Your sales team is pushing back on a new go-to-market strategy. How can you get them on board?

Market Insight is critical to success, majority of the markets are not stagnant, rather dynamic, therefore need to review your strategy on regular intervals, in order to grow & establish your product/ brand.

If you want to gain buy in from your team on a new GTM strategy, discuss the new direction openly, be curious, ask questions with the purpose of understanding how the new GTM direction is being received. Not everyone will have the same experiences and a change in market strategy may be causing anxiety. Work as a team to create the value proposition; create a repository with materials, use cases and customer testimonials to create world class presentations. I also recommend 1:1 conversations to allow your team members confidentiality if they are uncomfortable sharing their concerns in a group setting. It is ok to question and I have consistently found that if you show empathy and are willing to teach, they will be willing to learn.

The Sales Team is one of the 4 P's of Marketing. In this case, there is a direct sales force as the "Place" where customers' transactions occur . Go back to Marketing 101 and remember having a sales team (and not a webstore, infomercials, retail shelf space, etc.) is part of your Marketing Mix. By developing a go-to-market strategy without the input from Sales, you've ignored the eyes, ears, and feet on the street. Creating a strategy first, then trying to sell it to Sales will be always be met with resistance. Instead, develop a strategy WITH Sales to obtain insight and provide a sense of ownership which will result in their enthusiasm and vested interest in its success. Inclusion and listening in the development stage is critical.

To get people on-board you really need to listen. Why do they not jump into action? What holds them back? While you listen carefully answers will come. I remember having a group of managers holding back on a change move. Do you know what happened? It took me 3 hours to try to discover, we moved to the pool ambiance to relax and guess what, they said this was an older group, many years in the bank, they needed to learn to learn!

Listen to your team, get their suggestions and implement some of their ideas, where necessary tweak your plans, so your sales team will feel valued and in turn they will own the project and work hard to achieve the goals , because from an 'imposed' strategy it is now their strategy.

When your team understands the **benefits** of the new go-to-market strategy, they're more likely to embrace it. Clearly articulate how this strategy will make their jobs easier, such as automating routine tasks or opening new commission opportunities. Use concrete examples and success stories. For instance, show how a similar strategy increased sales by 30% in another market. Always tie these benefits back to business objectives—highlight how higher sales volume or market penetration contributes to overall company growth.

Explain the benefits to your sales team, the benefits to their clients and the long term goals....don't just look at the financial remuneration but how the new product will benefit their clients. Also help answer all doubts, fears they might have and work to overcome resistance to change from your sales team and their clients, handle their objections by providing tangible benefits that solve their client's difficulties.

So if you listen, you get to understand, and when you understand you know where to focus your story to help people. Sometimes this might be funny, if you talk to many different groups you will discover that your base story might be the same but the way you tell your story might be different. Different groups have different needs and you weeve it differently.

Training is a great tool. Usually role playing is great, they have an initial experience and it will be good to start with. Experiences stick to the mind. The mind does not know what is real or role playing. Do it!

Training which includes planning sales, calls, targeting, identifying potential objections and providing answers. Your sales team needs to believe in the product and strategy, even if initially there will be resistance, once the first results start coming they will start convincing themselves. This is why regular team meetings, to share best practices is important. If you have new sales people, mentoring and daily meetings are important, to manage their expectations and emotions.

Giving support is coaching your team, it can be individual or group. You can have a set of questions and answers and feed it constantly in a system. You can even record videos to give more credibility when sharing good and bad. People love getting together, for 30 minutes this might work out. So many techniques... the important thing is don't get automated make it a human talking to a human, not a number, people feel it.

Collaborate and get the Sales team's feedback early while developing your GTM strategies. This will help you uncover their concerns and insights you might not have considered. By incorporating their input early, you can address objections and secure buy-in, ensuring your strategy is sound before presenting. This way, you're not in a position of having to defend your strategy later. Additionally, collaborating throughout the journey will make sales training and enablement easier since they already have some background context on your objectives.