At a GDS Group RevGen Summit, a panel of industry sales experts, came together to explore their thoughts surrounding leadership innovation. The all-female panel included Amy Frazier, MD Sales Enablement at PwC, Leslie Pearce SVP, Inside Sales at FISERV, and Leslie Canning, VP WW Sales Enablement over at HPE. These women spoke about their biggest learnings from the past 2 years and what can we expect for the future. Let’s take a look at that discussion:
Prioritize Inclusivity
How can you be a great leader? Leslie from FISERV shares you need to bring inclusivity to the table. Inclusivity is key for bringing everyone together in a team mentality. Amy from PwC chimes in sharing that the average age of an employee at PWC is 26 years old. She talks about the importance of embracing the newer generations and listening to them as we prepare for the future. A survey by Deloitte finds that millennials, who are set to make up 75% of the workforce by 2025, overwhelmingly feel more engaged when their organization fosters an inclusive culture.
However, a lot of these millennials want to move up the ladder quickly and some big companies may struggle to fulfil that. Leslie from HPE comments on the new way of working, sharing that freedom and accessibility have become part of this new norm. “There is now a need to be agile and flexible in our approaches going forward. Modify nearly everything that we are doing.”
Human Led – People
Aligning people, process, and technology is not an easy feat. However, thriving organizations are leading with their people.
Amy from PwC shares, “we need to lead with our people. Human led, where we are inspiring them to be more competitive in the marketplace, develop new relationships and do it. If we don’t have that, then the technology and all those other elements don’t matter.’”
Leslie from HPE adds the importance of senior sales leadership to help navigate this conversation. By working together with sales leaders, they can help you introduce new processes and technologies, and/or support you with what the field needs.
“At the end of the day we have to remember what our table stakes are, and you only get their buy-in with. One- Does it help me serve my client better? Two- Does it make me much more productive? And if you don’t have alignment on those two things, it’s very difficult to get their buy-in.”
-Leslie Canning, HPE
The “new shiny toy,” – Technology
The reality of the speed of which we are adapting, changing, and moving at pace with new technologies and ideas feels faster than ever before. Amy from PwC makes the point around how it’s not until you have new technology established that something newer and shiner has arrived. It’s hard not to get distracted by that shiny new object.
“The tools can become overwhelming. Sellers will say, ‘I don’t know what tool to use for what’ and ‘you’re just laying on another tool.’ So, there’s a real process management of change so any tool we are launching to the field has to have been piloted and tested again. Trying to move fast, but do we need it? Because you know you can bring in a tool and have very low adoption and you know it’s just noise,” shares Leslie from HPE.
Not overbearing and overloading your teams with new tech is also important. There needs to be a good strong understanding of why these tools have been updated. If you don’t have a strong reason why, maybe you should be questioning why you are implementing something new.
Staying relevant – Process
With ‘new shiny toys’ tends to come processes. This is not a chicken and the egg scenario with which comes first – but more about needing one for the other to succeed. Leslie from FISERV talks in more detail about the importance of processes, tapping into the why.
“Technology and process are constantly evolving, and we might not need the new tool. We might just need to tweak the process that we have slightly. As we learned it is continuing to change. And so the process we had yesterday – is it still valid?’
With change can come resistance but Leslie continues to explain how looking at your current process and how to build trust and reassurance with your teams.
“Maybe we can take that off so the sales team says ‘ok, so you heard me and took something away and now I’m going to have some buy-in that you are hearing me and my feedback, so yes I am open to embracing new technology’ for the benefit of my client or the benefit of me being a better salesperson.”
Do you wish you could hear this first-hand? Why not enquire to join our next Rev Gen Summit where we cover more topics like this one. Learn from leaders in the area along with your peers.
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