This is the fourth piece in a series of six articles that will guide your own sales and marketing transformation. This article discusses the phases of a transformation and shares the best way to deliver early successes to build goodwill. Don’t forget to read the first three articles in this series; It’s time for a sales and marketing transformation, setting your transformation up for success and the secret sauce to run a transformation program.
Ready, set, transform
At this stage you are ready to start your sales and marketing transformation. Our advice for staging your transformation is to build goodwill from the start so you have a stockpile to draw on during the more challenging stages of the program. This is best done by delivering easy, high-benefit solutions at the beginning of your transformation.
Stage 1: Deliver simple, high-impact solutions
Quick wins deliver the most delight to employees. While overarching large-scale CRM implementations provide big upside, the benefit is delivered over time and does not often have a material change on sales and marketing teams’ day-to-day experiences.
There are a range of solutions that can be integrated into a sales and marketing transformation that are cost-effective, easy to implement and deliver big impact to frontline staff. A solution as simple as an e-signature tool addresses a pain-point for your sales and marketing teams, can change the nature of their jobs and delivers obvious and immediate benefit.
Stage 2: Implement the core of the transformation program
The foundation of a sales and marketing transformation is usually implementing a core Customer Relationships Management (CRM) system. A CRM implementation can take several months and this period can be disruptive and frustrating to employees.
It is important to make sure people do not feel this frustration too early in a transformation program. Entire transformation programs have been cancelled because the first phase took too long and was too painful.
Quick wins help people persevere through the longer, more challenging stage(s) of a transformation program. They provide a glimpse of the real benefits employees can expect to receive when they get to the other side of the change.
Contact us for more information on a phased transformation approach that will help you achieve early success.
Next up in this article series we will discuss the importance of change champions to support a sales and marketing transformation, and how to use them.
