On this week in sales weโll be looking at:
- Sales automation
- Post COVID lead generation trends
- Amazonโs Hire to Fire strategy
News: Whatโs Your Sales Automation Strategy?
A recent McKinsey study shows that more than 30% of sales activities can be automated to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
However, lack of awareness of automationโs potential, inadequate tracking, return on investment (ROI) concerns, and delayed delivery challenges are hindrances to adoption.
https://hbr.org/2021/06/whats-your-sales-automation-strategy
Automated sales commission platform Spiff secures $46M
Companies connect Spiff to their customer relationship management (CRM) platform, business intelligence (BI) tools, or accounting and payment systems to automatically glean real-time sales data.
While its prebuilt integrations include the likes of Salesforce, Looker, Snowflake, Quickbooks, and Stripe, the company also follows an API-first philosophy that opens things to just about any data conduit.
Through the no-code Spiff commission designer dashboard, companies can combine rules, variables, and conditions around commission payments so that when an employee meets certain preset criteria, they automatically receive their dues.
This can support any number of commission structures, including deal splits, ramps, and team roll-ups.
https://venturebeat.com/2021/06/01/automated-sales-commission-platform-spiff-secures-46m/
Lead Generation Trends Sales Leaders Should Know
sales emails have now effectively doubled from the pre-pandemic baseline โ 106% in March and 94% more email volume in April 2021.
Sales calls, too, trended up. Call events were up 72% and 65% in March and April 2021, respectively (compared to pre-pandemic baselines).
In 2021, we find spending up a staggering 38% in both March and April 2021. The year-over-year uptick is 52%.
However, despite buyersโ preferences for digital sales interactions โ 70%-80% of respondents to McKinseyโs research survey prefer over face-to-face โ all this activity has not led to increased sales.
The HubSpot data indicates closed-won deals cratered early with the uncertainty surrounding the onset of the pandemic (-9% April 2020) and were underwater (up only 1% to negative) seven of the next 11 months. Things seem to have finally reversed in March 2021, popping 13% above the pandemic baseline.
The big takeaways here are that more activity is generating fewer results and that this hard work, especially in prospecting or awareness-generating activities, is not currently showing signs of reversing course.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2021/06/02/lead-generation-trends-sales-leaders-should-know/
Five Ps of Sales Success
Five Ps of salesโpurpose, precision, personalization, productivity, and profitability.
Phil Harrell, a vice president and group director at Forrester, says in the report that modern buyers will place greater emphasis on companiesโ social and corporate responsibility, and seller candidates will seek more than income when considering job opportunities.
Will, how much consideration do customers (or seller candidates) put on social responsibility before making a buying (take a position with a company)?
https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-Insights/Insight/The-Five-Ps-of-Sales-Success-147149.aspx
Amazonโs Controversial โHire to Fireโ Practice Reveals a Brutal Truth About Management
According to the reporting, managers at the online retailer intentionally hire people that they know theyโre going to fire.
The fact that managers at Amazon might offer someone a job just so they can terminate them isnโt even the worst part of the story. See, managers at Amazon have a target rate for annual turnover.
Managers are evaluated based on a metric, known as โunregretted attrition rateโ (URA). Theyโre expected to lose, either voluntarily or through termination, a specific number of employees every year. If you donโt, youโre expected to make up for it the following year.
Result: Managers are hiring people they otherwise wouldnโt, or shouldnโt, just so they can later fire them to hit their goal.
To be fair, Amazon told Insider that โhire to fireโ isnโt a policy and goes against Amazonโs leadership principles, one of which is โHire and Develop the Best.โ From the companyโs website:
https://apple.news/AlbvHgzD5Tl6lSjHvcyHtzw
Do you have to be a practitioner to be a successful coach? (assuming you have access to dataโฆ)