What The Great Resignation Means For Sales Teams

The pandemic has been awful for countless companies, to say the least. Studies suggest that up to 1 in 4 workers have considered quitting their jobs once the world goes back to normal. Microsoft even found that 41% of people considered leaving their position in the next year, which is truly staggering and worrying for businesses.

Workers have had a year of unusual circumstances and countless hours to consider work-life balance, career paths, and life’s purpose. Therefore, many workers – especially those that don’t feel fulfilled by their work – will hand in their two weeks notice and quit their jobs. That’s why leading global economists are calling this The Great Resignation.”

Here are some of the leading reasons for people quitting their jobs in the great resignation:

• A complete career change into something more fulfilling
• People prefer working at home because of the convenience, comfort, and freedom
• Remote work has become popular, and people don’t want to go back to the office when they can do the same job remotely
• Industries that the pandemic destroyed, including leisure, hospitality, and travel, have seen people retrain and refocus on other avenues
• Workers have had extra time at home with their families, and it’s given them a heightened awareness of work-life balance
• The increase in remote working and the subsequent decay in some companies culture’s because of the lack of face to face contact has encouraged people to think about changing companies
• 80% of staff are concerned about career growth, and 75% of people suggest the pandemic has made them consider their skill-sets

It’s fair to say that every global crisis changes humanity, and it looks like the Covid-19 pandemic is going to influence the workplace to an unimaginable scale. Nonetheless, how will the great resignation impact sales teams worldwide?

Teams will lose members

Sales teams are going to lose team members during the great resignation, and often the team members perform the best. Although some team members will be determined to stay in the same role as the global economy picks up, many will see this as an opportunity to jump ship and try something else.

The sales industry has always had a high turnover of staff, so it’s nothing extraordinary. The average turnover in a sales team is 35%, compared to 13% in other industries. Sales work is a challenging yet gratifying profession, but that doesn’t mean every sales employee is up to the challenge, and the high sales turnover reflects that. In that sense, the historically high turnover means sales teams already know how to handle high turnover.

But here are 5 tips as a sales leader or Manager to withstand the Great Resignation.

1 - Figure out why your staff are leaving

When you figure out why your staff members are leaving, you’ll know how to fill the gaps in the workforce quickly. Ask your staff why they are leaving – is it because of new job opportunities, a career change, and better pay elsewhere?

Alternatively, is it because of negative reasons, such as poor culture, concerns about management, or clashes with team members? If your business knows why your team members are leaving, you’ll learn how to improve your workplace to encourage team members to stay. Also, you’ll know which roles are going to have a higher turnover in the future.

That’s why it’s an excellent idea to keep an open-door policy, meaning your staff can express their concerns and worries about the working environment and how it could be improved.

2 - Prepare for a higher turnover

It’s essential to prepare for a high staff turnover in the coming 12 months as the world returns to normality. You can do this by preparing for damage control by providing many incentives to encourage people to stay.

For example, talk to your staff and see what motivates them. Figure out strengths, weaknesses, and see how you can improve your team. In addition, if people’s roles have changed since the pandemic began, ensure that you’ve fully equipped them to do the new job.

Furthermore, see if there are any training courses or relevant projects that might interest your staff. If your team feels like their career will accelerate and you generally care about their development, you will reduce staff turnover.

With that said, it’s inevitable that when the world goes back to normal, you’re going to have to hire new staff and replace staff who decided to leave. Uvaro is an excellent place to find new high-performing sales staff as normality resumes.

3 - When there is a loss there is opportunity

Every business has challenging times, and if they hadn’t had difficult times before – they certainly did once the pandemic began. You should do whatever is possible to get through the challenging times, but always remember – you should keep the current sales team happy.

Unfortunately, many companies don’t focus hard enough on keeping the current crop of staff happy. Of course, it’s essential to maintain a strong team of sales staff together for as long as possible. In addition, with the introduction of Glassdoor and the freedom for former employees to describe their work experiences to the broader job market, you’ll want to ensure that you have the best company culture.

Sales teams know the sheer importance of teamwork and maintaining a high-team spirit. The pandemic has distanced sales teams and tested the revolve of sales teams, but going forward, companies must ensure they keep team spirits up. It’s going to be especially hard with the predicted Great Resignation, and if economists and researchers are correct, companies will lose a lot of excellent staff members.

In turn, that will directly hit a sales team’s morale. That’s where sales managers need to lead and show positivity and fortitude during the times ahead. You need to make sure your managers are excellent because bad management and leadership are critical reasons why people leave.

As staff return to the offices, it has never been so necessary to conduct as many team-building exercises as possible. Here are some other excellent ways to keep your most fantastic sales performers:

• Ensure your company promotes a healthy work-life balance
• Maximize communication in all business areas
• Create strong career pathways and make sales staff feel valued
• Be completely transparent and honest about your company
• Make all sales staff feel part of the companies big picture
• Recognize and take notice of the staff that are performing well
• Treat everyone with respect and dignity
• And of course, make sure the team socializes and builds a tremendous staff culture

Although the times are challenging, these times will also allow companies to focus on those key aspects that encourage staff to stay.

4 - Attract The New Faces To Sales

Now is an excellent time to attract the best sales talent in the world. Even though many people are transitioning out of sales, many new faces are ready and eager to learn. You should look to search through a rich pool of applicants to find the most extraordinary talent.

Here are 5 excellent ways to attract the best talent to your company:

Use a premium employer matching service

If you’re looking to hire the very best sales talent, Uvaro has an array of B2B sales talent. All graduates will have received world-class sales training, emphasizing soft skills that are ideal for sales. Moreover, every graduate has over 200+ hours of coaching with some of the world’s greatest sales coaches. Uvaro will match the perfect graduates to your company and save you countless time trying to find high-quality sales team staff.

Optimize the use of referrals

Employees often have an excellent network of people in the sales field. According to a report, 48% of companies hired people from employee referrals. Therefore, many of your current employees will have excellent talent pools around them.

Social media

Many companies successfully hire through social media, and a research paper found that 95% of recruiters use LinkedIn, another 58% used Facebook, and 42% said they used Twitter. Don't ignore these channels as potential pools for talented candidates.

Attend networking events

Managers should try to attend as many networking events as possible. Although the pandemic has brought many networking events to a standstill, these events will come back once normality resumes. It’s an excellent place to find sales staff that want to meet industry-leading managers, executives, and salespeople.

Communicate consistently

Unfortunately, many recruiters don’t reply to job applications. That can lead to a sour taste in the mouth of applicants and encourage them to spread negativity on the company. Furthermore, applicants have access to sites where they can review the application procedure, so you should ensure excellent communication to encourage the best talent to apply.

5 - Leave your sales recruitment to us

Change is always constant in life, and even with the dramatic impact of the pandemic – all sales teams will feel the impact of the pandemic for years to come.

Uvaro promises guaranteed exposure to the world’s most outstanding tech sales performers. In the coming years, many companies will be focusing on keeping the business growing as the world economy recovers, and Uvaro will help you focus on your business and ensure you have the sales staff with the following attributes:

• An exceptional level of training when they apply for our courses.
• Sales team members who can jump into your company straight away without trainingat your company.
• True team players with sensational expertise in finance, marketing, and product.

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