Tom McHale

🚀 SaaS Leaders - How to ensure you retain your best salespeople Salespeople are the key to growth of your SaaS organisation, particularly during the early years. However, they job they perform is arguably among the most complex and volatile of any given role within the business, leading to higher levels of attrition than any other area... 💡 Job seeking persists despite satisfaction: According to HBR, more than 50% of sales professionals are either actively or passively seeking a new role at a given time. Even many high-performing professionals, with strong results and company recognition, are exploring new opportunities despite being content in their roles, indicating that satisfaction alone isn't enough to ensure retention. 💡Traditional retention strategies are ineffective: Compensation adjustments, title changes, work-life balance, and sales culture improvements have little impact on retaining talent. Instead, sales professionals are more concerned with career growth opportunities and feeling confident in their trajectory for success in both the short and long term. 💡Compensation isn’t enough: Pay raises alone don’t motivate sales professionals to stay. In an industry where variable pay and commissions are common, sellers prioritize having the resources and clarity to succeed within their assigned territory over marginal base salary increases. 🤔 So what can you do to build longevity and progress within your sales team? ☝ Build talent from within: Companies with lower attrition focus on developing their sales teams internally rather than relying solely on hiring new talent. These organizations are reinvesting in sales enablement programs that build real capabilities for their salesforce, moving beyond basic onboarding and training to create a more skilled, long-term sales team. ☝Leadership support is key: CEOs and leaders need to be directly involved in supporting sales talent. When leaders beyond the sales department engage with sellers, it creates a culture of advocacy and inclusiveness, which boosts morale and leads to lower attrition rates. ☝Clear path to success: Top-performing companies transparently outline success paths for sellers, ensuring they have realistic goals and solid territory assignments. Salespeople are far more likely to stay if they believe their assigned territory provides real opportunities for growth and over-performance, rather than being stuck with leftover or underdeveloped accounts. ☝Long-term strategies over short-term fixes: Retention bonuses and quick fixes like title bumps won’t solve turnover issues. Sales leaders who focus on providing both immediate success opportunities and long-term career development foster a more committed and engaged sales team, ultimately reducing turnover in a sustainable way. Any other strategies you've seen work? Let me know below!

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Later next week see's the publication of the biggest Sales Coaching survey we believe ever undertaken from MySalesCoach and Aircall - And its just possible that one of its many jaw dropping findings is how sellers and leaders have very different perceptions of the sales coaching in their teams. **Please like or comment on this post btw - If Richard Smith sees I'm teasing the findings of the report, I will be #opentowork on Monday.** So why could it be that sellers and leaders are looking at two very different sides of the same mountain? 1:1's - Managers feel they have coached, sellers don't. Dedicated time together doesn't equal coaching if skills aren't being developed and future growth unlocked. Pipeline Reviews - Here it's even worse. Sellers feel interrogated. Leaders feel they are coaching. The question is are they creating an action list of what to do in the current deals in play, or truly growing career skills? What they want from coaching - Sellers want to grow. They want to develop skills that impact their career and success. Managers typically want, frankly, teams to maximise revenue this quarter. Agenda - Whose agenda is the coaching sessions that (supposedly) managers are having? Helping to develop the skills sellers crave? Helping them with mindset and overcoming the very real anxieties, confidence issues and imposter syndrome that are so frequently shared with managers (sarcasm inserted) holding them back from success? Managers can't easily leave their personal agendas at the door. So any coaching happening, is tainted by the personal agenda and goals of the manager, not the seller. Poor quality - A forthcoming survey may share some more here (dammit, stop doing that, your just asking for your P45). How many managers are great coaches? Have experienced great coaching themselves? Have been supported in becoming a great coach? Watch this space next week - and make sure your are following me (or even better Richard Smith - it may help me save my job)

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Calling all B2B sales professionals. With our friends at Aircall, we need your help with our State of Sales Coaching survey 2024. 3-5 minutes of your time could win you amazing prizes - the latest AirPods, Sonos speaker, Nespresso machine, and of course MySalesCoach scholarships. Sales coaching is widely considered the most critical function of a frontline sales leader. Previous studies demonstrate that it significantly boosts win rates and quota attainment. However, many sales organisations find it challenging to establish and execute an effective sales coaching culture and strategy. Our survey seeks to identify the key trends, best practices, and impacts of sales coaching in 2024. You'll be first to get the study published in October packed with insight, data and trends. Leaders and Individual Contributors should complete the survey - with scholarship places up for grabs for each. Your voice really matters, complete today for a chance of these amazing prizes and to be first with the report. Link here to complete - https://lnkd.in/eKRcTPXV

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If you're a CSM struggling to close deals, here are some tips that might help: 💰 Lead with value: When introducing a new product or service, start by asking questions to identify its value. Flip it around and ask the customer what they could achieve with it. 🚫 Address objections early: Find out objections early on, understand what would make them say yes, and learn their sign-off process. Ask questions like, "Is there anything you don't like about this?" and "What does your sign-off process look like?". ⏲ Set a timeline: Get a timeline from the customer as soon as possible. Ask when they plan to make a decision and how they chose that date. Avoid setting ultimatums, as they often lack substance. ⏪ Handle late objections: If objections arise late in the process, find out their source. Say something like, "Let's go back to where we started to go off track" or "Let's go back to where you started to feel this wasn't right for you". This helps rewind the process rather than complicating it. What other tips do you have? #customersuccess #saas #upsell

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Learn how the right system, like Salesforce, can help save time through automation, increase employee productivity, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. Download the guide now to find out more.

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Who is hiring salespeople right now? This post will reach 50,000 + salespeople across the UK and EMEA. After being on the market myself briefly... I've felt an uptick in hiring activity. However, its not always easy to get your brand out there with all the competition for talent. This one way is easy and free! Just follow the steps below: 1. Post a link to your role/roles in the comments 2. Share and like this post 3. Get your team to comment under the role you posted Easy, Peazy Lemon squeezy! Go Go Go!

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