Overview
“I started a quiet revolution.”
This is what Kyla, a friend of mine, said to me when I asked her how she’d managed to double the annual sales of her team.
Let me give you a little backstory. We were having a drink over the holidays a couple of weeks ago. The last time I saw Kyla was during our usual holiday get-together the year before get-together. Back then, my friend was miserable. She’d recently been promoted to Director of Sales at a division of a mid-sized company. She’d dreamed of the promotion for years, but her first few months in the position hadn’t gone how she expected. She was hoping to make a dent in some of the pre-existing problems on the team—flat sales, low morale, and the challenge of attracting great salespeople. But those problems were still there.
Cogs in the Machine
As Kyla explained to me, she thought she could make some headway with these issues by changing some of the ways the previous director, Joel, had operated. Joel had been in the position for over fifteen years. He was a decent, well-meaning guy, but he was controlling. Everyone had to keep strict office hours and follow a pre-set process for selling—using precise scripts and hitting particular metrics for things like calls per day. Joel would often refer to his team as running like a well-oiled machine. He meant it as a compliment, but it revealed that he saw his reps as cogs in the machine he had built—not very empowering to say the least.
For most of Joel’s directorship, sales grew—not at a spectacular rate, but modestly enough to keep the business leaders happy. When sales flattened out, Joel decided to retire, opening up the position for my friend.
Kyla was excited to get promoted because she knew the team had potential that Joel had never let flourish. Kyla first thought she could tap into that potential by treating the reps differently, making them feel like they were all peers and teammates—instead of minions working for “The Man.” She started working closely with the reps, helping them with sales, coaching and encouraging them, and celebrating their wins. The team’s mood seemed lighter than under Joel, but nobody was much more engaged or productive. The team’s overall performance remained flat. That was the picture Kyla painted for me last year.
The Revolution Begins
When we got together a couple of weeks ago, I saw a different Kyla. She was beaming, full of positive energy. Her team had almost doubled its sales over the previous year—a result the company didn’t usually see in any of its divisions. When I asked her how she’d managed to turn things around, Kyla said she’d done it by starting a quiet revolution.
When I asked her what she meant, Kyla told me that soon after we met last year, she’d had a revelation—she would never bring out the team’s potential just by behaving differently from Joel. That’s because the main issue holding the team back—the element of control—was baked into the team’s systems, processes, structure, and the larger company.
Systems of Control
The systems and processes for selling were all very prescriptive—they told the reps exactly how to sell. They didn’t allow for creative leeway and new approaches. All the metrics that Kyla had to report on demanded the reps spend their time in specific ways, which did more than stifle creativity; it forced people to act in ways that weren’t necessarily driving the best results. Reps would do what it took to hit their activity metrics rather than what they felt would create new and bigger opportunities.
The compensation structure was also controlling because it only rewarded narrow ways of working; it didn’t, for example, encourage reps to work together, which some of the reps knew would drive new sales growth. General business practices like office hours and performance reviews with their elaborate rating systems—were controlling by nature.
change the fact that the reps had little freedom or choice in how they worked. To eliminate the element of control, Kyla would have to tear down the controlling infrastructure.
Let Them Fly
Kyla decided she would only care about results—sales results and some broad metrics that she felt were essential stepping stones to hit the quota. She would let the reps handle their job’s “how” part. Nobody had to comply with old processes or work with the old systems. If some wanted to stick to how things were done in the past, that was fine. But if they wanted to try new ways, they had the freedom to do that. Results mattered, and Kyla was there to help the reps or get out of their way and let them fly. Kyla also revamped the comp structure to reward various ways of working.
Kyla knew that getting the endorsement from above for this radical strategy wouldn’t be easy. The company leaders weren’t prone to giving a long leash to their employees and trusting that they would help the business rather than abuse their privileges. So, instead of seeking approval first, Kyla decided to go ahead and do it, knowing that when results improved, she could defend the merits of her strategy. Thus, her quiet revolution began.
Rolling
For Kyla, things were chaotic in the beginning. Some reps had trouble adjusting to the new freedom and felt paralyzed. One eventually left. However, most of the reps embraced the opportunity to generate ideas and have the chance to implement them. Many reps started rolling with entirely new selling methods within a few months. Some had jumped into social media, leveraging it in innovative ways to prospect—something that had never been able to flourish under Joel. One rep focused on automation technology to qualify leads and move a sale along. A few reps paired up to collaborate on larger accounts. A couple chose to work remotely or during different hours. Most of the reps didn’t comply with Joel’s traditional processes nor hit many metrics Joel had tracked, but they were getting results. A few saw staggering improvements and were primarily responsible for the lift in the team’s results.
Playing Defense
While the team worked away in this new world, Kyla played defense with the VP she reported to, often making excuses for not sending the usual reports or submitting formal performance reviews. As Kyla had hoped, the demands for her to comply dwindled as the team’s results ramped up.
An added benefit to Kyla’s approach was that her reps began to spread the word among their friends and peers about how they were thriving, which led to an influx of strong candidates and a few great hires.
As of our conversation, Kyla wasn’t sure how long she’d have to operate under the radar, but she and the VP had plans to get together in the new year to review how she’d pulled off such a spectacular year. Kyla believed that the VP would have little choice but to embrace her approach and help bring it to other divisions in the company.
The Heavy Weight of Tradition
I loved my friend’s story because it’s a beautiful example of a story happening in small and large degrees worldwide. Leaders everywhere realize that to unleash their people’s potential, they have to make not incremental changes but radical changes to how their businesses operate. These leaders understand that many business practices have lost their relevance and value and are only held in place by the heavy weight of tradition and that it is up to them to find the courage to remove the dead weight.
In his bestselling book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink writes, “On the edges of the economy—slowly, but inexorably—old-fashioned ideas of management are giving way to a newfangled emphasis on self-direction.”
Some of those stories are found at companies like Adobe, which has ditched the traditional performance review for informal check-ins. Or at Valve Software, where there are no managers, and whereas Forbes has reported—”each member of staff can choose the project he or she is working on.” Many of these stories are about companies moving to a ROWE—a results-only work environment akin to what Kyla achieved with her sales team.
Seeing as it is the beginning of a new year, which offers us all the opportunity to make this year dramatically better than the last, I hope you find some inspiration in the story of Kyla and what she accomplished in a single year with her quiet revolution.
