Blogs Business Consulting Sales Development Sales Leadership Sales Training Uncategorised War for Talent

Don’t Let Your Sales Talent Walk Out The Door

9th March 2023

In a recent Gartner survey, 89% of salespeople reported feeling burned out and 54% were actively seeking alternative employment. Furthermore, nearly 70% felt that management doesn’t understand how to motivate them. These are worrying numbers for any organisation that is serious about retaining top sales talent.

Fortunately, the 2 key themes that prevent sellers performing at their best, a lack of development opportunities and a lack of empowerment, can be addressed.

It’s easy to say that sales leaders need to invest more time in supporting their teams when the average leader spends less than 10% of their time on developing their reports. But to be truly effective they first need to be able to accurately diagnose the problem, something that is unlikely to be the same for every member of the sales team.

At Bloojam, we look at a salesperson’s Drive through three lenses:

  1. Motivation; are they a self-starter, focused on achieving excellent outcomes, persistent in the face of setbacks and driven to solve client problems?
  2. Goal focus; do they have clarity about what they are trying to achieve, are they focused on the end goal and the actions required to successfully reach it?
  3. Self-belief; are they confident in their ability to positively influence a sale, do they show resilience when faced with setbacks and self-awareness of their own strengths and limitation?

Truly understanding what is impacting upon the Drive of your sales team, at an individual and collective level, allows sales leaders to provide much more targeted support and challenge to their teams. By facilitating more detailed discussion of the key causes, personal to them, of their burnout or demotivation, salespeople are much more likely to open up and engage with the conversation. As a result, the sales leader can respond to the needs of the individual rather than taking a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to re-energising their sales team.

That benefits the individual as they will feel that their manager truly understands their needs. It benefits the sales leader as the limited time they have with team members can be focused on the factors most likely to enhance performance. And it benefits the organisation as any subsequent training or support can be tailored to individual needs, thereby ensuring that training budget ROI is maximised.

Jim Bloomfield is a Director of Bloojam Consulting with 20 years’ experience of using business psychology to develop salespeople and leaders. He is a member of the Association of Business Psychology (ABP) and the British Psychological Society (BPS) and has successfully helped some of Britain’s best-known businesses exceed their sales goals.

Bloojam Consulting offers a range of robust recruitment and development tools and interventions, including the Acuity for Strategic Sales suite of psychometric assessment and development tools.

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Demystifying Sales For Professional Services

2nd February 2023 No Comments

More and more of the leaders we speak to in professional services firms recognise the importance of enhancing sales capability as they pursue growth during challenging economic circumstances. In the past the language used has typically dressed sales up as something else…. client origination, business development, practice growth etc. But this is no more.

Individuals too also recognise the need to develop their sales capability if they are to be successful. However, being open to the idea of “sales” isn’t necessarily the same as feeling equipped and capable to carry out this critical element of the role. Firms are typically very good at communicating the requirements to progress as a leader, articulated through bespoke frameworks and values statements that create clarity, and they put a lot of effort into supporting new and emerging leaders. However, provision is more patchy and ad-hoc when it comes to developing B2B sales capability. There are very few sales frameworks out there and training, when it takes place, tends to focus more on the sales process than the person and the behaviours and attributes required to be successful in strategic sales.

That is changing as clients recognise the importance of nurturing and retaining their people, in the context of the scarcity and expense of finding top talent in the market, if they are to achieve the growth they seek. Today we are seeing firms create training academies and defined career paths for sales professionals, in a manner similar to leadership development programmes, that provide their client-facing teams with clearly-signposted opportunities for progression.

At Bloojam, we work with clients to ensure that they have a clear understanding of the key drivers, behaviours and attributes that drive superior B2B sales performance. Successful organisations are able to apply this knowledge to promote and hire people who want to be on that journey and to develop them once in the role. Using such a blueprint helps to demystify B2B sales for both the individual role holder and supports organisations to supercharge the performance of their client-facing teams.

Sarah Clapperton is a Director at Bloojam Consulting and a Chartered Business Psychologist, with 20 years’ experience working in selection and development. She specialises in working with leaders and senior salespeople.

Bloojam Consulting offers a range of robust recruitment and development tools and interventions, including the Acuity for Strategic Sales suite of psychometric assessment and development tools.

Blogs Business recruitment Sales Development Sales Leadership Sales Recruitment Sales Training War for Talent

Why The Great Resignation Is A Double Whammy For Your Salesforce

28th June 2022 No Comments

The Great Resignation is a term first coined last year by Professor Anthony Klotz of Texas A&M University but already it has proved a compelling shorthand for a cluster of factors impacting upon the War For Talent in the jobs market. The numbers differ by country, but all tell the same story. Here in the UK, 20% of the workforce plans to leave their current role in the next 12 months, according to PWC, while nearly 30% are planning to ask for a pay rise. But it’s not just the large corporates that are encountering these problems. A survey of SMEs by Grant Thornton shows that 50% were struggling to replace staff that had left while a similar proportion were finding it hard to fill newly created roles.

The impact on sales teams is two-fold.

  1. Churn Among Client Stakeholders:  According to LinkedIn, turnover among B2B buyers is up nearly 30% globally and as a result 85% of salespeople have delayed or lost a deal because of a change in stakeholder within their client account.
  2. Turnover Of Sales Talent:  Within sales teams turnover is also high with moves among salespeople up by over one-quarter.  This disruption further impacts the ability of organisations to close out opportunities in a timely fashion and to win new deals.

A two-pronged approach is required to minimise disruption.

Sales leaders must focus on retaining their top talent. First, they must look in the mirror. A recent McKinsey survey found uncaring leaders and unreasonable expectations were two of the most commonly cited factors for people leaving a job. Third was a lack of career development. Not a surprise when sales leaders typically devote less than 10% of their time on developing their teams.  All three are push factors away from a management-style and work culture that employees feeling increasingly confident to walk away from. If you don’t want your people to look elsewhere these factors must be a priority.

To manage the impact of turnover within prospects and existing client accounts, salespeople must be well-connected. Our own model of sales capability, Acuity, shows that those who are well-networked across their client accounts are better able to build their understanding of their customers’ key drivers, to bring client stakeholders together and to drive the sale to its conclusion.

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Six Ways To Win The War For Diverse Talent When Hiring

7th October 2021 No Comments

We are hearing from more of our clients about their drive to increase diversity in their teams.  Currently, this is also in the context of a highly competitive employment market.  Anecdotally we are seeing salaries rising to help firms win the war on diverse talent.  But if you are serious about enhancing the diversity of your team, what more can you do as a leader? Below are six recommendations from Chartered Psychologist, Sarah Clapperton:

  1. Look beyond your network. It is tempting to take the most direct route, using your own existing connections to recruit. But consider the diversity of your network – it is unlikely to adequately reflect the range of demographic groups you need to attract. Look wider. Talk to HR or reputable recruitment firms about advertising in different publications and in different ways to ensure your search reaches a variety of groups.
  2. Beware of recruiting for team or culture-fit. Selecting people who are a good ‘fit’ for our team or culture is potentially a way to recruit people who are very similar to us, who do things in the “way they are done around here”.  Recruiting in our own image is a sure-fire way to reduce diversity and create an echo chamber of ideas.  Rigorously define the behaviours, attributes and values that are needed for success in the role, and recruit against these, but allow for (and indeed seek out) flexibility in style and thinking.
  3. Use structured interviews. Research shows that using structured interviews, where all candidates receive the same job-related questions and are rated against the same criteria, are a much better predicter of performance in the role.  It creates a level playing field, allowing each candidate equal opportunity to show their potential. Use structured rating guides that include clearly defined behavioural rating scales.  Psychometric tools can add objective value to the interview process, but these should be incorporated by a trained and accredited user. The tool itself must be rigorously developed and validated, and relate to the tightly defined job criteria.
  4. Use trained assessors and interviewers. We are ALL subject to unconscious bias, hard-wired through learning and experience. If we can all agree that we are inherently biased, then we have a starting point for action. Train your interviewers in gold standard approaches in objective assessment, to provide them with the tools and methods that minimise the risk of unconscious biases creeping into their assessments of candidates.  If possible, use pairs/panels of assessors or interviewers (preferably representing a variety of protected groups), who have equal voice in the process.
  5. Walk the talk. As a leader, ensure that you articulate, demand and role model the behaviours that support diversity and inclusion.  Explain your D&I mission to your team.  Call out and address situations where people fall short of these expectations.  Create an environment where everyone’s ideas are sought, listened to and respected.  Ask for and respond to feedback. Then you will be able to genuinely demonstrate to new hires the value that is placed on diversity within your team and the steps you take to ensure everyone is included and respected.
  6. Creating career paths. Offering career opportunities can support retention of your talent. Ensure that your assessment of internal talent is objective. Promotion opportunities should be clearly advertised and the skills / experience required should be defined and articulated.  Encourage managers to have open and honest conversations with their team members about career goals, and ensure that employees with the right skills are encouraged to apply for internal opportunities. Consider creating mentorship networks to provide greater diversity of role models.

Bloojam are business psychologists who take an evidence-based approach to selecting and developing salespeople, leaders and sales leaders.  To learn more about our approach and how we can support you take a look at our website.

Sarah is a Chartered Psychologist with 20 years’ experience of working in selection and development. She is a Director of Bloojam Consulting Ltd.