LinkedIn Sales Solutions: Project Inspire

How do you motivate and inspire an organisation to step up and go the extra mile when it’s already winning? Well that’s exactly what Alyssa Merwin and her leadership team did at LinkedIn Sales Solutions North America.

This is a real story about an organisation going from good to great. This is a study of a leadership team that purposefully came together to lead and inspire change within an organisation that was already growing.

The philosophy taken up by this team was that ‘we don’t have to be sick to get better’.

They wanted to know what they needed to do to be even better at helping their customers, their people and the business?

The Opportunity

They wanted to know what they needed to do to be even better at helping their customers, their people and the business?

The organisation was executing well, but did not have a clear strategy for growth

There were great examples of siloed performance, but no real team work or common purpose

There were many examples of career progression within the organisation, but little example of targeted leadership development to support the business strategy

More about the opportunity

When Alyssa took over the reins of the North American organisation she undertook an intensive 30/60/90 program to deeply understand the business and its potential.

This included: one to ones with her directs, skip level meetings, time with customer executives, time with all stakeholders, she obtained feedback from cross-functional business partners and undertook deep analysis of the business metrics.

It was clear to Alyssa that the business had been executing well by reacting to the growth in their product success in the market, but there was now an opportunity for a more proactive and strategic approach to the business. Sundial were bought in to partner with Alyssa while executing her ambitious strategy.

LinkedIn Project Ignite Sundial Consulting

Our solution

Together with Alyssa, we designed a program framework which would bring together the executive team to build trust, to create to a common propose and to inspire a joined-up transformation plan with mutual accountability.

We delivered multiple leadership workshops and one to one coaching interactions across all levels of leadership within Sales Solutions, to help build confidence and encourage commitment to a new plan of proactive growth.

Provided a catalyst to help people realise that change was necessary

Enable a culture of trust and openness to enable high performance leadership and team effectiveness

Delivered a cascaded program of change and leadership development across all levels of management

More about solution

Together, we designed a 5-stage program that would reach everyone within the sales organisation. We built high performing teams at all levels, who were mutually accountable to the common purpose. We open sourced the strategy and created personal development plans for all to help them cope with and embrace change.

Throughout the program we enabled the leaders to embrace Sundial’s methods and best practice, which helped scale the program efficiently and enabled a hardwiring of the new behaviours.

sundial consulting linkedin case study leadership graph

Alyssa and her team successfully smashed their targets for their next 2 years and have built a highly motivated sales organisation, with a culture of openness and fun.

During this period Alyssa was promoted to Sales VP within LinkedIn and she has now inspired a new program (Program PlanIn) of account planning across the Worldwide Sales Solutions Organisation.

Sundial Consultants On Project Inspire

London & San Francisco

Helping leaders show up at their best to inspire confidence & fulfilment in their people

Alyssa Merwin

VP Sales Solutions at LinkedIn

Working with Sundial has been one of the most transformative and impactful experiences I’ve had as a leader. Andy has coached and developed me into a stronger and more dynamic leader and has helped me to do the same for my entire leadership team. Many of the leaders on my team have said that the work we’ve done with them has been the most important of their professional careers. Sundial are a game-changer. They can identify gaps instantly, create forums of trust and honesty, and unlock people’s true potential.

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