Case Study – Sales Force Reorganization

 

Business Challenge:   To implement a new selling model for a 2,000 strong sales force without negatively impacting sales.

Organizational Assessment:  This sales force was selling in a commodity product highly competitive industry.  In the past, changes to territories or organizational structure had resulted in months of disarray and unacceptable drops in revenue.  This time, not only would there be territory changes, but also a new field structure.  Although the change could be viewed as positive, this was a big adjustment for the field.    Two sales forces which shared geographic similarities but were run as separate entities would now being joined together under one sales force.  In addition, the two individuals (one from each sales force) that previously had overlapping territories would now be joined by a third person in their territory.  Individual sales force identity was strong in the field, sometimes even stronger than company identity.  This change was being made at a critical time in the product selling cycle of their primary product and there wasn’t room for a drop in revenue.

What was recommended:

Results:

  1. The change communication plan focused on the role that senior management and senior field management needed to play.  Execution was the key and with a few minor exceptions everyone carried out their part quite effectively.  Several different types of feedback loops were implemented which created a positive business climate for the changes.
  2. The identity merger plan included a contest to pick a new name for the combined sales forces and resulted in some positive competition across the United States.  Through the process people stopped thinking about themselves as being on one team or another, but rather on the new unified team.
  3. The management training plan focused on how managers in the field could handle the change effectively.  They were given the tools to identify and understand where their employees were in the change cycle and how to move them along without negatively impacting the business.  In addition managers took a fresh look at starting up their new teams and learned how to jump start that process for everyone’s benefit.
  4. In the end people thought the change was “no big deal”.  That is a credit to the implementation team, senior management and senior field management.  Even though it was a very big deal, it was executed in such a way that allowed people to move into their new situations without missing a beat.

Bottom Line:  Sales remained constant throughout the realignments, even increasing in some areas.  Sales management reported better communications and increased morale throughout the US.  The sales goals for the year were met.

 

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