3 Reasons Companies Are Struggling To Hire Salespeople And How To Fix Them

Published: November 17, 2015

TK Kader headshot2 300x200A recent series of hiccups at Yelp has highlighted an issue plaguing business as a whole: it’s hard to scalably and consistently recruit great salespeople.

While professions such as engineering, marketing and HR have in-roads into high schools and colleges to drive people into the profession, it remains a struggle to get talented people to choose sales as a career path.

Here are three reasons why companies are challenged to hire in sales, and how we can fix them.

Sales Is Viewed As A “Plan B”

Few graduates leave college intent on becoming a sales person. Why? Sales suffers from both a perception and an exposure problem.

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It seems that the best (and worst) sales people “stumble” into the profession — inherently making sales a “Plan B” job. You’d be hard pressed to find a college that offers a “sales theory” class. In rare cases, I’ve found people seek a lucrative career in sales only because they had a parent or an aunt/uncle pitch it.  

This lack of specialized training not only reduces the number of people seriously considering it as a profession, it also leads many to believe sales is for anyone and everyone, regardless of education, temperament, skills, or experience. As a result, sales suffers from high turnover, and further feeding the perception it’s a Plan B field.

The Fix: The savviest tech companies have built comprehensive training programs for sales. They provide incoming sales employees with a robust set of training resources to demonstrate the importance of sales as a profession. In-house peer mentoring and ample opportunities for learning and feedback will also give salespeople the sense that they are supported and valued.

The Perceived “Dog-Eat-Dog” Culture

Sales is a quota-driven industry and a “watch out for yourself first” culture persists. Alec Baldwin’s “always be closing” mantra in Glengarry Glen Ross famously perpetuated the relentless, competitive culture most people think of when they think of sales. It’s no wonder recruitment efforts are tough: young people can decide between workplaces that champion teamwork and collaboration, or the perceived dog-eat-dog culture of sales.

The Fix: Find creative ways to grow a culture of collaboration within your own sales teams. Foster an environment where the number is important but sales people share information, celebrate each other’s victories, and are rewarded for teamwork (software designed specifically for salespeople is making this possible). Not only will morale and culture improve, but actual sales will too.

Sales Is Perceived as a “Smile-and-Dial” Industry

Sales is plagued by the misperception that it’s all about cold calling or mass email blasting. No one wants to be the annoying sales person on the phone, calling at the most inopportune time, or the source behind the mass email that causes you to immediately hit unsubscribe.

The Fix: The reality is, sales is becoming less and less about “smile and dial” and more about strategic thinking, consulting and providing value via real relationships. Businesses should embrace tools that are better and smarter, to support sales people so they are freed from the mundane tasks and more about making a personalized impression.

The sales industry is at a crossroads. People are not just leaving the industry, they are never showing up in the first place. In 2013, 35% of companies said they missed their revenue goals. By investing in sales as a culture and outfitting sales departments for modern day success, we can turn the tide.

Tawheed “TK” Kader is the founder and CEO of ToutApp, the leader in sales software that helps teams close more deals with the power of email tracking, templates and predictive analytics. TK is an accomplished entrepreneur and an expert in building sales and marketing teams, understanding the new sales culture and managing for growth. ToutApp has more than 100,000 users and 400 enterprise customers on the platform, including sales teams at Atlassian, Dropbox, Optimizely, Jive and Okta. 

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