Recruiting great sales talent is a critical part building high performance sales teams, but not the only part. Great sales people don’t just happen on their own. They need to be led, developed and set up to succeed.
In the book, “First, Break All The Rules ‘What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently”, authors, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, conducted a study amongst 80,000 managers to learn about what the impact of happy employees on company performance. What they found was that unless companies satisfy employee’s basic needs first, employees can never be expected to give superior performance. They also found a correlation between happy staff and companies with higher profits, better productivity, less employee turnover, and more satisfied customers.
The authors cited basic needs as: clear guidance on expectations, providing necessary equipment and support to perform the work right, and providing feedback, praise and coaching.
In the sales context this means things like ensuring reps know where to spend their time, not tangling them up in unnecessary meetings or administrative work, providing them sufficient training, recognizing wins, and paying expenses and commissions on time.
I recall working with one company which retained Peak to recruit sales staff. The company claimed to be serious about finding and employing best in class reps. Meanwhile my recruiters had informed me that they were getting calls from our new client’s reps who were disgruntled and wanted to leave.
While it is easy to verbalize a commitment to keeping your reps happy, it is another thing to actually make their satisfaction a priority. Leaving satisfaction to chance is risky business. Top sales leaders know the importance of having happy sales reps happy and making it a priority.
See also 19 Simple Ways to Make Your Best Reps Leave
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Eliot Burdett
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)
- 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
- How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
- Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021
