Larry Satterfield | Leading Sales Orgs Through Transformation

Larry

00:00 - 00:03

The biggest mistake is not being impatient. I think.

Chris

00:03 - 00:04

you have impatient?

Larry

00:04 - 00:06

Yeah. I think you have to be impatient.

Chris

00:06 - 00:19

When you're in the middle of a transformation, what are the early signs that your current teams may be not built for what's next?

Larry

00:19 - 00:23

Well, you know, it's let me say this upfront that.

Chris

00:23 - 00:24

Yeah.

Larry

00:24 - 01:12

Building a team or transforming a team is probably one of the most difficult things that a sales leader has to has to do in a business. I mean, you can build teams from the ground up.

You can inherit teams and try to accelerate the growth of those teams. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you have to cut cost, and so you have to increase productivity.

All of those things, you know, you you can follow some real tight rules. But when you're in the middle of having to transform a team from doing one thing to doing something that's very different.

Maybe it's not completely different, but it's very different from what they're doing today.

Chris

01:12 - 01:12

Yeah.

Larry

01:12 - 01:27

That's probably one of the most difficult things you're gonna have to do when you're in business. And so some of the early signs and I haven't done I haven't done this a few times and not always been successful at it, by the way.

Chris

01:27 - 01:53

It's a very to your point, Larry, it's very difficult, but this is such a unique topic because I with with AI coming into the fold, really distancing ourselves from the pandemic and and moving forward, a lot of things have changed to help business is done. And I do see a lot of companies that you and I support going through those transformations, and it is it's tough.

Right. A 100.

Larry

01:53 - 04:01

Right. So so the early sounds you know, getting back to your question, the early sounds that, it's gonna be difficult is when, the the leaders that you have that are closest to your sellers are having a difficult time buying it.

So, you know, when you're transforming team, it's all about buying first. And if you can get the leaders who are closest to the sellers to buy in early on, that's a good sign, a good sign.

But if there's a lot of pushback, from the people that are closest to the sellers, you're gonna you're gonna struggle because, if they're good sales leaders, their teams are really dependent on them, you know, to help them understand what you're trying to get accomplished. So if you're battling with the that layer of sales management, that first layer of source management, that's an early sound that this is gonna be hard because you're gonna have to make some really tough decisions on people who probably have been driving your success and the company's success for a long period of time.

So, you know, in in in many cases, what that means is that you may have to retire or move away from people who are not low performers. They're actually pretty high performers if they don't buy in to where the company needs to go to be successful.

So those are the early sides. If in fact they do buy in, then you move into how successful they they are at helping to communicate that message to the sellers.

And if they're good sales leaders, they usually can do it. And then you have a smoother route.

It doesn't mean that everybody's gonna be able to survive this transformation, but it does mean that it will be a little smoother, as you go forward.

Chris

04:01 - 04:39

What is interesting, you say...