Making
difficult
change
fun.
Changing a large company’s sales management system can be hard, risky, and scary. How do you get thousands of sellers excited about change? Create an engaging metaphor that tells a story tied to company vision and immediate business impact.
Pedro
Senior director
Invested a lot of time and energy into new system
Responsible for billions of dollars in transactions
Twenty year career, eight years at the company
Doing career defining work
Leads team of 8+ people
Replacing a legacy (an outdated?) software program, that no one likes, seems an easy task but replacing it with a new experience, that no one knows, is daunting because change can be tough. The old system had gaps and wasn’t reliable. The new system needed to be more robust and faster.
Transitioned nearly 3,500 salespeople to a new system
Transitioned quickly to the new system With 100% adoption
Character development based on persona analysis
Results
The transition started with audience research and discovery, seeking to understand stakeholder objectives and key results. After conducting audience interviews and focus groups, in-depth research led to persona development, including end-user concerns, hurdles, and expectations.
A metaphor was developed that paralleled the nuances of the key areas and benefits of the new service. Based on a detailed, underlying narrative, a set of characters was created to help all employees relate to unique messaging that aligned to a targeted, change-management strategy.
The communications strategy leveraged an integrated campaign combining email, internal social posts, events, and leadership presentations which included “takeovers”, where meetings were strategically interrupted, for a few minutes, by the campaign story.
Changing from the old platform to the new wasn’t optional, so the transition was virtually 100% guaranteed. However, to ensure employees were excited about the new system, an experience sentiment was shared with other employees to help early adopters influence their colleagues, ultimately accelerating adoption.
The transition was a huge success and the story and characters developed for the campaign were used in later communications, including upgrades and announcements.
“It was our ability to capture the personas of the employees, in the characters we developed for the campaign, that made the difference. The story we delivered was fun and engaging, but the clarity of how the narrative tied so cleanly to the change was what really made the effort so effective.”
~ Pedro ~
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The information outlined in this case study is based on an actual Carpool engagement.
