How to Manage Change with Heather Martin

How to lead sales teams through change with KPI discipline, psychological safety, clear cadence, and a risk register so signal beats noise.

Change doesn’t break sales—silence and guesswork do. In this episode, Mark McGraw and guest Heather Martin lay out a practical playbook for leading teams through change: build a KPI foundation before you pivot, create psychological safety so truth flows up, communicate like a sales cycle (even when the update is “I don’t know yet”), and use a risk register to prioritize signal over noise.

In this episode:

• Sales and pipeline are lagging indicators—how to read real market signal

• Build the KPI funnel (activities → meetings → opps) before change hits

• Psychological safety: set permission, protection, potency so reps speak up

• “Bring data to your gut”: document with SCQA and metrics

• Managing up: write it down, include the risk register

• Be the stable leader: cadence, transparency, consistency

• Prioritization: signal vs. noise—what to park and how to track it

• Mental health: model PTO/boundaries so the team follows

• IC playbook: how sellers manage themselves (and their manager) through change

About Heather Martin

Heather Martin is Vice President at Crisp, where she leads CPG sales and go-to-market. With 15+ years in automation, data management & analytics, and category/shopper insights, she builds KPI-driven, psychologically safe teams and guides organizations through high-change periods with clear communication, documentation, and disciplined execution.

🔗 Download exclusive sales resources at: buildingyoursalesengine.com/giveaway

Mentioned in This Episode:

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com
Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/37
Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine
Heather on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinhl/