Thing about changing your sales culture?
Thinking about changing your sales culture?
A joke that I can vaguely remember from years ago which centres around Ireland deciding to follow the rest of the EU and drive on the right side (the other side) of the road.
I remember it told as an “and finally” item on the news, the idea being that whilst Ireland was fully committed to the transition, not everyone was onboard and so as to keep everyone happy, cars would start driving on the right on Saturday with lorries and buses to change on the Monday.
I’m pretty sure I’ll not do the joke justice here but you can imagine the carnage.
Sweden made that exact transition on September 3rd 1967.
They call it H-Day or Dagen H.
The H stands for Högertrafikomläggningen the one word that they use for right handed driving and as change management goes, that’s a pretty extreme example.
The country was the odd one out in the Scandinavian region – the only one to drive on the left and as you can imagine it wasn’t something that they placed under ‘any other business.’
It was a huge decision to make and one that was rejected initially.
Yet as most Swedish manufactured cars had the steering wheel on the left, it made safety sense to align with their neighbours.
Can you imagine the preparation and planning required for such a change?
It’s not something that can be phased in – it’s all or nothing.
At 5 O’clock on September 3rd, Sweden joined their neighbours on the other side of the road.
People were literally instructed to move from one side of the road to the other and continue the journey.
For that to happen smoothly, road signs and markings had to be replaced along with traffic signs.
Bus lanes were redesigned and bus stops repositioned.
Imagine the money behind the marketing campaign?
It worked out well enough for everyone.
After a traffic jam to end all traffic jams, the number of accidents decreased and although the respite was short lived with numbers rising after a few years, the overall plan was considered a success.
What does Driving in Sweden have to so with changing your sales culture?
There’s a lesson in this for anyone considering a change in your culture at work or specifically changing your sales culture.
We all know that the only constant is change (#yawn) but thankfully if you are changing your sales culture it’s unlikely that you will be forced into a 5.00pm deadline.
Your sales culture will primarily be your people.
Trying to change their individual / collective behaviours overnight is pointless.
Sure, they can fix punctuality issues in a heartbeat but changing your sales culture is more than good timekeeping.
Ingrained behaviours are hard to shift with the hardest pivot sometimes coming at leadership level.
Getting a new CRM installed on a Friday and hoping for everyone in sales to start capturing data by Monday is not even a dream.
Changing a sales culture takes time – it’s not happening overnight.
A clear sense of perspective must be matched by a clear sense of direction.
The conviction for change must be allied to the patience for delivery.
People will move much slower than any technology.
You can expect resistance and reactance.
In 1967s Sweden it was arguably easier to get people to change from left to right than to get them to slow down or drive more carefully.
They agreed on the principle of change but were forced into specific and immediate actions.
Change as much as being a constant is also inevitable.
You can always control the speed.
