A lot of sales professionals are so stressed that they’re on the verge of quitting their jobs. upGrad Enterprises’s GRAND Sales and Workplace Report, which draws on data from almost 4,000 sales professionals across India, found that 60% of survey respondents want to quit in the next 3-24 months, stressed out by competitive market conditions combined with unrealistic management expectations.
How can we keep our valuable sales talent and equip them with the skills to manage stress and expectations? In an exclusive webinar hosted by People Matters in partnership with upGrad Enterprise, top leaders from major organizations discussed the focus areas that can make the biggest difference for this important function.
We were joined by Manavi Pathak, Head – Learning and Organizational Development at Samsung, Ashissh Kapoor, Director – Human Resources at EY, Arati Parashar, Vice President & Business Head at Zaggle, and Shreyasi Singh, President- Capability, Delivery & Brand, upGrad Enterprise.
It’s important to teach sales professionals emotional intelligence
Sales professionals experience so much stress because they aren’t fully equipped to meet expectations, said the leaders.
“These stressful situations require a mix of functional and behavioral skills, but a lot of organizations focus only on the functional skills such as product knowledge and customer relationship management,” pointed out Manavi Pathak.
She highlighted emotional intelligence as one particularly critical skill – the ability to identify, understand, and manage the emotions of oneself and others, which gives significant advantages in a sales interaction.
Emotional intelligence is not just important for external interactions. Arati Parashar drew a parallel between how parents ‘manage’ their children and how sales leaders can manage their teams for better results, pointing out that empathy and emotional intelligence can bridge disconnects between leaders and their direct reports.
“One common thread among sales people is that they love talking to people, they love connecting. If you don’t connect with them, how are they going to deliver?” she asked.
Close the gaps in functional skills
Even though organizations are more likely to train sales professionals in functional skills, gaps still exist.
Ashissh Kapoor identified mismatched expectations, resource allocation, and lack of alignment as three causes of gaps in functional skills.
“The cause of mismatch is different prioritization,” he elaborated. “Sales professionals may prioritize immediate needs such as product knowledge while business heads may prioritize broader strategic initiatives.”
Resource allocation issues, he explained, arise from resource constraints where an organization is simply not able to address all the needs simultaneously. And lack of alignment is a combination of different prioritization and poor communication, where leaders may not have the same understanding of needs as the sales team and there may not be a robust feedback channel to help them course correct.
The criticality of training methods
“Traditional training methods may not be engaging or flexible enough to meet the needs of sales professionals today,” noted Ashissh Kapoor. “I think a lack of innovative and adaptable training methods sometimes leads to perceived irrelevance of the training programs.”
He highlighted several particularly important ways of leveraging technology to provide the most effective training:
Personalized learning paths that can cater to specific learning needs
Adaptive learning platforms that can provide highly tailored functional content
Interactive and engaging content to keep learners coming back
The use of artificial or virtual reality to improve knowledge retention and application
On-demand access to training materials
Analytics to optimize training and align it with the needs of both the individual and the organization
Cost-effective scalability of training programs and methods across geographies
Importantly, all these training initiatives must be positioned for the long term and not merely treated as one-offs. Data from upGrad Enterprise’s GRAND report found that the overwhelming majority (92%) of sales professionals think structured, long duration programs are more effective than tactical interventions, and 78% feel that such programs will induce them to stay in their job longer.
Keep learners engaged
Besides leveraging technology to deliver learning more effectively, L&D leaders must also pay attention to how well the learning is received. As Pathak pointed out:
“There will come a time when a lot of learning is self-driven, and the challenge for L&D professionals will be making sure that the learning happens. Because left on their own, learners are not likely to complete their training. Learning engagement becomes very important.”
Shreyasi Singh highlighted that with limited learning hours, the focus must be on getting the most response and knowledge retention for the shortest time spent, meaning that designers of learning programs need to find innovative ways of presenting information.
“I think sales professionals will appreciate cohesive learning journeys which are multi-format and multi-skilled for the various needs which they have,” she observed. “Learning is like a marketing function, you need to be able to use consumer psychology to put that marketing layer on a learning program and create that sense of gratification when a learner finishes it.”