Burning Questions from Sales Leaders (Requires 40 seconds to read)

Peak partner, Brent Thomson, tackles some of the questions we hear the most often from sales leaders these days:

1) How is the market?
Brent: The market is strong. Whether it is tech, industrial, construction or Telco, all the sectors we deal in seem to be experiencing strong growth in sales and are expanding operations, upgrading facilities, and investing in sales and marketing efforts. There is also a lot of changing of the guard with incumbents faltering and new players coming on. On the flip side, companies that have survived on investment rather than cash flow and profits are sputtering.

Companies that come to us tend to be strong companies that are making investments in their infrastructure across the board and it is a very exciting time.

2) What is the market for hiring?
Several of our clients are overhauling their whole sales team, replacing poor performers and adding new head count. At the same time, reps who have experienced lower commissions over the last few years are enjoying higher sales numbers – some reps view this as an opportunity to sell while their value is high, while others become less interested in moving. In either case, this creates a fight for talent amongst companies and requires the hirer to be creative and aggressive about acquiring new sales talent.

3) How is this affecting compensation?
Compensation is definitely rising. The most attractive reps won’t want to leave a pipeline that they fought hard to build unless there is a good financial reward to mitigate the risk and if the rep has multiple employers chasing them, they have the leverage. We aren’t seeing many moves where the compensation is equal. While not all great reps are money motivated, they realize it is a sellers market and expect some kind of a boost in compensation package to justify the move. Companies that aren’t prepared to play into the sellers market theory tend to get the left over reps who aren’t likely to deliver the necessary sales results or be worth the investment.

To your success!

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