#30 - This Week in Sales with Victor Antonio and Will Barron

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 


Sales automation

Post COVID lead generation trends

Amazon’s Hire to Fire strategy

News: What’s 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 automation’s 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 — 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 buyers’ preferences for digital sales
interactions — 70%-80% of respondents to McKinsey’s research
survey prefer over face-to-face — 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 sales—purpose, 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 companies’ 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
Amazon’s Controversial ‘Hire to Fire’ Practice Reveals a Brutal
Truth About Management

According to the reporting, managers at the online retailer
intentionally hire people that they know they’re going to
fire. 


The fact that managers at Amazon might offer someone a job just
so they can terminate them isn’t 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 “unregretted
attrition rate” (URA).  They’re expected to lose, either
voluntarily or through termination, a specific number of
employees every year. If you don’t, you’re expected to make up
for it the following year. 


Result: Managers are hiring people they otherwise wouldn’t, or
shouldn’t, just so they can later fire them to hit their goal.


To be fair, Amazon told Insider that “hire to fire” isn’t a
policy and goes against Amazon’s leadership principles, one of
which is “Hire and Develop the Best.” From the company’s
website: 


https://apple.news/AlbvHgzD5Tl6lSjHvcyHtzw
Do you have to be a practitioner to be a successful coach?
(assuming you have access to data…)