"When you're starting something new, building it from the ground up is a lot easier than inheriting an existing team."
This insight from Brian Liebel, Director of Sales Development Americas at 8x8, cuts straight to the heart of one of sales leadership's biggest challenges.
Most leaders think building a team from scratch is the ultimate test. But Brian, who's 90 days into leading a sales development team of 25 people and has 15 years of sales leadership experience, knows better. The real challenge? Taking over an existing team with established processes, entrenched habits, and people who've been doing things their way for years.
When you inherit a team, you're walking into a complex web of relationships, systems, and expectations. There's pressure to drive results immediately, yet you lack clarity on what's actually broken. You face resistant team members clinging to old ways and existing systems you don't fully understand.
So how do you navigate this challenge without derailing what's already working while fixing what's not?
Brian has developed a proven 5-step system that focuses on people first, identifies real problems, and creates sustainable change. In this article, we'll analyze his approach and show you how to win your first 90 days as a new sales leader.
The temptation for new leaders is to come in with grand plans and immediate changes. Brian takes a different approach: "I'm a big imitate before you innovate guy."
Before touching any process, before implementing new technology, before sharing your vision, you need to understand WHO you're leading. This means within your first week, you should meet every team member one-on-one and learn what motivates each person and why they show up daily.
This isn't just about being nice - it's strategic. Understanding your people helps you identify who your allies will be, who needs extra support, and who might resist change. When you know what drives each sales rep, you can tailor your approach to get buy-in for future changes.
Sales teams are relationship-driven, and if you don't invest in understanding your people, they won't invest in your vision. These initial one-on-ones set the foundation for everything that follows. They signal to your team that you value them as individuals, not just numbers on a quota sheet.
More importantly, these conversations give you the intelligence you need to make informed decisions about processes, coaching needs, and team dynamics. You can't fix what you don't understand, and you can't understand your team's challenges without talking to them first.
Once you've established relationships with your team members, it's time to dig deeper. Brian recommends asking one powerful question during your one-on-ones:
"What is preventing you from hitting quota?"
This single question reveals everything you need to know about your team's challenges:
The beauty of this approach is that it shows you what to fix first and, equally important, what's not broken. Too many new leaders assume everything needs changing, but sometimes the existing sales coaching platform or current processes are working fine, it's just one or two roadblocks holding the team back.
After conducting all your one-on-ones and identifying individual roadblocks, you can start to uncover common patterns. This is where your vision begins to form based on real data rather than assumptions.
Look for patterns like:
Pattern recognition prevents you from treating symptoms instead of causes. If three people mention the same CRM issue, that's a technology problem. If everyone struggles with handling objections, that's a coaching opportunity where AI sales roleplay could help. If only one person has a specific challenge, that's an individual development need.
These patterns become your priority list. Focus on the issues that affect the most people first—these will give you the biggest impact and help you build credibility quickly. Individual issues can be addressed through personalized coaching or training.
Brian identifies frontline managers as "the most stretched resource in sales" because they're managing direct reports while working cross-functionally with other teams. Yet these managers are also your most important asset for driving change.
"If that manager can coach the right things the right way and get reps to go from C players to B players and B players to A players, you hit your number," Brian explains.
Manager enablement should focus on:
One well-enabled manager can impact an entire team. If you have a manager overseeing eight sales reps, improving that manager's coaching ability affects eight people's performance. This is why manager enablement often delivers faster results than working with individual contributors directly.
This is perhaps the most challenging but crucial step. In your first 90 days, people will fall into three categories:
You need to know who is who and be prepared to remove detractors, even if they're top performers.
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Brian shares a powerful example from when he was managing retail locations.
Brian's #1 rep in the state was a detractor who was:
Despite being the top performer, Brian made the difficult decision to let this person go. The result? The store moved from 8th place to #1 in the district the very next month.
This example illustrates that detractors have a multiplying effect across the team. One negative person can spoil the culture and prevent everyone else from reaching their potential. Sometimes removing one detractor unleashes the performance of the entire team.
Inheriting an existing sales team is more challenging than building from scratch, but Brian Liebel's 5-step system provides a proven roadmap for success. By focusing on people first, identifying real roadblocks, recognizing patterns, enabling managers, and removing detractors, you can transform team performance in just 90 days.
The key is patience in the beginning and courage at the end. Take time to understand your team and their challenges, but don't hesitate to make tough decisions about people who resist positive change. Remember, even your top performer might be holding the entire team back.
Success in your first 90 days isn't about implementing the most changes, it's about implementing the right changes based on real data from your team. Follow Brian's system, and you'll build the foundation for long-term success as a sales leader.
In this episode of SellMeThisPen Podcast, Michael and Brian dive deep into the challenges of inheriting an existing sales team versus building one from scratch. They discuss Brian's proven 5-step system for winning your first 90 days as a new sales leader, including real examples of tough decisions that led to breakthrough results.
Brian Liebel is the Director of Sales Development Americas at 8x8, with 15 years of sales leadership experience. He specializes in transforming inherited teams and has a proven track record of taking underperforming groups to top performance through his people-first approach and systematic methodology.
