Taking Sales in a New Direction

Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past

In an age of disruption, when management decides that resources must be diverted away from what still may be a thriving legacy business and invested instead in catching the next wave, the single most important function to redirect is B2B enterprise sales. 

Part of the challenge is that past success creates a kind of linear inertial momentum. The company has an established market position, with customers budgeted and ready to buy, and an ecosystem of partners ready to sell support product and services to complement and extend the core offer set. Inside this world of established relationships, every signal is flashing green, so it feels unnatural to slow down for a turn.

But there is an even bigger hurdle created by a more gyroscopic kind of inertia—you know, the sort that keeps returning you to your base no matter how hard you lean out to change directions—and that is the result of commission-based sales compensation, the foundation of virtually every enterprise sales fabric. In the world of commissions, your job is to make your number—period. OK, you are not supposed to break the law, but aside from that, however you make your number is up to you—just make it. 

Experience has proven that, year in and year out, by far the easiest way to do this is to sell more of whatever it was you sold last year and sell it to whomever it was that bought it from you last time. Sure, companies can add in a spiff to get you to sell the next new thing, and that does work for the short term, and on a discretionary basis, but when push comes to shove, commission-based behavior, like water, seeks the path of least resistance. As well it should—that is precisely what it is intended to incentivize.

By contrast, strategic sales, sales into the new category, the one that lets you catch the next wave, are much harder to execute productively. Customers are not teed up in advance. Your ecosystem is not ready for their new role. Budgets are not already in place. Your salespeople do not have established relationships with the new buying centers. Your go-to-market playbooks are not tuned for solution selling. Your lead generation does not create the right leads, and your demos are far too product-centric to make the connection to the new problem sets. In short, things are a mess.

Now, there are some green shoots. A subset of your sales team is naturally gifted at solution selling, and they have begun to blaze a trail to the new positioning. You have early adopter customers who are willing to serve as references. There is, indeed, a chasm to cross, but there are established playbooks for how to get this done, and you have more than enough resources to do so—provided you are truly willing to free them up. 

Aye, there’s the rub, as Hamlet has taught us to say. Are we truly willing to divert resources from a profitable business that will help us make the number this quarter and focus them instead on an unprofitable business of uncertain expectations that we believe is key to our future?

Part of this challenge must be faced by the executive team and the board of directors—a set of issues addressed in an earlier book, Escape Velocity. Part of it is an operational challenge, as you must divide your forces in order to pursue two go-to-market motions in parallel, something addressed in my latest book, Zone to Win. But a big chunk of it has to do with getting the sales leadership and the top sales performers to lead the charge in the new direction. Here you must be watchful. 

I do not know of any material change in direction that was not deeply resisted by some subset of the leadership team. Prior to the decision to redirect, this kind of disagreement is actually valuable as it helps keep you from pulling the trigger too soon. But once the commitment to change has been made, then any such resistance must be eliminated immediately. Normally, this means moving one or more key leaders out, and this is made doubly hard because they have been core to your prior success and have deep relationships with much of the current team. But there is no help for it. When you want to move in a different direction, you cannot afford to have even one rower rowing the wrong way.

In addition, you will also have to redirect your marketing team to run two very different pipeline generation programs, one for the legacy business, a very different one for the new one. And the same goes for your teams for customer support, professional services, and customer success. Every org must bifurcate. You cannot afford to abandon your legacy business. It is what is keeping the lights on and the payroll met. At the same time, you haven’t a second to lose in your race to creating a material business in the new landscape. Everyone has to stretch.

At the end of the day, however, nothing happens until there has been a sale. That’s why redirecting the sales force is your first priority.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Geoffrey Moore | Zone to Win | Geoffrey Moore Twitter | Geoffrey Moore YouTube