This article comes from Chelsea Minguez’s insightful talk, ‘Less is more: Prioritizing behavior shifts for maximum impact,’ at our 2024 Austin Sales Enablement Summit. Check out her full presentation here.
Driving meaningful behavior change in our sales teams can feel like an uphill battle sometimes, am I right?
We pour our hearts into creating amazing enablement programs, only to be met with lackluster results or reps who just don't seem to buy into the changes.
Trust me, I've been there. Over the years, I've learned that trying to overhaul everything at once is often counterproductive, and less is more when it comes to facilitating lasting behavior shifts.
By zeroing in on smaller, incremental changes and meeting our reps where they are in their journey, we can actually drive greater impact and more sustainable results.
It's all about being strategic, focusing our efforts on the highest-leverage areas, and understanding the psychology behind how people adopt new behaviors (because let's be real, change is hard!).
So let me walk you through my "less is more" philosophy when it comes to enabling behavior change.
Who's ready to start making a bigger impact with less effort? Let's dive in!
The five stages of behavior change
To understand why prioritizing bite-sized behavior shifts can be so effective, it helps to look at the five stages of change that therapists refer to:
1) Pre-contemplation
2) Contemplation
3) Preparation
4) Action
5) Maintenance
I've witnessed these stages play out across numerous sales teams.
The pre-contemplation phase tends to involve reps blaming external factors, rejecting feedback, or lacking self-awareness about areas for improvement.
Contemplation is a bit better - reps acknowledge challenges exist, but are still hesitant to move out of their comfort zone.
It's not until preparation and action mode that you really start to see the momentum build. Reps actively upskill, consistently apply new techniques, and demonstrate positive results.
But even then, reps can regress into a maintenance mindset when fresh challenges or distractions arise, requiring renewed focus to sustain the behavior change.
The key takeaway?
