Class Summary: Pavilion's Change Management for Revenue Leaders

Pavilion, a private community for go-to-market or revenue leaders, offers a course in Change Management for Revenue Leaders, which I took several months ago. It was created and taught by Timur Hicyilmaz, the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Insight Revenue, and Matt Pflughoeft, Strategic Advisor and Consultant at Insight Revenue. (If you're not a Pavilion member you can click here to join with my affiliate link),

Sessions included (click to scroll down to learn more):

• Introduction to Change Management
• Managing the Process with Empathy and a Clearly Articulated Vision
• Leveraging Managers, Teams, and Individual Contributors
• Capstone Exercise, Discussion, and Accountability Measures

Course outcomes or learning objectives included:

• Drive successful change management within your organization
• Craft a plan that addresses structural barriers that might stand in the way of any change
• Leverage your broader team to execute change effectively
• Think through any accountability mechanisms that will be needed to keep the change on track

Continue reading for a summary of some of the course content and learnings.

And to set expectations for anyone looking into taking this course, though the class title said "revenue," indicating it is targeting all the revenue teams, the title on many slides and course material was heavily about sales teams and not people involved in the entire revenue cycle (marketing, sales, customer success, RevOps, etc.).

Class 1: Introduction to Change Management

Learning objectives for this session:

• Identify and avoid the root cause of why sales change management efforts often fail
• Develop a roadmap for sequencing the proposed change
  

This class provided a charter as a tool for understanding the nature of change and managing change:

• Often it is the current costs that motivate people, costs as the trigger or the pain, where change management efforts start.
• The reality of changes looks more like a J curve, where performance starts to decline for a while, so people decide that now they have to do something, it's time for a change. Things start to get better, but it doesn’t suddenly get better; performance may get a bit worse first when people are asked to do new things (to change behavior). Often, the change is not given enough time to succeed.
• What does change look like in sales? How is the sales function different than others? The audience said the variable compensation is different than other departments, which requires more of a need to focus all communication on "what's in it for them." Culturally, they are less inclined to follow processes since they may see outlier reps that are successful, lone wolves. The timing of sales and involvement with customers also needs to be considered in changes.
• Incentive pay is the strongest form of communication you have, which can be a mixed blessing that can accelerate the change or get in the way. But compensation plans should not be changed monthly or quarterly, and there is never a great time when salespeople are on deadline for monthly, quarterly, or yearly quotas and goals. Time is more balanced for non-sales people, without as much year-end ramp-up in activity.
• You need a mechanism for a dry run, a reconnaissance mission, with customers for any changes that will affect them.
• Be prepared for feedback about why you are making this change when they’ve been asking for a different change for so long. People may be puzzled why the roadmap isn’t shifting in the way reps are asking for.
• Don’t just announce changes to sales, work with them to plan the changes so they feel involved.

Here is a 4-step process to change.

Similar to my discussion of roles in documentation, there are also several roles involved in change management, where people can hold multiple roles:

• When you encounter resistance to the change, keep in mind that naysayers aren’t often saying no, they are thinking through it well and asking hard questions that need to be answered for everyone
• Allow the different levels of people to incubate and think on the change before moving to the next level, like informing managers before individual contributors. Executives are removed from day-to-day work, so changes they recommend need more time to be accepted. Executives are different, driven people, whose appetites for change are bigger than the rest of the people in the company.
• People may not understand the why behind the change related to the business goals. Consider the gap, why someone would not want to make this change.
• Also, try pilot groups to test out the change, so the change seems more ‘for sales by sales’. But don't call them pilot groups since that implies the change may not happen if the pilot group fails. (Learn more about what to name this group in the next class session)
• There is a tendency for everything to be announced as a big change, but sometimes it's just an improvement of one step and doesn't need as big of a process to change

Class 2: Managing the Process with Empathy and a Clearly Articulated Vision

Learning objectives for this session:

• Create messaging that addresses customer, employee, and company goals
• Set up a cross-functional pilot as a learning tool
• Create and implement policies that support any new process

When confronted with change, people react in three common ways: freeze, fight, or flight. For example, hearing crickets (silence) after a change is mentioned is an example of the freeze response. In change management, we want to prevent these autonomic responses.

We’d love for everyone to be moving in harmony through the change, but it's usually chaos, unless there’s preparation.

 Here are more takeaways from class:

• Motivate people by describing the destination
• Put the sales force in control, think of change management as giving them a map and a navigator for the changes
• In a crisis, you won't have time to think through every decision, so you need guidelines to make decisions in the heat of the moment. That map and navigation can serve as those guidelines.
• You can't create lasting change by yourself, especially if you're an executive is is far removed from the customer. You need the managers and team members who are closer to the customers to change their practices and norms, which lead to a cultural change. You may be solely in charge of the change's destination, the end result, but you need teams to get there.

Create a reconnaissance team from around the company as that "pilot" group for the change.

• An executive sponsor would be the Creator role we saw in the previous class
• A project lead could be the implementor/champion role
• High-potential team members (NOT high performers) may be the role models

Reconnaissance team’s job:

• Message (see slide below)
• Process and metrics
• Policies: This piece is missed most often, getting the team thinking of the policies involved in change, making it clearer so when larger groups execute it, they don't have to think through everything
  

It's important that they have time to start documenting these things as they work.

• If you immediately lead your customer-facing messaging with benefits, the buyer won’t believe you
• Customer-driven changes are more powerful and will get more adoption by sales teams than internally-driven changes

Class 3: Leveraging Managers, Teams, and Individual Contributors

Learning objectives for this session:

• Apply a model for driving adoption
• Help managers support their teams through change
• Continuously incorporate the voice of the customer and the voice of the field

If the change you’re trying to achieve goes against company norms and history, it is hard.

This chart illustrates the effort it takes to motivate each type of person to change.

Be careful of determining a premature victory. Laggards are hard to convince to change.  Maybe their jobs aren’t what you thought it was, so there are more factors to consider and messaging to tailor.

 A kickoff meeting for the change is important, which sales enablement orchestrates, an executive sponsor throws their weight behind, and the reconnaissance team from the previous class provides their experience with the change. This is a time to explain the rationale and motivation for the change many times.

• Top-down messaging only carries you so far. Middle managers and peers have more visibility and influence as role models.
• Start with teaching here’s what we're trying to achieve.
  
• Say what's in it for them
• Remember that managers may have been at the company longer and may be more invested in the old ways. Some are beloved for the wrong reasons, such as siding with their team for everything. Empower them about the change with materials and other enablement, and don't assume they will know what to do to be a role model for change

People don’t usually schedule these interactions or reminders about the change well. It is helpful to create a messaging/training/enablement schedule to ensure enough time is spent with each person.

People's attitudes towards change: 

Salespeople are competitive, but senior leaders can be more competitive and more assertive -- watch out for this. 

Compromisers are hard because they will do literally what you ask, no more or less. For example, they will ask how many calls or emails they should do, they want a specific number answer when you actually want them to think about it, not just act.

• Remember to schedule the interactions and do not leave change to chance.
• When revealing something new and hearing no questions, that does not equal assent or agreement to the change. As discussed in the fight, flight, flee discussion, if no one asks questions immediately,  they may be in shock, or they are not sure of the question yet, such as how to phrase it.
• For which communication channels to use and when, too much is usually in email that shouldn't have been written, and doesn't sound as the person intended
• When leveraging technology during change, keep it simple, consistent, updated, and have a single source of truth for all policies, frequently asked questions, and more on the topic.

Class 4: Capstone Exercise, Discussion, and Accountability Measures

Learning objectives for this session:

• Workshop a real change project with colleagues (topics will be identified during the prior session)
• Set up accountability measures

Throughout the course, we discussed a case study in class and in breakout groups, including this session.

Points discussed and reiterated:

• The biggest challenge in change management can be making the time to do these change-related tasks and scheduling them.
• Invite sellers to the journey of creating this change plan so they feel involved and become champions for it.
• Aligning their expectations can be a challenge, knowing what will happen in this change
• Culturally, people like creating and using processes in different amounts. In Germany, they might brainstorm a process for 3-6 months, then implement it, seeking perfection. In other parts of Europe, they may lean into systems with rigid processes and stages. Americans find parts of it useful; they get the higher level, get started on smaller things, get people involved, and then make changes. Change management can be easier with the American method, breaking it into smaller chunks of the process, rolling the change out a little at a time instead of all at once.

You may want to perform Monte Carlo simulations to learn the likelihood of a range of outcomes, then refine the inputs to the simulation and make time for reflection.

Make sure to recognize people for their efforts in successful change, especially early successes. Talk about those successes to keep people motivated to continue the change and get the laggards on board with the change. 

For those laggards who are hesitant to change, think about hill, skill, will -- Identify which of those three items is blocking the person. The 'hill' would be a systemic issue in the environment. If skills are the blocker, coaching and training could help. If they are still unwilling to change, maybe they are not a good fit for the company or role.

Thank you to Timur, Matt, and Pavilion for creating this course!