The Power of Transparency: How to Successfully Navigate Change in Sales Organizations (Best of Series)

Dr. Jim: [: 00:00:00

Now think about it. If you as the sales leader is getting whiplash, how are your reports feeling? So how do you communicate the pace of change? How do you communicate the changes that are happening without losing your people? That's the question that we're going to tackle today and joining us is our usual host, but he's playing the role of guest today. Lucas price. Welcome to the show.

Lucas Price: Glad to be here, Jim. Thanks for filling in for me and happy to be on the other end today.

er the last couple of years, [: 00:01:00

You've held just about every role within a sales organization. You've spent a lot of time as a sales leader and you're obviously the founder of yardstick as well. I'd like you to set the stage a little bit and give us some insight into the different changes that you've experienced throughout your sales career, both as an individual contributor and as a leader, and share with us a little bit about in those moments, how those changes impacted your mindset .

Lucas Price: At Zipwhip for instance, when I was the sales leader from less than a million dollars in ARR on the B2B side to built the team that took the company to over a hundred million dollars in ARR, when I started there, there was a three sellers. And and we built a much larger team than that over time.

people [: 00:02:00

And, some people are gonna be affected by negatively. And so I, it's it was a time of rapid change, like every 18 months in that job. It felt like a totally different job than it was before. And so dealing with change was a constant for sure.

Dr. Jim: You joined the organization when it was fairly small and there was only a handful of sellers. There's three or five or 10 sellers there, and they were brought into the organization with a certain set of expectations.

Now the team starts scaling and with scaling and growing the team, you're going to have more reps, you're going to have more splitting of territories and all that sort of stuff. And all the people that were initially there. Are probably sitting there wondering this isn't what I signed up for.

s isn't the story that I was [: 00:03:00

Lucas Price: I think it was actually easier. As an early leader, because people were joining when it was early on to be part of the rocket ship to, a company, a growing company that has lots of opportunities inside of it. And so it was really easy to have conversations with people at that point in time where it's like, Hey, if we succeed, and if you're part of solving problems for us, then there's going to be a lot of opportunity for you within this company, and it's going to generate opportunities.

And decided, Hey, there's a [: 00:04:00

And so some of the sales reps who were selling to that segment of customers, we had to put them somewhere else and, there were other times there were. Needs to move up market in various ways. And Hey, we can't start keep sell to this bottom end of this segment.

We need to raise the prices and target the top end. We need to move away from, monthly deals and we need to move into to, multi year deals, so there was all types of changes like this that I think were more challenging that tend to become more prevalent later in the organization and are a little bit easier to deal with early on.

Dr. Jim: Wow. That's really good. And it actually has me thinking. Because if I'm looking at it from the reps perspective. So I'm an I'm an early stage rep, or maybe as we've grown I'm a rep that was brought on that built us a specific set of skills in a niche. And now you're the sales leader.

e we're not going to service [: 00:05:00

So how did you navigate that conversation?

Lucas Price: Yeah. I think that the important part about it is really putting together a plan for how you're going to communicate it. And the plan is not a one-time thing. You're gonna keep hitting it over and over again. And so part of what I was trying to communicate repeatedly to the whole sales organization before I had.

going to, I'm going to be a [: 00:06:00

This is totally unfair to me. This sucks for me. I hate that the company is making these changes. That's one attitude you can have about it. The other attitude is and I would try to tell our sales organization, Hey, as a sales organization, we're going to lead the change. We're going to do what's best for the company.

And when you do that, there's going to be opportunities. The changes are going to create opportunities. If you're currently a top performer in a segment, that's going to be de emphasized. It's an opportunity for you to go and show that you can be a top performer in a different context. And that's going to help your reputation at this company.

And it's going to help you. You ever need to go get a job somewhere else that you've been a top performer in multiple different contexts and multiple segments. And so there's opportunities for either, if you're not a top performer and your cheese gets moved around, it gives you an opportunity to be in a different context and show and become a top performer in a different context.

the sales team is like, Hey.[: 00:07:00

And that. And that it, there are going to be some short term negatives for them, but they have an opportunity to make it a long term positive for themselves.

Dr. Jim: So I, I hear all of that. And I still have my rep hat on and you said a bunch of stuff and I'm sitting here thinking yeah, that's all good and fine. But right now, all I'm hearing from you is you're screwing with my paycheck. So that immediate sort of visceral reaction, what were the things that you did to mitigate or at least at least soften that initial reaction,

n about why the changes. Are [: 00:08:00

And, it's very easy to put a spreadsheet together that is, going to send the company to the moon and beyond. It's going to be a rocket to the moon and beyond. And it's very easy to put magical thinking into that spreadsheet. And so you do have to be listening to the sales reps and listening to, what's realistic, how do we accomplish the things that we need to accomplish?

And there were times, one of the things that we did when the organization was larger like that is we'd build the first draft of a compensation plan, we'd share it with the managers, we'd get feedback. We'd build a second draft, we'd share it again and, we'd build a plan and we'd realize ah, some of what we're asking our sales reps to do this year really isn't going to be realistic that we put in the first draft of the plan.

o have to remove the magical [: 00:09:00

you do have to like, allow them to understand why the company's making the change and allow them to opt in to having the right attitude for it. And you have to be realistic in terms of building a plan that works for your reps and your top reps and our and people are going to continue to see success all around them in the sales organization.

Dr. Jim: So there's something about what you said that I think needs to be highlighted. And that was in your example where you're talking about new commission plans and you had a first draft and then you had a second draft. But what caught my attention about that is that you're being transparent with making it an iterative process.

So I don't want to let go of [: 00:10:00

Lucas Price: So we would have a I think it was a Monday morning, all hands with the sales team. And we and a lot of times I would have. Other leaders besides myself within the sales organization, run it. And when I could start to see that on the horizon, there was going to be changes, this conversation started at the executive level, at the board level.

And to me, it became clear like where it was going. I started to make sure that. I had I, did a little bit more of communicating myself at those meetings and, cause I, I do think it's I thought it was great to have other people take over, but then I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to do a little bit more of it myself than I have been doing.

re time on the communication [: 00:11:00

noT your compensation plan is going to be blown up, but Hey, we're thinking about how we're going to do territories next year. And these are some of the changes that we're thinking about putting in, when you start to build, it doesn't need to be. Like complete transparency.

You don't need to go in with messages that people are going to be angry about, but start to lay the groundwork for the changes that people might expect. My my father in law is a retired dentist, but he pokes and prods in people's mouth. And he would always say he creates a lot of pain in your mouth.

nd not just springing people [: 00:12:00

Without having laid any of the groundwork ahead of time.

Dr. Jim: So I like what you mentioned in terms of giving people some advance notice. In addition to creating that habit of pay advance notice, here's what might be coming down the road. How did you leverage that to create space for feedback and modification as part of that process?

Lucas Price: Yeah, I'm not sure I did some things to do that, but I'm not sure if I did enough to do that. The things that I did was a couple of things that I did to try to create that environment was that I would try to block time on my calendar every week for an office hours, and I would tell the sales organization, Hey, whatever it was like Thursday afternoon.

s available to anyone in the [: 00:13:00

The second thing was, me reaching out to people relatively randomly within the sales organizations and asking. To set 30 minute meetings with them where I would just pull them on, what was going well for them, what wasn't going well for them, what, how the company was supporting them, how the company can do a better job supporting them.

And those were a couple of the things that I did that I thought I think were effective. I think that it's probably better to have a better plan a more comprehensive plan than what I had, but those were, but I do think that those two things were both effective for me.

Dr. Jim: So there's an interesting aspect about what you mentioned, the random 30 minute meetings. I think that's a great idea. And if you're pairing that with your standard sort of one on one cadence, that's like supercharging it. But one of the things that I'm curious about, and I don't really know what size.

you avoid the potential hurt [: 00:14:00

Lucas Price: it was just to set the expectations that we do skip levels. We, are always trying to collect feedback from our sellers on how to empower them, how to do a better job with them. And I think that it becomes a landmine when you don't do it regularly and you don't have that expectation.

And I think that it diffuses the landmine. If it's, this is how we do things is that, I, talk to people at every level of the sales organization. I'm going to talk to the managers, the directors, the sellers, the SDRs, and and so I think just, and if you're not the head of sales, if you're a director, for instance, I think that you can have that same expectation with on your, within your team that, Hey, you managers who report to me, I'm going to meet with you, but periodically I'm going to meet with people on your team as well.

I think having [: 00:15:00

Dr. Jim: I'd like you to expand it a little bit more because I think you and I both know that there is a lot of sales managers that are out there in the world of work who, to borrow a phrase that you used earlier, are spreadsheeting their way to success.

And I think what you're describing where you're spending that limited time that you have in one on one conversations, that's actually much more valuable. So let's say you're one of those managers that tends to manage by the numbers. How do you create the space and the habit? Of being consistent in those one on one conversations that actually set you up for success whenever you have these change management decisions or events coming up,

g to do it each week or each [: 00:16:00

I've blocked, I've allocated this amount of time to do it. And then letting everyone else know that you're going to be inviting people to meet with you and the reason that you're doing it. And so I'm not saying that there wouldn't be some managers who would push back on it, but I just think it's a.

s, but don't do them with my [: 00:17:00

Dr. Jim: I want to switch gears a little bit and bring it to the rep level, but bring it to the rep level from a customer success perspective.

Lucas Price: Yeah.

Dr. Jim: we're talking about communicating change and communicating drastic change in a way that's that's effective. So let's say you're leading an organization, you have a strong group of existing customers that are paying and re upping.

And one of the initiatives that's announced internally in the organization is that prices are going to increase for support and for new licenses for the next year. And you can, anybody that's listening to this that's been in part of the sales organization, you can probably hear the response. That the customer success organization is going to have, and they're going to be like, Oh my God, everybody's going to leave.

o when you face that sort of [: 00:18:00

How do they set the stage with their customer that something like this might be happening so that they have a better chance of that conversation going well?

Lucas Price: Yeah. So I think first of all, in the conversation with the customer success manager and helping them understand what's going on, the thing, the first thing I would say is I would hope it would be a data based decision. And so I think that you want to be able to bring the data to the customer success manager.

And I think that the data could be of the flavor of look, we have big, we have really good reasons to think that our customers aren't going to leave us over this and, or, we can't continue to operate. Under the old way. And so even if we don't have really good data, the only way for us to get to, where achieve our goals as a business is to make these changes.

eally understand that people.[: 00:19:00

This is why, and this is how it's going to benefit you. So I, I think that, like all communications it's, it's important to put together a plan to spend time on, making sure you're doing a good job of it. And, and helping the people that are affected by it, understand the reasons for it.

ou're not in regular contact [: 00:20:00

And in this case, this would be a customer. Any message is going to be received poorly because a relationship isn't there. So you have to have those sort of micro conversations first. And make sure that you're setting the stage well. Really solid stuff, Lucas. I appreciate you walking us through the process of building an effective communication and change management plan. I think there's a lot of stuff here that's going to be useful for those sales leaders that are out there that are trying to do the same thing.

So when you think back to all the stuff that we've talked about so far, for those listeners out there, what are the two or three things that you feel are critically important for them to keep in mind when they're trying to build this highly effective communication culture?

sparency to a communications [: 00:21:00

Number two I think that the bigger the organization gets, the more complicated the communication becomes. I mentioned how every 18 months the job was a little bit different in my last 18 months at Zipwhip, I spent a lot more time thinking about how do I communicate the right way to this big group of people, whereas in the first 18 months, I could just go and have one on one conversations with everyone quite easily.

And so the communication gets more complicated and you, as a leader, you really want to like have be very deliberate and be very thoughtful. In those all the time, but in a different way in a large organization. And then I think the third is when you're dealing with changes, bring the reasons that you're making the changes to the conversation, that ties in again to the transparency.

So those are the three points that I would, that I'd come back to.

g a lot of the insights that [: 00:22:00

They're going to get a lot of valuable insights from the conversation. There's a few things that stand out to me when I think about this conversation that we had. If the goal is to successfully communicate massive change or drastic change effectively, I think the first thing that you need to do is well before that change needs to be communicated, you need to be building a habit of creating that communication culture.

If you're not doing your one on ones, if you're not giving people insights or visibility into the things that are going on that are relevant, you're setting yourself up for failure. Because there's not going to be any trust that's established within that organization or within your team to receive that big complicated message.

t is the point that you made [: 00:23:00

But most people are okay with that. If you let them know that, Hey, this thing that might be coming is going to twinge a little bit. So I think that's an important lesson when we're talking about communication and change management and not surprising people. If you're giving people the right level of visibility, that.

Makes it more likely that message, that eventual message is going to be received well. So I think those two things are really good foundational habits. And then certainly if you can embed a communication culture across your organization where you're regularly doing skip level office hour meetings, those are all going to be helpful .

ou can certainly email Lucas [: 00:24:00

team and check out the website. There's a lot of resources there for you to to get up to speed. If you like this series, if you like the founders features series, give Lucas an email and let him know. What other topics are going to be important for you to learn about as a, as you're on your own journey from 1 million to a hundred million ARR.

So thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us today. Leave us a review and then tune in next time where we will be sharing more insights, that's going to help you build an elite sales team,