Best-in-class companies are innovating their GTM large salesforce transformation. It adopted a simple practices to drive meaningful, sustainable growth. narrative of “mobile first, cloud first,” departing But it's not easy. In the words of a senior sales leader, from the traditional “Windows first” strategy. Later, “If I’m struggling to get my reps to update their CRM, targeting new areas of opportunity, the company how will I get them to use analytics insights in their shifted toward an “AI/cloud first” strategy. sales process?” This type of messaging is ideal. Simple and concise, Other pertinent questions arise: How do you change it can be understood by everyone in the organization, the way of working of a sales team that has seen and captures the essence and the magnitude of the major attrition over the last 12 months? How do you change. It became a key pillar of Microsoft’s hugely embed technology in every action of a sales rep who successful transition to the cloud, which contributed 13 has relied, and thrived, on intuition for decades? to its stock multiplying more than fivefold. How do you balance independence and relationship building with a rollout of best practices? How do you make the changes scale past a few proofs of Role-model change from the top concept? No implementation will work without steadfast support from the top. And role modeling is even There are no easy answers. Change is hard. more effective than executive support. When However, a few practices could accelerate reps see their leaders embracing new concepts change— and make it stick. First, define a simple, that they’ve been preaching to the frontline, they compelling vision that the whole sales organization model that behavior in their own sales pods and it can understand. Second, role-model change from cascades through the organization. As a sales leader the top. Third, embrace the “two-pizza” rule: adopt told us, “Nothing is more important than seeing nimble cross-functional teams (small enough to be senior sales leaders doing exactly what they’re fed with just two large pizzas!). And finally, create a asking the broad organization to do—especially culture of autonomy—but measure everything that when it’s hard!” This level of collaboration requires matters. overriding internal politics, seeing the big picture, and focusing on the best solution. Create a compelling but simple change story Embrace the two-pizza rule A clear vision allows everyone, from sellers to “Change might be designed in the board room, but it customers to channel partners, to understand what happens on the ground,” said a former executive of the change is and why it’s necessary. The sales a global technology company. And it happens faster VP at a leading company put it this way: “The ‘aha’ with small, agile teams. moment for our team was when we asked reps for their thoughts on the transformation and it became A leading biotech company had an issue where clear they didn’t really understand why we were patients with serious, life-threatening illnesses making it. So, we spent time making the change could not afford the drugs they needed. It typically story clear and transparent and this allowed us to took the company up to three months to process gain whole-hearted buy-in from employees.” patients’ information so they could receive free medication. To fix this, the company developed a When Microsoft, for example, pivoted its core sales cross-functional team of eight frontline members efforts from selling Windows-based software to who were given free rein to redesign the system in focusing on the Azure cloud platform, it undertook a two weeks. They devised a new system that could 13 Doug J. Chung, “Commercial Sales Transformation at Microsoft,” Harvard Business Review, October 15, 2019. 34 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe