The vocation of sales is relentless in the best of times even for the most gifted. Selling in the past 6 months has been, well…brutal. I caught up with 5 of my network to understand what its really been like at the coal face of late and offer some #salesleadership recommendations.
Working from home – Permanent New Normal or Situation from hell
The commute can be heaven or hell depending on how long it is and of course the state of traffic or Public Transport. Many use it as an opportunity to psyche themselves up for the day ahead or for decompression after a long toil. A 20 second commute to the home office (for that read Conservatory/Dining Room/Kitchen) usefully adds a few extra productive hours to the working day. All of my interviewees are starting earlier and finishing later. Those with younger families are rising earlier still, with a couple beginning their day with childcare between 0500 and 0600 each day.
All were unanimous that whilst more of a balance between office and home is desirable, the current adaptation cannot be a permanent arrangement, even with a personalised, dedicated working area at home. For some it felt like they were living at work with little downtime. Sure, productivity has increased markedly for all, but that was partially as a result of skipping lunch and any form of exercise. For one individual, lack of time to eat in a saturnalia of video calls “reduced their ability to think”. All missed the “escape of the office or customer facing meeting”. A partial return to the office at the earliest opportunity was hugely desirable to all. Unsurprisingly, nobody was tempted to tune into Philip Schofield of a weekday morning to catch the latest quiche recipe.
“I’m more doing more, but am I more productive?”
Which of course doesn’t always equate to increased productivity. The removal of just about all travel during the pandemic has, as we have seen, reduced overheads on the working day, but, as one sales person said to me, “the hours don’t quantify the return”. In all cases more customer facing meetings were taking place, sometimes up to 50% more with one sales exec now achieving 32 meetings a month. With their captive audience, all on Zoom or Teams, getting that meeting may be easier when your targets are just as omnipresent as you are. Whether “more” means “more productivity” is a moot point.
Sales Cycles have lengthened
There is a further downside though. Whilst Zoom may bring everyone closer, 7 hours a day of it (verified by my own experience) is hugely draining. You have only two senses that you can utilise and body language is not one of them. You can’t socialise very easily (I have done a few zoom dinners with friends and it’s hard work), building trust is hugely difficult and building rapport is almost impossible.
“Zoom takes the emotion out of sales and replaces it with cold logic” said one of my tame sales people.
A face to face meeting is very different. It starts with the arrival at the prospect’s offices with a cursory glance at the visitors’ book as you sign in. Fascinating and illuminating to see who has been in before you, that day, that week, that month. The walk to the meeting room sharpens the senses, providing an immediate opportunity to make an impact. Qualification and the building of rapport starts on that walk. A Zoom call on the other hand can be a soulless affair, rather like football behind closed doors with the fake crowd noise turned off.
Once you arrive at the meeting room, the small talk begins, everybody has an angle or hook and it’s the sales person’s job to understand what it is. Try doing that on a 50-minute zoom call with 6 people talking over each other if you can. It becomes difficult to “read the room” on a video call and this leads to additional time spent further qualifying people and thus, opportunities.
The current video call-based regimentation has also led to colleagues and customers being difficult to track down for that odd, vital, ad hoc conversation. They may be “omnipresent” but finding a slot in their diary can be a real challenge. Some hide behind slack or even email and that productive conversation at the end of their desk or by the coffee machine appears to be a thing of the past for now at least. One sales person proffered that 50% of his progress prior to the pandemic had been achieved by the informal socialising that takes place in an office. It now requires an organised call to move things forward and that isn’t always in the same week.
Deal slippage now appears to be accelerated by holidays of all things. Understandably, many of us declined the chance to the join the mass exodus to Cornwall at the height of the summer holidays or risk a two-week quarantine after a vacation overseas, but employers are now demanding that unused leave is taken before it gets accrues as a cost. Best check your customers’ holiday arrangements for your upcoming deals as you may find they too have a sudden holiday in the first week of November.
Measure, Measure and Measure again.
“I’ve had 4 QBRs already this fiscal year and we’re only in the second quarter” complained one downtrodden sales exec. For some leaders, selling in the pandemic has become defined by KPIs, metrics and numbers. Logic becomes a core focus and the business wellbeing of their sales teams is not a consideration.
“Motivation and morale are falling behind the wayside at precisely the time when it is most needed”
Intrusion by Sales Leaders appears to have replaced coaching and corralling during the past 6 months. Seemingly, there is more time to pore over a spreadsheet or the latest call or meeting stats. There is a direct correlation in my experience between insecurity and experience with time spent “measuring”. The very best leaders pay it some credence, but their real focus is on how to get the best out of the individual. If you think that sending a weekly email to each individual in your brood telling them they “must do more” and never pick up the iPhone Pro to any of them, maybe Sales Leadership isn’t for you.
“The review cadence has increased markedly and it’s impacting morale”
Prospecting from the old and new schools
Unsurprisingly, Social Media and in particular our friend LinkedIn, is providing the key underpin to making progress with potential new customers. Used intelligently, (which rules out 90% of the people who message me) it can provide a huge amount of personalised information about the key issues and drivers of your target customers. Do you research properly (quality v quantity) and you may even find that the not so unsolicited call of yours is actually taken by your intended recipient. One sales person I spoke to has had much improved success from the phone call of late, but not before she did her research properly and used additional tools such as Bombora and Lusha to help qualify who she should target.
I know this much to be true.
Unless you are a sales executive for a manufacturer of toilet paper or sanitiser, the past 6 months will undoubtedly have been challenging from a target achievement perspective. However, I don’t know how to say this, but, it’s only going to get worse in the coming months. A second lockdown has now started and this will impact your committed deals and your pipeline well into next year. My cadre of sales people are already seeing this.
Your current work rates are not sustainable for that period of uncertainty. Everyone has zoom fatigue and you need to do two things:
- Make sure you find time for your physical well being
- Strike the balance between video and spoken call
The impact on mental wellbeing of this pandemic will be huge and in a high-pressured environment, it is magnified. One sales person I spoke to is employed by an organisation that has a “Chief Happiness Officer” (imagine that?!) and they advocate something that I have espoused for years: the “walking call.” Put on the comfortable shoes, pop in the pods and away you go. I’ve dialled into deal reviews in the middle of Macclesfield Forest before now, so anything is possible.
For those Sales Leaders that are doubling down (I hate that expression by the way, but some of you be will working for US based organisations) on metrics, can I say that this just isn’t the right approach? I get that you need KPIs for all sales teams. The best leaders set them at the start of each quarter (or better still, at the start of the year) and make it clear what the success criteria should be, with regular, timetabled, predictable, sharing of them and some agreed corrective plans if required.
Listening to my cohort, they had one message for me from the field:
“Coaching and motivating your sales teams is the only game in town right now…”
If you are not doing this then you have either hired the wrong people or you are simply not up to the task.
I don’t think the current challenges we face will necessarily be forever, but, like everybody else, I don’t really know for sure. What I do know though, is that “WFH”, 100% of the time can’t remain the status quo for everybody either. There is a balance and the “escape” to the office is a valuable thing for networking, collaborating and ultimately being more successful. Those that mandate remote working in perpetuity might just lose competitive advantage. My feeling is that it will revert to 1, maybe 2 days a week in the office for many sales people with the rest out on the road or working from home.
Sadly though, Zoom is here to stay. My overriding worry is will “logic-based sales” become prevalent resulting in the total commoditisation of sales overall?
Thank you to those sales people who gave valuable time for me to interview them.
DWSL is a Sales Transformation consultancy. We help you remove your inhibitors to revenue growth using a structured methodology.
