Opportunity in Sales – SALES WOMEN
This is likely the new growth area for women in companies & on to the boards of companies. We are already starting to see this with people like Nazma Qurban, Heather Colby Yvonne Cook in the UK and Jill Konrath, Cynthia Barnes, Hilary Headlee Becc Holland in the US. A growing number of women moving into Sales or Customer Success Management roles then stepping up into CCO or CRO roles.
I recently had a chat with a CRO of a leading Cyber Security SaaS company he was telling me that his best performing (£1+) salesperson was a woman who had only been on board for just over a year beating all of the men hands down and that she was the lowest paid member of the Sales team. We then discussed what he was going to do about that and what he thought about bringing more women into the team in 2021, all positive.
Women currently hold less than one third of B2B sales jobs, women are underrepresented in B2B sales in most industries, including wholesale, manufacturing (27%) and financial services (30%).
Yet research shows that women salespeople often outperform men. In a recent study it reported that 86% of women achieved quota, compared to 78% of men. The B2B sales landscape has been shifting in ways that favour women in sales roles. We think the Covid-19 pandemic will lead to a step change in this trend during 2021 and beyond.
Although women hold only a quarter of the high-tech sales jobs, career data sources report that at least 50% and as high as 70% of CSMs are women. And as of April 2020, women were leading global customer success teams at some major tech companies, including Oracle and Salesforce.
Studies also show that women only make 77% of what their male counterparts earn. While this is an improvement from previous decades when women earned as little as 59% of what the men earned, the pay gap persists.
Accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis, salespeople overall are traveling less and relying more on video and other digital communication channels. The shift towards less travel aligns with the needs of both men and women who want to balance career and family needs. As more women take on business buying roles in the target clients, female salespeople can build stronger relationships with the changing customer base.
Boosting the Number of Women in Sales
Future sales success for many companies in the rebounding economy will hinge on attracting and retaining more women for sales roles. In traditionally male-dominated industries, this can require eliminating the perception of sales as an old boys’ club and creating a more female-friendly culture. Several programs are helping sales organizations attract and retain more women. Programs like these (WISE, NAWSP & WSP, WIT) have certainly helped retain more female professionals. What would help in the UK would be something for ‘Women Sales Professionals’ specifically for those in the UK.
Diversity-focused recruiting. As an Executive Search Consultant, I always try and encourage companies to make the gender diversity an explicit goal of sales recruiting, committing to specific objectives for sourcing, selecting and attracting women to a role. More and more companies are now reaching out to sources female job applicants. They are making job descriptions more attractive to women by toning down masculine language, for example, replacing words like “aggressive” and “compete” with gender-neutral language such as “customer-focused” and “succeed.” Job descriptions are also emphasizing problem-solving over client entertainment responsibilities. And by including more women sales leaders on job candidate interview panels, companies are getting a diverse perspective about candidates’ qualifications while reinforcing a female-friendly culture that attracts women applicants. We don’t have a stringent government directive, for gender equality, just general diversity, maybe we should.
Female mentorship programs. We need to see more of these other than just the general ‘Women in Business’ programs. I was speaking today with Nazma Qurban (recognized as one of the “Top Women Leaders in SaaS of 2018” and voted “Top 10 SaaS Sales leader UK 2018”) and she said that to me she has a mentor in James Isilay, CEO of Cognism, but she has also personally delivered outstanding results against targets, mentorship, empathy, needs to be made more formal in my opinion and sold as a benefit.
Better coaching. Companies are in fact taking steps to improve coaching of female salespeople, especially by male mentors. This requires breaking down stigmas for male-female mentorship relationships and ensuring women get the same objective feedback their male colleagues would.
More promotions for women. In the study female-led sales teams had roughly equal numbers of men and women, while male-led teams were more than three-quarters men. Promoting more women to sales management and leadership roles is a clear path to attracting and retaining more female salespeople. A good way to develop female leaders is to champion women for stretch roles and responsibilities that test and develop their managerial skills. Going beyond this into developing their leadership skills, inspiring, empathy, emotional intelligence is often a more natural place for women than the ‘stick and carrot’ of management.
Gender diversity in sales is not just about social justice. In today’s world, it is about increased performance, companies with less gender bias perform better. The position we have achieved in 2020 is just the start, getting the target of women onto boards (hitting the 33% of women onto FT 100 boards) but there is more work to be done. One key challenge is addressing the perception that sales requires comfort with risk, such as rejection and income uncertainty, which discourages some women from pursuing sales careers. As customer expectations of salespeople continue to evolve, attracting and retaining more women for sales roles will be a key to future sales force success.
Ultimately it will lead to more women getting into the boardroom and then more women getting to lead the teams in the boardroom, is this such a bad thing, I certainly don’t think so.
About the Author
Howard Longstaff has over 25 years of experience delivering people within the talent acquisition arena.
He has worked extensively across the UK, Europe, USA, Canada as well as in South America, Australia, and New Zealand.
Over the last 20 years he has specialised in two fundamental areas, although he often covers a wider remit due to his thirst and understanding of technology. The first area which he has a real passion for, building ‘Sales Teams’, pulling together the very best ‘A Players’ and creating something incredibly special for his clients.
To do that, he needs to have a clear understanding of what his client wants, so establishing clear communication with the client is paramount, understanding the nuances of what they are looking for and documenting this. Understanding the technology, the opportunity, and the growth potential all help to find the ‘right fit, first time’. He is one of the few head-hunters that is willing to guarantee his work, offering 12 months free replacement.
The second area he loves getting involved in, is the leadership team, the C-Suite, helping to get the balance right, cover the gaps in knowledge, skills and experience, working on the assumption that ‘No one is perfect but a team can be’?
Howard is someone who thinks outside the box, has an eye for detail, but is perceptive, looking beyond the surface of just skills and experience. He wants to know and understand the candidate behaviour as well as the emotional intelligence, the motives that drive the candidates he interviews. He is looking for the best fit for his client but also looking to ensure it is a fit for the candidate as well.
In the last 25 years he has also built his own companies and opened offices in New Zealand, Los Angeles, New York and most recently several companies in London. Specialising in technology companies, he has delivered permanent resources across practically every department. This has predominantly been for technology start-ups (Enterprise Software Co’s) but also for many leading management consulting and enterprise clients.
Howard is someone that uses technology to enhance the hiring process, to save time, money and effort and take the pain out of the process, but to find those ‘Exceptional People, who are so hard to find’. He operates a ‘Private Client Video Portal’ keeping everything together, the video, as well as psychrometric behavioural assessments on candidates and interviewing on an emotional intelligence level. He has repeatedly built teams across three continents, so has a good breadth of knowledge across the talent acquisition arena.