Note: This article is based on a lightly edited transcript of a video conversation. The language has been kept conversational to preserve the speaker’s original tone and flow.
As a manager and leader, you must embrace change. If you don’t, it will consume you. The challenge is that, as human beings, we are often creatures of habit.
Embracing change is one of the most important skills for sales managers. Most people don’t like change. Suppose you had to change jobs or move to a new place. You had to learn your way around — the new town, the local shops, the coffee spots — everything.
Most people do not naturally welcome change. We tend to prefer the familiar, and the uncertainty that comes with change can often push us away from it. Generally, we perceive change negatively because it forces us to do things differently—to think differently.
The Majority of individuals resist change, especially when its impact is unclear. When change isn’t managed effectively, it can create uncertainty, doubt, frustration, and resentment. If the rationale behind a change isn’t clearly understood, people are less likely to support or engage with it. This is why strong change management strategies are essential.
Any significant change often requires rewiring behaviours and habits. Without sufficient motivation or engagement, the change may never get off the ground. Change is hard, especially in sales teams, and we must be careful about how we implement it.
The Nature of Change in Sales
I’ll share a few stories and personal experiences about how I’ve tried to facilitate change to achieve the best outcomes for the business, the individuals, and the team.
But first, it’s important to understand that successfully navigating change requires planning the change management process carefully.
Change management planning includes evaluating the impact of the change on any relevant departments and stakeholders. The bigger the change, the greater the level of planning required.
As sales managers and leaders, we must remember that change is a process.
If you’re currently undergoing sales management training, this concept will resonate with you. Imagine you’ve been asked by the business to review your department. As a result, a major decision is made — perhaps affecting your role, your team, or even your organisational structure. That’s a significant change that can’t be implemented overnight.
You need time to process what the change means, and ideally, access to clear information explaining why the business is making the change. Before you communicate anything to your team, you must fully understand the reasoning behind the decision. If you don’t, you won’t be able to answer their questions or earn their trust.
My number one piece of advice: before passing any change onto your team, take the time to ask all the necessary questions.
Ensure that you’re completely clear on what the change means for you, your team, clients, and any other relevant areas. This applies directly to those who have completed a sales manager course or are in the process of sales managers training — clarity is key.
Don’t rush. The more informed and prepared you are, the better positioned you’ll be to communicate effectively with your team. And even before that communication happens, remember: change in sales is constant. Everything around us is evolving, and this is where skills for sales managers become critical.
But in sales, change also creates opportunity. Without change, progress rarely occurs. As part of B2B sales training, it’s important to understand that change management strategies will guide how you handle such opportunities.
The key is to ask: how will your team process this change? What message do you want them to take away? Simply announcing a change isn’t enough.
You need to think about what you want the change to achieve and how to gain buy-in because, without it, you won’t get the outcome you’re hoping for.
With that in mind, remember this: the foundation of any successful change is communication. Instead of diving in headfirst, talk to people. Gather context. Ask questions. If your manager can’t answer your concerns, there’s a disconnect. And until you’re comfortable with the answers, don’t move forward.
I’ve been in situations where a top-down directive was handed to me, and I was expected to act. But if I felt uneasy about it, I knew I owed it to my team to get clarity before passing anything on. If you want to know how to become a sales manager, it’s about being proactive, informed, and confident in the decisions you make.
That’s your responsibility. It’s not just about relaying information — it’s about making sure everything you share is in your team’s best interest. You need to have your i’s dotted and your t’s crossed so you’re ready for any follow-up questions that may arise.
Finally, let’s acknowledge a universal truth: we all prefer ideas we’ve come up with ourselves. If your team feels ownership over the change — if they’ve been involved, consulted, and understood the reasoning — you’re far more likely to achieve a smooth and successful transition.
Ideal Buyer Profile
Your ideal buyer profile is critical because today’s buyers have more choice, more awareness, and way more access to information than ever before. Technology and the internet have broken down geographic barriers—competition can come from anywhere now.
Let’s be clear: buyer personas are not the same as marketing personas.
- Marketing personas are focused on generating awareness and interest—they’re top-of-the-funnel tools. Their job is to cast a wide net and bring in potential leads who might be interested in what you offer.
- Buyer personas, on the other hand, focus on the actual buying process. They’re about understanding the moods, motivations, and decision-making criteria of the stakeholders involved in the sale.
Gartner found that most buyers are already 60% of the way through their research before they even speak to a vendor. That means they’ve likely compared you to competitors, read reviews, maybe even looked at pricing, before you get a chance to make your pitch.
And if you’re in B2B? You know that the B2B sales process is rarely a one-person decision. You’ve got:
- An economic decision-maker (focused on budget and ROI),
- A technical decision-maker (focused on integration and functionality),
- A user (focused on usability),
- And potentially, influencers or stakeholders who need buy-in, too.
It’s your job to understand:
- Who each stakeholder is,
- What they care about,
- When they show up in the process,
- And how to engage each of them.
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Effective Change Management Strategies
Change management 101 is about inviting input rather than simply telling people what to do.
If you do that, you’re far more likely to get them thinking about the topic. For sales managers training, this is one of the first lessons in understanding change management strategies.
Let’s revisit the example I mentioned earlier — moving from selling products to selling verticalised solutions. Instead of announcing a decision outright, try asking your team: “Look, we’re facing certain challenges and need new ideas.
Here are some suggestions from the business — what do you think?” This approach is in line with sales management training, where skills for sales managers include the ability to involve the team in the decision-making process.
Approaching it this way means you’re not enforcing a decision. You’re involving your team in the process. So, instead of jumping straight into implementation mode, take a step back.
Ask for their opinions. Encourage them to reflect on it. Help them become more comfortable with the idea. This is a great way to enhance sales managers training, especially for those interested in developing effective change management strategies.
By doing this, you’re allowing them to connect with the concept emotionally. You’re giving them time to consider what the change could mean for them — how it might impact their day-to-day work. This is an important part of sales training and helps build skills for sales managers that are critical for long-term success.
In turn, you’ll start to gain a deeper understanding of the impact the change might have — not just on your team, but on the wider business, the client, and the organisation as a whole.
When you involve your team in this way, you’re likely to receive a range of emotional responses. Some people will be enthusiastic. Others may be hesitant or even resistant. This is a good place to be — it gives you a sense of where people stand, which is an essential part of change management.
Another strategy I’ve found incredibly effective is to engage with the person in your team who is your polar opposite.
Go to them and say, “I’ve been thinking about something. If this change were to happen, how would you feel about it? Do you think it’s sustainable? Do you think it would work?”
This is an approach I highly recommend for those in sales management training, as it allows you to address concerns early on in the change management process.
Here’s a real example: I worked with someone older than me, someone who had previously held my role as a sales manager but had since moved into a different area. He had deep experience and was always the first to challenge ideas, pointing out all the reasons something wouldn’t work.
I regularly used him as a sounding board. His feedback is a crucial part of learning how to become a better sales manager. It’s about validating your approach.
Rather than simply informing him about changes, I involved him early in the process. That made him feel included, and his insights helped me anticipate objections. His feedback allowed me to refine the way I communicated with the wider team, addressing concerns before they were even raised. This is a sales manager course best practice.
This, to me, is a crucial part of managing any change. You must validate your approach. Otherwise, you risk staying in your echo chamber.
Yes, your ideas might seem solid in your head, but they may not resonate in the same way with your team or others. Also, bear in mind: you’ve probably been thinking about the change for quite some time. Your team hasn’t had that same luxury.
So it’s not fair to expect immediate buy-in. You need to give them the appropriate amount of time to digest, question, and ultimately get comfortable with the change, whatever that change may be.
The change management process takes time, and it’s essential to remember that sales managers training involves learning how to guide a team through this journey.
Psychological Impact of Change
Let me introduce a useful tool: Force Field Analysis. This simple yet powerful method was developed by Kurt Lewin.
It helps you assess the impact of change by evaluating the pros and cons of any decision. The model is based on Newton’s law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In this context, it means the benefits of taking a specific action must outweigh the benefits of not taking it. This approach is essential for sales managers training, particularly when facilitating change management strategies.
What I love about this tool is how quick and accessible it is. You can use it by yourself, in pairs, or as part of a team brainstorming session.
The process involves placing the change idea in the centre — for example, “We need to change our proposal template” or “We should restructure the team.” This is a great exercise for sales management training and helps sales managers evaluate change management on a personal and team level.
On the left-hand side, you list all the reasons the change would be beneficial. On the right-hand side, you capture all the reasons it might be resisted or perceived negatively. You then score each point to assess its weight.
This exercise is particularly valuable because it captures input across the spectrum — not just from the middle 60–80%, but from the outliers as well. These diverse perspectives help you build a complete view of the change’s potential impact, a process that is central to sales training and sales managers training.
As you carry out this process, observe how your team responds. Most people instinctively consider, “What does this mean for me? What will I have to do differently?” This is natural, and watching how your team processes the idea gives you important insight into their mindset.
This is also an important part of change management, where you assess how to manage emotions during change, a critical aspect of sales manager courses and training for sales managers.
Here’s a real (but anonymised) example: a client wanted to introduce a new account management structure, separating portfolio accounts from key accounts.
When we ran a Force Field Analysis, we surfaced ideas, scores, and reasoning that, from a manager’s point of view, might seem like no-brainers. But by involving the team, we validated our assumptions and uncovered valuable perspectives that shaped our communication and planning.
This is how sales managers can take advantage of skills for sales managers to foster better communication during change.
This process also helps people get comfortable with change, even if they aren’t fully on board. And while not everyone will embrace the change, the key takeaway is that you’re not operating in an echo chamber.
You’re engaging with your team’s real concerns and ensuring the change is implemented with their best interests in mind. This is an essential part of sales management training, which helps you guide teams through difficult changes in ways that align with change management strategies.
One framework I find incredibly helpful here is Bruce Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development, introduced in 1965. This model outlines the phases teams typically go through during significant changes:
- Forming – The team comes together, ground rules are established, and relationships begin to form.
- Storming – Team members start expressing differing opinions. Conflict and confusion often emerge as people try to reconcile various expectations, processes, or client needs.
- Norming – Gradually, the team works through challenges. They align on shared ways of working and accept the realities of the new structure.
- Performing – At this stage, the team is aligned, focused, and achieving strong results.
- Adjourning (or Transforming) – The team evaluates their performance and looks for ways to continue improving.
We used this model during a major transition from product-led sales to a verticalised approach. It was a big shift involving a large team, and we made sure to communicate openly about the journey ahead.
We acknowledged that it wouldn’t be smooth sailing and shared this model with the team to help them understand that discomfort and resistance were normal parts of the process. This is also critical when implementing change management processes.
By doing this, we normalised the emotional ups and downs and kept the team moving in the right direction — even if not everyone was moving at the same pace.
This aligns with skills for sales managers, as it helps you recognise the emotional phases your team will go through during change management.
We’ve recently been through a process with a client who is undergoing a significant transformation. We were quite taken aback by how reactive their sales process had been, and now they’re shifting towards a proactive sales approach.
Through this transition, we’ve noticed a large sales team that’s genuinely concerned about whether they’ll be able to meet the new demands of the process. Previously, they would wait for a client to place an order—an email would arrive, they’d process it, maybe speak to someone on the phone, and that was it.
Now, however, they’re being asked to proactively build prospect lists, initiate outreach, and think about conversation topics to engage their customers with. They’ll need to establish rapport instantly during calls.
These are major behavioural shifts for people who haven’t worked this way before. That’s why it’s so important to understand the psychological impact of change, which is a key part of sales managers training and sales manager courses.
As managers and leaders, we’ve all been through change. Think back to a time when a significant change was introduced to you.
How did you feel? Anxious? Skeptical? Uncomfortable? How did you eventually come to terms with it? Reflecting on our responses helps us better empathise with our teams and understand the emotional spectrum they might be navigating. This is an important part of change management strategies.
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