Approach to Successful Sales Transformation Initiatives

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Introduction

The world of B2B sales has never experienced the rate of change that is occurring today due to COVID-19. Since the pandemic interrupted business as usual earlier in the year, companies immediately sent their work forces home, and for the first time ever, the vast majority of businesses are now operating remotely. We are all aware of this but sales organizations and their supporting functional groups like sales enablement, finance, marketing, etc., began using communication tools like Zoom, email, texts, social media, and other collaboration solutions in an effort to not lose the momentum they had gained since the first of the year. These frequent, yet disjointed efforts to communicate resulted in sales organizations actually taking their eye off the ball and the new sales transformation initiatives that were in place during Q1 that were intended to improve the effectiveness of the sales organization began experiencing poor adoption rates as sellers reverted to their old way of selling.

Four Pillars to Implementing Sales Transformation Initiatives

Studies have shown that the most effective approach to implementing new sales transformation initiatives into the sales organization consists of four pillars.

  • Pillar I – Communication and Messaging
  • Pillar II – Engagement
  • Pillar III – Adoption
  • Pillar IV – Best Practice

Pillar I – Communication and Messaging

To remain competitive, companies need to continually evolve. New sales transformation initiatives are essential to help companies adjust to new market dynamics and opportunities. Effective communication and messaging are critical in implementing new strategic initiatives. When there is alignment in communications, revenue has been shown to increase in double digits. In a more decentralized environment, the question becomes how can we increase communications effectiveness and what is the optimal number of times to communicate and message to an audience to elicit a response. This is known as “effective frequency.” Marketing’s Rule of 7 states that people need to “hear” the message at least 7 times before taking some type of action. However, a frequency beyond 7 has cumulative benefits; the point of diminishing returns doesn’t occur for a good period of time. Microsoft conducted a study where they found the effective frequency to be upwards of 20. While 20 may seem excessive, the first several communications are “heard” as background noise. It’s not until the 9th or 10th time that the recipient becomes aware of the message. And It’s not until a few more interactions that the person engages or responds to the communication. The effective frequency depends on the type and level of engagement. E.g., text, email, LinkedIn, webinar.

Pillar II – Engagement

Engagement is where the sales organization begins to practice and use the new sales transformation initiative in their day-to-day workflows. A good example of this is sales training. Attending sales training programs, whether in person or virtually, is the communication and messaging piece. It usually one and done. Research has shown that only 30% of information demonstrated during training is retained. However, this number increases to 75% when sellers return to the office and practice the new ideas communicated during their training. This number can be further increased when sales managers reinforce training concepts through coaching and mentoring. After a period of time, the benefits and results of the new selling approach becomes apparent to a majority of the sales organization. This is when the company enters the adoption phase. Most teams have not been able to measure these engagement and adoption touchpoints until now.

Pillar III – Adoption

To continue with the sales training analogy, adoption is when the sales organization has embraced the new approach to a new initiative and the likelihood of sellers and sales managers reverting back to their old way of selling becomes slimmer as time goes on and the benefits and results continue to improve.

Pillar IV – Best Practices

The last pillar is the final stage in successfully implementing a new sales transformation initiative(s). This is where the new initiative becomes “how we do business.” Again, to continue with the sales training example, everyone in the sales organization, whether they are a seasoned veteran, a new seller, or an experienced seller that is new to the organization knows that this is the selling approach used and this is what you do to be successful in your role as a salesperson and/or sales manager. Additionally, when sellers model top-tier performers, the entire organization benefits financially.

Implementing Successful Sales Transformation Initiatives

Sales transformation initiatives vary from company to company and depend entirely on the strategic goals the company is committed to attaining over a certain period of time. It may be that several initiatives must be implemented in order to achieve a long-term strategic goal. For example, onboarding new sellers to be effective with a new initiative in days, not months takes a coordinated effort.

When it comes to effectively implementing new sales transformation initiatives, the Gig Economy Group (GEG), founded by Dave Toole, is a sales transformation company that delivers results through their Adaptive Sales as a Service platform. Their expertise in sales transformation is unparalleled on a global basis and GEG’s supporting software ensures strategic initiatives are effectively implemented using the four pillars as a framework.

For more information, contact Dave Toole, CEO of The Gig Economy Group.

How to Solve Your Communications Gaps to Drive Increased Revenue

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Prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic, most companies’ world-wide workforce worked in a traditional office environment where employees commuted to the office and worked their shift under the watchful eye of their manager. Managers were hesitant to allow workers to work from home. One of the biggest reasons was trust; they were unsure if their workers would actually work without supervision. Why was this such a big issue? The reason: organization’s communication misalignment in the office would likely exacerbate with remote workers. This is the #1 Issue in Sales Transformation with Communication Misalignment.

These managers are in deep, profound trouble as SiriusDecisions’ research found that highly aligned B2B organizations achieve 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profitability when employing a remote workforce. Couple this with the fact that sellers who work from a home office spend 62.8% of their time doing core selling activities like face-to-face Zoom calls, phone calls, and emails—all that drive increased revenues.

In our last blog, The High Cost of Communication Misalignment in B2B Companies, we were astonished to find that the cost of communication misalignment across enterprise B2B companies with approximately 10,000 employees cost companies $6.24M to the bottom line each year. 1

The main causes for gaps in communications are due to the myriad of communication tools used today such as smart phones, regular phones, SMS, email, text, video, and Zoom meetings coupled with the manner in which we communicate which is oftentimes ad hoc and informal. Few companies have implemented a repeatable communications process that would enable them to measure the effectiveness and the results from all their communications.

We ended the blog by stating alignment in communications is critical. Communication research focuses on interactive processes assumed to be automatic in humans; it also offers important implications for human-machine interaction.

What can be done to help companies close their communications’ gap and drive increased revenue?

First and foremost is for leadership to recognize the critical need to create and implement a repeatable communications’ process. They just have to look at their own manufacturing group that has repeatable processes in place to ensure their defect levels are within or better than industry standards. The purpose of implementing a communications’ process is to clearly articulate all communication pathways; internal and external to the organization, to drive consistent, measurable business outcomes, and to ultimately drive increased revenue.

To be successful in today’s dynamic, fast-changing corporate environment impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic requires human expertise and technology platforms enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to support and enhance a company’s rapidly changing communications.

The advent of AI and ML in software enables computers to learn over time. This means that with these types of technologies, communication pathways and messaging can be effectively measured and tracked. As more and more people use the software, the system recognizes gaps in communications and can deliver best practices on how to bridge the gap or to alleviate it all together.

At the beginning of 2020, we did a case study on one of our customers, LifeVantage, to show the results they achieved by implementing The Gig Economy Group’s Adaptive Communications as a Service for Remote Teams platform. It was a case study in that the purpose was to understand LifeVantage’s current challenges, what their objectives were in an effort to solve their challenges, what solutions did they review, what solution did they select, and what was the ROI for implementing the solution chosen. They following is a synopsis of the case study.

LifeVantage is a publicly traded, direct selling, company that specializes in a science called Nutrigenomics. They have 70,000 independent contractors also known as distributers in 19 countries where they sell 19 products focused on wellness and personal care. LifeVantage boasts revenues of a quarter-billion dollars each year where The Gig Economy’s Adaptive Communications as a Service for Remote Teams platform delivered their global communication efforts between LifeVantage selling teams around the globe.

Before employing The Gig Economy Group to help solve their communication gaps, LifeVantage had some loosely connected apps to support their business and align their communications, but they weren’t intelligent—meaning they weren’t learning over time and weren’t optimizing the company’s overall business and communications’ performance. LifeVantage needed to make some fundamental changes in how they communicated across their business. They looked to the Gig Economy Group to develop and implement a technology platform using AI and ML that could recommend optimal communications pathways and messaging, determine communication gaps, and recommend best practice solutions—all that were objective-driven to business results and measurable to outcomes.

The results realized by LifeVantage?

A key metric for all independent distributor networks is the concept of first dollar. First dollar means how many new sales distributors sold in the first month.

By implementing The Gig Economy’s solution, they found a 400% increase in independent distributors getting to first dollar sold in 30 days. They also realized a 250% average increase in enrollment rates of net-new independent distributors and buyers purchasing LifeVantage’s products.

At LifeVantage, getting independent resellers to first dollar ensured they had a salesforce that would sell for them for the foreseeable future. But to ensure they could drive increased revenue required their sellers to grow their own downline distribution network where these sellers would, in turn, develop their downstream network. The Gig Economy Group’s Adaptive Communications as a Service for Remote Teams provided best-in-class performance for the sellers by delivering optimal communications’ pathways, proven and effective messaging, and best practices recommendations to enable their sellers to close the communications’ gaps with LifeVantage corporate, their buyers, and their independent downline distribution network. All in an effort to drive increased revenue.

 

The high cost of (mis)communication

The High Cost of Communication Misalignment in B2B Companies

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When looking at the high cost of communication misalignment across enterprise B2B companies with approximately 100,000 employees we were astonished to find that $62.4M is lost to the bottom line. 1 This equals $624.00 per employee. A mid-size company with approximately 100 employees will lose about $500K to the bottom line. This equal $5000.00 per employee. And for a small company with approximately 0-50 employees it will lose about $26,041.00 to the bottom line. All of these numbers are incredibly astonishing!

Communication has been around since the prehistoric caveman chiseled animals on their cave walls to communicate their hunting expeditions. Here we are 44,000 years later from the earliest known communications to where each person in any sized company has advanced communication tools at their fingertips. Smart phones, regular phones, SMS, email, text, video, Zoom meetings, and the list goes on.

With all the advancements made in communication technologies over the past 20 to 30 years, how can it be that global, enterprise companies are losing, on average, $62.4M annually due solely to misalignment in their communications?

In today’s fast-paced businesses, there’s a real need for creating and implementing a repeatable process around communications. Especially when we look at all the ways we can communicate. A few technology-based communication tools are listed above, but we still often communicate by speaking with people in an informal, ad hoc way. For example, take the CEO of a large company who catches the VP of Sales in his or her office and in that very instance decisions are made around new pricing for two major products. This decision not only affects sales, but it also affects finance, manufacturing, customer service, training, etc. What happens with this type of ad hoc communications and decision-making (that we are all guilty of doing) is that the CEO assumed the VP of Sales would handle the communications to the correct functional heads and the VP thought it was something the CEO would or should communicate. So, what we have here is a complete failure to communicate!

So, the causes for gaps in communications are: Ad hoc, informal communications, communications affect many, if not all, functional areas in a company, all people in a company can communicate with one another and they have many, different tools to get their ideas, messages, and thoughts out to the organization.  Zoom is the leader in supporting ad hoc, informal meetings. How many times a week do we have ad hoc, informal Zoom meetings? In today’s COVID-19 pandemic, this medium is taking over. But very few companies are able to measure the effectiveness and the results from these meetings.

Now, consider the performance of an organization’s functional groups. Manufacturing has processes in place to ensure they don’t produce defective parts. Finance has fine-tuned, error-free processes to deliver financial news to Wall Street. This same level of scrutiny and processes should be in place for communications and messaging. Yet, few companies have taken the time to create a repeatable communications process that would allow companies to see where their communications misalignments are occurring and to what degree.  Bottom Line: Companies today don’t know the real costs associated with gaps in their communications and messaging. And these “hidden” costs will only continue to grow.

Alignment in communications is critical. What does this mean? Alignment in communication is a novel direction in communication research, which focuses on interactive adaptation processes assumed to be more or less automatic in humans. It offers an alternative to established theories of human communication and also has important implications for human-machine interaction.

*Redeapp

Is there such a thing as too much communication with remote workers?

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The insurance industry today is experiencing an exponential increase in the number of agents working from home causing a huge shift in how remote workers work and how managers effectively lead and communicate with them. The Covid-19 virus has impacted nearly every industry worldwide and the insurance industry is no different; however, they have never experienced such a sudden, broad-based exodus of employees moving from corporate offices to remote offices.

The largest problem facing the rapid sales transformation required of leaders in managing this new remote work force is effective communication. The reverse is true for the agents working in an environment that is foreign to them. How do managers ensure their workforce is working to capacity and more importantly staying focused on the company’s strategic and tactical goals? What can they do to help these workers stay on task and deliver the results expected from the entire team? How do they motivate them? And, how do remote workers stay in the loop and not miss out on critical conversations? How can they ensure they are doing the appropriate work to attain organizational results? The answer: Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Studies show that 90% of companies do a poor job of effectively communicating with their employees and particularly when communicating to cross-functional groups. And, this was before Covid-19 when workers were in the office—not working remotely! Research also shows that 62% of executives agree that relative to audioconferencing, video conferencing significantly improves the quality of communication, a figure that rises to 73% among high-growth companies.1 In addition, viewers retain over 95% of video content versus barely 10% with text.

When introducing a new pathway for teams, the ability to increase engagement and retention is critical especially when leading remote teams. Video conferencing is becoming the de facto standard for corporate communications. A key feature is that the entire team can get on a video conference call and see each other, just like in a conference room back in the office. What happens when the meeting is over? How do you ensure everyone stays aligned to organizational goals and priorities? Another benefit is the ability to record video conferences. It can be transcribed and shared in text, if needed. Short summaries can be created to deliver critical, salient points across the team. Along with this, leadership needs to employ feedback loops to know who is engaged with your communications. When discussing critical information where the execution of this information is important to the entire organization find the best ways to increase engagement and retention.

1 Forbes – 5 Reasons Why Your Company Needs to Embrace Video Conferencing Now

The Future of IT Webinar Series: Gig Economy

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About this webinar
How are you leveraging a flexible workforce within technology? How has your IT turnover rate changed and what do you anticipate it will look like in the future? What type of knowledge transfer plans do you have in place and how are you ramping up temporary team members rapidly?

Join us as we tackle these critical questions and dig into the practical answers from organizations that are navigating the changing world of work right now. You’ll gain a view into how other tech teams are tackling major concerns brought on by the global pandemic and walk away with new ideas and solutions to bring back to your organization.

Panelists:
• Elliott Potter, Co-Founder and CEO, Linq
• Dave Toole, CEO, Gig Economy Group
• John Hagel III, Co-Chairman, Center for the Edge
Moderated by Cesiah Kessler, Senior Regional Vice President at Experis North America

Live online Jun 17 11:00 am United States – Los Angeles
or after on demand 60 mins
Presented by
Elliott Potter | Linqapp, Dave Toole | Gig Economy Group, John Hagel III | Center for the Edge

Webinar Series #6: How the Common Language of Skills Will Write the Future of Workforce Development

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Webinar Series #6: How the Common Language of Skills Will Write the Future of Workforce Development

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Work and Life in the 21st Century — Untapped Data Opportunities

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This Wednesday at 1:30 PM Pacific we will be hosting the 4th in our series of Work and Life in the 21st century. John Hagel, a world renowned management thought leader from Deloitte will be sharing his views and what he believes is the core in shaping our interactions long-term around Untapped Data Opportunities. It is important to consider as we go through the “Great Reset” as has been advocated by Gary Bolles, Chairman of the Future of Work at Singularity University. This also reflects the “Great Phase Shift” in what Bill Davidow and Michael Malone advocate in Autonomous Revolution. What is at the core challenges our ability to Innovate our way out of this pause we have because of the pandemic.

History has shown that when you try to hold on to the past and in many cases what got you here and contributed to your success, you become blinded to what is going on around you as people are innovating in redefining how things get done as we move into the future. Having done this over a dozen generations of Moore’s law in helping to build Advanced Technology Factories around the Globe, I found that when it is dark, unsure, the future is cloudy, it was the time that you must first maintain your support for your existing customers, but it also is a time where you need to take a bit of your bandwidth and apply it to figuring out what it would take to innovate in the present situation which has definitely changed most all of our lives. Something small that can scale.

As we are challenged with how we might leverage technology to better serve humanity, many times we permit it to overwhelm us, whether email, whether too much social media, whether too much news on television, whether with all of the information that is coming at us, it is easy to lose sight that technology should better serve us. So many of these things that now are so easily accessible to us should be here to serve us. At the core of this in our present technology relationship is Data, which has primarily been used to optimize how we did things in the past. We optimized how we surveil people who might buy our products and services, or be influenced by our political position. It has not yet been defined in a way that it can best serve individuals, those around them, corporations as we move from Shareholders to Stakeholders in society. As we continue to explore what we have available to us to Design the Future of Work we should consider this is a very important time to innovate and redefine our relationships both personally as well as with technology. Please join us Wednesday.

Webinar Series #3: The Great Reset & the Near Future of Work

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Join us online for the third webinar in the SEMI Virtual Forum series, Work & Life in the 21st Century.

Time

1:30 pm – 2:30 pm

Location

Online, Pacific Time,
United States

In this session, Gary A. Bolles, will share various scenarios and tactics individuals, organizations, communities and countries are taking to put themselves in a position to thrive as all of us continue the transition toward a more digital economy.

Gary is a thought leader and business strategist who advises a wide variety of stakeholders to develop actionable strategies around what he refers to as “The Great Reset.”

Register Now

Featured Speakers

Dave Anderson, SEMI Americas
MODERATOR
Dave Anderson
President, SEMI Americas
Dave Toole, The Gig Economy Group
MODERATOR
Dave Toole
CEO, The Gig Economy Group
Gary A. Bolles, Singularity University
Gary A. Bolles
Chair for the Future of Work, Singularity University

In The Mix and Getting In the Pocket — Aligning and Synchronizing

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The best leaders and teams that get alignment around their Purpose and North Star will determine the winners and losers coming out of the great transition we are going through in 2020. That is a tough calling, even for the best. We thought this was the year to see how Vision 2020 was conveyed 5–10 years ago to rally people around a vision. We wanted to communicate how all the pieces would come together in new ways. Now we have a world that is turned upside down. For the few that aren’t struggling with feeding their families and the survival needs of their livelihood, there are many that are trying to determine what our socio-economic relationships might look like on the other side of this.

While most of history has found those leaders with great vision would do better than most, now is a time for the present moment. This is of urrgent importance coming from a technology background and living on the front lines of the roll out of Moore’s Law. We have gone from a linear path to a vision that took us to a destination and now is one that you need to get in the mix and iterate to a better place with a direction in mind. Adding capabilities you and a network of people can build will create new services for the new economy.

This brings us to what “Being in the Pocket” means. As a professional musician in my day, the greatest experience was when the rhythm section was all connecting, bringing a pace that the audience resonated with while collaborating and improvising with band members. This created a flow of sounds that expressed a movement. The Beatles, Symphonies, Jazz and most of the musical greats have experienced the highest level of capability when different people with different skills can come together and create greatness. It does not need just to be the greats, but it will be those that come out of this with a new capability to synchronize with teams that are not in the same room but believe in a common cause. This is “In the Pocket” Commercial or Social.

There is starting to be more people talking about the fact we are defining the future of work as we are all distanced from each other. I’m working with a great group of people exploring this and sharing experiences of what you can do to work through this challenging time as we are now adjusting to a new work and home life experience. There are three drivers that we must keep our eyes on and participate in. Stabilizing where we are, pivoting to a unique advantage and normalizing to a new normal.

There are organizations with a mission that need to be preserved for shareholders with many existing organizations, some recognize this needs to be improved upon, we can’t walk away from what has served us before. We must build a bridge from the old Industrial World to the new Information Age (this is how we surface new valued interactions) and in many ways will require us to redefine our purpose around stakeholders. There is the interworking of stakeholders that moves our society to a better place. This is not easy and new approaches to evolve our collective advantage will be tested at scale.

If we focus on where stakeholders are coming together to move socio-economic interests along we will find a way to get “in the pocket” as we mix it up. We will better align and synchronize to serve a broader middle class. This is the core to the survival of society.

Work & Life in the 21st Century – Webinar

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WEBINAR SERIES #2

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

1:30–2:30pm Pacific Time

Join us online for the second webinar in the SEMI Virtual Forum series, Work & Life in the 21st Century.

In the face of COVID-19, many companies have decided – or will soon decide – to perform all work virtually. Work is changing, and companies must explore new ways of working to sustain and thrive in uncertain times. These are the moments that matter, and how you rally your team will be key.

In this webinar, we will discuss how companies can execute a cohesive business strategy and response through three deeply connected dimensions of an organization: work (the what), workforce (the who), and workplace (the where).

Register Now