Episode 8:​ Successfully Creating and Navigating Change in Your Organization

Organizational changes are hard enough. Add Covid, a dispersed staff, then figuring out how to get everyone on the same page— and keep them there. And if you’re a sales organization, how can you do this seamlessly without client disruption? 
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In this episode of “True Confessions of a Sales Leader,” we explore how organizations can successfully pivot to change their own culture but also meet client demands and expectations. Our guest is Blackboard vice president Dave McLaren. Dave joins Scott Olsen, founder of the Olsen Group, and Gary Brashear, managing partner of the Olsen Group. 

When Dave’s team recognized that clients were increasingly moving to the cloud and SaaS and away from on-premise hosting and meetings they’ve been on a journey to meet these new requirements through their own changes. Listen to how they’re accomplishing this. 

Key Highlights from the podcast episode. 

Never forget the client
This is important: Focus on the client journey, too. Help define your change from a client’s perspective so they can come along on the journey. Interview and record your best clients and not-so-satisfied clients and play the interviews for team members responsible for the journey. This helps them become empathic because they’re hearing real feedback from an actual client. Changes won’t matter unless everyone in the organization is running with the same client heartbeat and thinking of the client first. 

Remember individual sales team members 
Don’t get lost in the big picture of organizational change. Build on what you’re doing right, then recognize the gaps in the group plan and individual plans. Convey to your team along the way to help them understand the “why” so everyone buys in. 

It’s about coaching, too 
The shortcut? Just tell your sales team what to do. The hard, but better option? Ask tough questions. This helps create a discovery moment so they come to their own conclusion for a resolution, and why it makes sense because they figured it out. It sounds simple but you need to coach people to think differently on an individual level and create an environment with trust so you can get buy-in into the organizational change. 

Keep your eyes on the prize
Changing your organization in any scenario but especially in the midst of a pandemic is stressful. Remember this: Go back to the “why” the decision was made to change and why it’s important to the client.  What are the values and tenets you agreed upon? What do you want it to look like? Make the commitment as a team to work toward that.