When your boss forces you to post on LinkedIn

Published: Wed, 09/07/22

September 7, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Well, here we are again. It’s another glorious week in sales – we’re writing, you’re reading, sales managers are asking what you’ve got cooking, and prospects, well… no one really knows what prospects are doing. In this week’s edition of The Quota, we’ll talk about how to retain top sales talent, give you some tips for closing deals out on the golf course, and give some advice to a sales rep who doesn’t want to post on LinkedIn. Let’s do this.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

92% of consumers are willing to trust companies when referrals come from people they know.

Source: ZenDesk

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

If you thought some of your coworkers were shady, they’ve got nothing on a new crop of sales reps from China, who are allegedly scamming private equity firms by getting hired at multiple companies at once, then collecting the base salaries from their employers without actually doing any work. You can read about the crooked reps here.
How bad are the stress levels among salespeople? Pretty bad according to a recent report from the Jones College of Business. Michael Peasley, PhD, a researcher at the school, took a look at how personal stress and burnout affects sales performance, and came up with some things that employers can do to reduce employee stress. You can read more about the study here.

FEATURE

According to The Harvard Business Review, this is how you can retain top sales talent

Many employers, especially CEOs and other top execs, would like to believe the Great Resignation is a thing of the past – that hiring, engaging, and retaining superior sales talent will become easier from here on out. But recent studies indicate that not only are high turnover and widespread vacancies still plaguing the sales industry, an employee’s satisfaction is a poor indicator of their intention to stay in a job. Seriously.

Part of the problem is that CEOs believe that hiring, rather than retaining existing talent, is the biggest hurdle to overcome. And many companies don’t have the resources for increased hiring efforts anyway, still hurting from slashed budgets during the pandemic era.

What’s more, many industry leaders aren’t aware that almost half of their workforce (56%, according to a recent survey by SBI and Top Percentile Collective) are actively looking for other jobs. This is true for salespeople at all levels and across all generations. Many execs assume that it’s Gen Z and Millennials who are always on the hunt for something better, but in fact, Generation X showed the highest instances of job-seeking behavior in this survey, and, the vast majority of these job-seekers still reported satisfaction in their current job.

So how do you retain good salespeople, you ask? Here’s what the research shows:

Offer Career Mobility and Support

SBI’s research came to a strong conclusion: “Compensation adjustments, work-life balance, immediate promotion opportunities, title adjustments, and creating a strong sales culture have little impact on retention.” Salespeople don’t just want perks, bonuses, or title raises, they want bosses who are invested in their short-and long-term success. When considering whether or not to stay with their current position, salespeople judge a company by its likelihood of helping them build their career.

Develop Your Sales Force, Don’t Buy It

Organizations with low turnover organically develop sales talent, investing in their people and helping them become better at their jobs, rather than promising them the title of “Assistant to the Regional Manager” to tide them over. Unfortunately, this type of development went by the wayside during the pandemic at many companies. But the research shows that if companies can bring it back, they will see improvement in retention.

Involve the C-Suite

SBI’s research showed that advocacy for sales teams from cross-functional leadership teams — especially from the C-suite — is a characteristic of companies with low sales attrition. The best C-suites engage with sellers, show interest in their success, and make themselves available for questions and concerns.

Lay Out a Clear Path to Success

Salespeople tend to stay in positions where they see a clear, realistic path to career success. Companies that do a good job of setting expectations and offering clear avenues for upward mobility retain more talent than those that don’t. This could look like sharing territory quality analysis with new candidates or assuring new hires that their new territory won't consist of previous sellers’ castaways.

A Clear Path Forward

The strategies discussed here are not expensive, but they do require top-down change. Hopefully, companies will become aware of the underlying reasons for turnover and invest the time and energy in providing short, and long-term career support for their employees. If not, then they’ll never get off the hire-to-churn treadmill that plagues so many sales organizations.

TOGETHER WITH DATANYZE

Salespeople & Dealmakers all over the world are using Datanyze to connect with their ideal prospects. With one click, you can get email addresses and direct phone numbers of millions of Linkedin Profiles. You can also leverage Datanyze's free Directory pages to get more insights into your ideal prospects, including, but not limited to, ice breakers - curated information to arm you with related data on what's happening in a prospect’s world. You can check Datanyze out here !

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

In the movie Tin Men, which product do the main characters sell?

A. Aluminum cables
B. Aluminum foil
C. Aluminum siding
D. Soda cans

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

“I remember my biggest Sales Fail like it was yesterday, probably because it happened not so long ago. I worked (and still work) for a seventy-person sales team. We are the entire sales team for our company, which advertises strictly online. We work both inbound and outbound leads.

At the beginning of the year, I was working a deal. The prospect was qualified but kept putting off the decision. My month wasn’t looking great, and he was the hottest deal I had going, so I racked my brain for all the sales tips I could remember in order to get the deal over the finish line, and decided I would make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

I called him and left him a message. When he called me back, I said that we were doing a limited time company-wide sale that would end on the last day of the month, and that he could get the discount but only if he signed ASAP. He listened calmly, then said he would call his wife and call me right back.

Well, little did I know that instead of calling his wife, he called my company back through the main phone number instead of my direct line, and asked about our limited time sale. The rep who answered told him that we weren’t running any sort of promotions at the moment.

A few hours later, I got an email from the prospect which said that he can’t do business with someone who he can’t trust, even if he was going to save a few more bucks with me. I tried to reason with him but he wouldn’t respond to any of my emails or calls. The worst part was that I didn’t hit my goal that month because I was so focused on his deal that I neglected to prospect for something better. Sales Fail!”

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- September 2022

WORTH A PEEK

There are endless articles talking about how to close deals on the phone, over video, or over email, but what about closing deals the old-fashioned way – out on the golf course? We came across a pretty good post with some tips for how to close prospects when you’re out on the back nine. You can read the article here.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

I work as an Account Executive at a relatively new software startup. The company is only three years old, but recently raised a pretty big round of funding. After they raised the round, they brought in a new Chief Marketing Officer, who (supposedly) is going to take the company to the next level.

A month or so after the CMO was hired, she rolled out an initiative that every person at the company, especially the sales reps and marketing team, need to be regularly posting on LinkedIn. She said it doesn’t have to be posts about our company, but she wants us to post about the challenges of our roles, things we’ve learned, and about our “personal journey,” because these are the things that tend to get engagement (these are her words).

I don’t want to do this. Not even a little bit. I am not a shy person, but I think a lot of this type of content is fake, annoying, and not something I would ever want to do. I came here to sell. That’s my profession. I didn’t come here to pretend to be somebody I’m not so that strangers can click “like” under my posts and game the algorithm.

What should I do here? I am definitely considering quitting if they give me a hard time. So far, I’ve only been called on it playfully in our Slack channel, but I am worried that they’re going to lean on me harder since it seems to be a huge part of the company’s marketing strategy. What do you think?

Self-conscious in Washington State

Dear Self-conscious,

There are two ways to look at this:

1. This might be an opportunity for you to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and try doing something new. Something, which, by the way, might actually help you close a bit more business (if you don’t spend your entire day posting instead of doing actual work like some people).

2. This wasn’t part of your job description, and is a distraction from the work you were hired to do. If you can exceed your quota doing things your way, then there’s no reason for you to do something that takes away from selling, and is something you’re obviously adamantly opposed to.

If you have no intention of taking the first approach, our advice is to stay the course, focus on your primary job responsibilities, and hope they don’t give you a hard time. But, if this initiative is a requirement, and not just a suggestion, then you might want to start looking for another job. Good luck!

Quiz Answer: C

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Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

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