Most sales organizations don’t have a strategy problem. Ask almost any sales leader, from a frontline manager to a VP of sales, and they’ll tell you they have one. The problem shows up when you ask 5 sales reps to explain the company sales strategy and describe actions they must take to execute that strategy. The unfortunate reality is that the new sales strategy wasn’t effectively communicated. At best, it was communicated, but new strategic direction regarding the actions in the field didn’t change.

I’ve watched this happen for decades. Reps hear the new strategy, nod along, and quietly conclude it’s more of the same. That isn’t resistance. It’s what happens when nobody has told them what the change means for how they spend their week.

Why do sales strategy changes fail in the field?

The short answer: Most sales strategy changes fail in execution, not design. Leaders announce the new strategy but don’t translate it into the specific behaviors expected of reps, and they don’t realign training and coaching to build those behaviors. Firms that do both are far more likely to hit their sales objectives.

Our joint research with the Sales Management Association, which benchmarked about 80 large sales organizations, makes the cost of skipping those steps hard to ignore. Two strategy execution practices separated the firms that hit their numbers from those that didn’t:

  • Communicating the expected change in behavior. 82% of firms that spelled out what reps and managers should do differently met their sales objective, compared with 33% of firms that didn’t.
  • Realigning training and coaching to the new strategy. 83% of firms that did this met their objective, compared with just 20% of firms that didn’t.

The encouraging news is that most firms say they already do this reasonably well: 70% report being effective at communicating behavior change, and 66% at realigning learning and coaching. The sobering news is what happens to everyone else. And because large sales organizations go through what they describe as a transformation roughly every three years, this isn’t a one-time problem. It’s a capability you need on hand at all times.

Why doesn’t just announcing the strategy work?

There’s a quiet assumption inside many sales leadership teams: we hired good people, so if we give them the information, they’ll figure it out. It’s a flattering assumption, and it’s usually wrong.

One commercial performance leader we work with puts it plainly to his own leadership team: you can’t fault the field for not doing things nobody trained them to do. Telling isn’t training. If you haven’t resourced the change, spelled out the skills it requires, and given people a chance to practice them, you haven’t really asked for the change at all.

Without that follow-through, the outcome is predictable. People fall back to their comfort zone and keep doing what has always worked for them. In fast-moving markets, that’s how a sound strategy quietly stalls.

Ask “What must we do differently?”, not “How do we fit this in?”

When a strategy changes, reps and managers naturally ask how to fold it into what they’re already doing. That instinct is the problem. A real change in strategy usually requires reps to do something genuinely different, and often for a different customer.

Consider a strategy built around deeper adoption inside existing accounts. The rep’s long-standing relationship may be with the end user of the product. Executing the new strategy might mean engaging IT, operations, finance or risk management: people the rep has never called on. If nobody names that shift, the rep will keep calling on the same people and wonder why the results don’t move.

Managers can use a simple filter here: does this activity directly produce a result tied to one of our strategies? If it doesn’t, and there’s no clear reason to keep doing it, it’s a candidate to stop. Strategy is as much about what you stop doing as what you start.

Define the critical on-the-job behaviors

When we work with sales leadership teams on strategy, we ask them to settle on no more than three or four strategies. Then we ask the question that matters most: what are the critical on-the-job behaviors required to execute them?

The answers should be concrete enough to observe and measure. “Build stronger relationships” isn’t a behavior. “Meet with the risk managers at the top five hospitals in my territory to walk through our new value proposition” is. When reps can describe their role in those terms, you know the strategy has landed.

That list of behaviors does double duty. It tells reps exactly what’s expected, and it gives your enablement team a blueprint: can our people do this today, or can’t they? Wherever the answer is no, that’s where training and coaching investment belongs.

Realign sales training and coaching to the new behaviors

This is where the 83% versus 20% gap comes from. Firms that succeed don’t assume their existing sales training covers the new strategy. They build the specific skills the new behaviors require, give people room to practice through case studies and on-the-job application, and coach to those behaviors in the field.

There’s a useful side effect, too. When the expected behaviors are explicit, coaching stops feeling intrusive. A manager who shows up to work a deal isn’t coming out of left field; both people know what they’re working toward and why. The strategy creates the expectation of coaching, and the coaching keeps the strategy alive.

Make the strategy how you operate, not something extra

The organizations that sustain sales strategy changes treat it as an operating mechanism, not an add-on initiative. A few habits make the difference:

  • Keep it tight. Three or four strategies, executed quarter by quarter, are far easier to act on than a long list of priorities.
  • Tie everything back. When a new product, clinical paper, or marketing campaign launches, connect it explicitly to one of the strategies so it isn’t dismissed as the flavor of the month.
  • Ask about barriers early. When you roll out the strategy, ask the field what concerns and obstacles they see, and explain the why behind each choice.
  • Celebrate early wins. Showcase reps who are making progress in difficult accounts so others can see what the new behaviors look like in practice.
  • Revisit it deliberately. Markets move quickly. Commit to a regular review, at least annually, so the strategy stays current.

The question to ask before your next strategy rollout

The next time your sales strategy changes, ask one question before you announce it: what, specifically, will our sales team do differently next week? If you can’t answer that, your team can’t either. And if you can answer it but haven’t trained and coached to it, you’re relying on telling to do the work of training.

For the full findings on how high-performing sales organizations develop, communicate, and course-correct strategy, download the Research Brief, Managing Sales Organization Strategy, from Ignite Selling and the Sales Management Association. You can also watch a recent webinar recording where we discuss the findings and their implications. To discuss how these themes apply to your own sales organization, contact us.

Related reading: Why Do Deals Stall Mid-Pipeline — and How Do You Fix It?