selling with the Buyer’s Perspective, it’s not different. How could you do this well? How could you drive the embedding of the new way of selling in your sales teams?

I went for some advice on Jeb Blount’s sales articles. Jeb recommends focusing on Sales Leaders to embed change with a different skill set than expected. In a way, they are so obvious, but thinking them through, they are hard to do consistently. Without these, however, the new selling method will be less effective. Here they are:

Be Humble

As a leader, you may not be the expert in the details of selling with the buyer’s perspective. And that is fine. Although you may not be the new way of selling superhero, your strength as a leader is in leveraging the knowledge and expertise of the team. You are the right person who can identify who can help with numerous process challenges :

• Who is super good at finding insights for different buying stages?
• Who are the best conversation openers?
• Who has shown innovative ways to get more stakeholders involved in meetings?
• Who is excellent at creating a business case for change?
• Who is great in Change to Who conversations?
• Who can share practical business acumen stories?
• Who has already experience in using AI?

Be a Collaborator

The best Sales Leaders use that new knowledge and encourage collaboration. You get everyone to help others with what they are best at. For example, create time on Friday afternoons to get your team together and start sharing their stories to benefit everyone. Together, each achieves more.

Be Curious

To embed change, you need to coach 70% of your time. Great sales leaders beam a certain curiosity when coaching their sales teams. Their effective questioning encourages the Salesperson’s critical thinking about customer challenges and how to bring a different perspective to the customer’s table. Sales Leaders respect the change of habits salespeople go through and help them through active listening and enabling coaching.

Demonstrate your curiosity about who in your sales team is showing the right new selling behaviours by starting a competition. What about a leaderboard on old opportunities that were successfully added to the pipeline and won? Or the number of third-party research articles shared that you sign off as valuable insights to change customers’ perspectives. Let your creativity drive you.

Be Customer Centric

Embedding the selling with the buyer’s perspective means sales leaders prioritize the customer’s success above all else. As such, Sales leaders guide their teams to focus on insights (Why Change?) and solutions (Change to What ?) that genuinely benefit the customer and their customers. The most difficult part of the new way of selling is not talking about yourself, your company, or your solutions in a Why Change conversation. Guide your teams on how they can do that better.

Be Courageous

And finally, a courageous sales leader teaches their team to view rejection as a learning opportunity rather than a setback. The new way of selling conversations will not always go perfectly. Give your teams motivational and developmental feedback so that they learn from their mistakes. This resilience is key to maintaining motivation and confidence.

Courage also means embracing risk-taking activities. For example, experimenting with new technologies like the use of AI to find insights and curating to make sense of information. Share in team meetings how that works. Demonstrate the value of the 4 x S of AI.

In Summary

Frontline Salespeople need strong Sales Leaders to make the selling with the Buyer’s perspective change a new sales culture. Everyone has been through sales training and is trying every day. But that is not enough. It is up to you to Embed the change.