In sales? SCORE an extra $20K pay rise, right now: Mark McInnes

The GREAT RESIGNATION is here and it's wreaking havoc on HR teams everywhere. It's also providing an incredible opportunity for sellers.

An opportunity to get more money and also the possibility to ruin careers.
It's a once in a decade situation, (maybe more) take advantage now or you'll miss out on the free $$$.

But, like all things, there is a YANG to the YING.
What goes UP must also come DOWN.

What could be the downside to this current shortage?

Whilst corporations are screaming for salespeople right now I'm predicting a significant swing the other way with devastating ramifications for sellers, sales leaders and customer experience.

Am I right? Am I wrong?
Let me know

Mark McInnes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mcinnes/

VIP Sales Mailer
https://markmc.co/salesmail/ 

Catch all versions of me here.

https://linktr.ee/markmcinnes
LinkedIn profile
VIP sales mailer
Tactical Pipeline Growth
BOSS Podcast
1 on 1 Consulting

Transcript

Mark McInnes: 0:03

Welcome to the BOSS podcast. I'm mark McGuinness. Thanks for listening. This is a podcast about sales tactics, sales strategies, and helping sellers to be more successful. But tonight it's not about any of that today. I'm going to share something that's been on my mind for quite some time. And I think it's going to have an incredibly negative impact on the sales community across the next 12 days. Maybe you're not interested in a slightly bleak conversation. Maybe you'll be grateful for the heads up. I'm not really sure which way you'll take it, but as you can probably tell today's discussion is significantly deeper and more involved than what I would normally be talking about on these podcasts. So therefore it seemed just fair to warn you. This is a bigger discussion than I would typically undertake. Now if your only interest in this podcast is to grab a few tactics, maybe jump back into the back catalog and find another app has episode to have a listen to it. If you are interested in how to land a quick 20 grand pay rise listening for the next few minutes. And if you're interested in more about what I see and the future of the sale space, then stick around a little bit longer from a content point of view. If you do listening, I'd love your feedback. Do you want more of these type of stuff or would you prefer that? I stick to just the sales tactics. So be sure to let me know what one suits you going forward to give you an idea about this episode. I had several concepts for a headline and they were coronavirus has killed the B2B sales rep. Um, another idea was sales stuffed. Uh, another was why you should leave your sales job now. And lastly was how to get a 20 grand pyros immediately. Just to give you some background, I've been doing some work with a couple of clients who were in the recruitment space. One is assess, apply to the recruitment and high chow function and another sales tools to help corporates attract new talent. As a result, I've been spending a lot of time thinking and reading about the current recruitment trends, not only in the sales space, but in all industries more why. Recently, I was listening to one of my favorite residential property podcasts called the elephant in the room, the elephant in the room. And they've got a, they had a guest on called Simon boost. Marker. I'm sure have ruined that. Anyway. Uh, Simon is a demographer specializing in the current, uh, social and economic trends impacting Australia. He's also a regular economist for the Australian newspaper. He said on that podcast that if you work for an impact, The smartest thing you could do right now is quit and find a new role because the lack of staff, lack of staff availability right now is driving out rages at a war, right? We've not seen previously. You can basically do the same job you're doing now just over at a different company and score an extra 15 to 20 grand per year, based off the fact that everyone's so desperate to find employees. And there's so few employees in the market. In most cases there's 15 to 20 grand is going to be significantly more than you would be able to negotiate in your typical salary review. So Simon shared this on that podcast, the elephant in the room, in the context of a discussion around house price, affordable. So believe me, there's that we'll get to sales shortly. Now, if you're an economist or you're interested in the stock market or in the property market you'll know that rising wages or the lack of rising wages has been a focus for the RBA in its outlook to increase the official interest rates. So wage growth increase is important for the overall economy. More money. The more money we have in our pocket means more money we spend means businesses typically do better. Having spoken to my many clients across various industries, they tell me that salespeople, particularly those who are responsible for new business are in very hot demand right now and have been for some time. This reinforces Simon Sinek. And to give you a single example. This came from a junior seller who approached me for advice, which really stands out. They wanted to know if I thought they're moved from company to company. B was a good idea. When I asked what it was that they'd be doing over at company B, that was going to be different from company. I, they replied who cares. It pays heaps better. So that approach has me a little watered. So here's the first key takeaway from today's session. If you're not a hundred percent or even 90% happy in your current role now is the time to move. It's a sellers market. I hope you got the residential reference here, residential property reference. So make the most of it whilst this sounds like it's good news for our sellers. I actually think it's very bad news for the entire sales industry, this jumping wages. So let me share with you why I think this. All right. A little bit more background. How did we get here? Firstly, we now have, I think called the great resignation. This is. This great resignation is called this. This is off the back of some recent Microsoft research that indicates 41% of staff were want to move to new roles. Once the pandemic eases, the thought is that there are a number of reasons. People are going to move on mass, firstly, safety and security. There will be pent up jobs. In job blew this because during the work from home or during lockdown, any job that you had appeared to be safer than no job, the thought process was why risk moving into a new role and being on a 90 day probation, when you're perfectly comfortable with a secure role in the middle of a pandemic, when everyone's focusing on safety and security, particularly when you've got the government support to help employers keep people in their jobs. Research says people chose to stay in their current roles. Even if they hired the work. How did the boss and to Dave, all the other people, once things started to look less dangerous. Once things start to look less dangerous, these people will start to move out into the job market. And in fact, we're already seeing this as a mid-October 2020. The second thing that's impacting the workforce is the lure of the gig economy or going freelance work from home has meant that many people get to sample what they think working for yourself must be like. So they intend to quit their big corporate job to start working on their own gig. They think that they'll get to work at their own pace. This is true. It just doesn't quite play out the way that they think I'm someone that's been working Moira and Alice for quite some time. And working for yourself, working your own hours often means working 12 hours a day or more and six days a week with no paid holidays or no vacation. Now I'm not trying to say that to stop people from joining the gig economy. Uh, it's truly very rewarding. It might not just be exactly what it says on the sticker. Anyway, there are still apparently a logical group people looking to start their own good. These people's roles will become vacant adding to the, um, to the gap between people that are looking for jobs and the jobs that are available. The third thing that's going to impact. Um, corporates is the work from home slash flexible work discussion. Some people can't get back to can't wait to get back into the office. We all know those people, others are more comfortable at home and not having to worry about the commute. So if you and your employers are not aligned in your thinking about the future of work and what that looks like, you're very likely to try and find an employer that is more likely to be aligned with the. For example, if you want to stay work from home and your employer is calling you back to the office, there's a mismatch and you'll, you'll likely change employers to try and find a spot to the lady to work from home for the duration that you wanting. These three will be the biggest drivers in the great resignation. So that is work from home, flexible work, the lure of the gig economy and the desire for people to be safe in their role. The best estimates on the great resignation that this is happening right now in the USA and the UK. So we'll target 2021 and we'll hit Australia heavily like 20, 21 and only 2022. And we'll start to Peter out March or April. So if you want to move roles and snare that 20 to 15, 15 to 20 grand pie, ROS ensure you've moved before the end of the first, the third quarter in AIPAC. What else is happening? That's worth making. Okay. So no immigration because we've been closed from, for, um, the pandemic means we have a lack of cheap labor. This is pushing up prices for everything, from your coffee to your stationary. As we use more expensive library and its place, that's, if we can actually find somebody to work at all in a lot of cases, All you need to do is look at the logistics industry right now. Freight is delayed deliveries that used to take three days. Now take three weeks. This logistics and transport industry is already heavily impacted. I've got examples of things that would normally arrive in only a few days are taking more than a month. And there's no chance of getting anybody to help you because the logistics industry is just so slammed with parcels. CEOs of organizations are desperate for results. After two years of treading water during the pandemic, and now therefore desperate for staff to help them do that. They also have access to very cheap money because interest rates are so low and this allows them to plan for expanding. All senior executives right now are sitting around the board table talking about how, when the economy rebounds inverted commerce, they'll be making the most of the opportunities that are presented to them. Everyone's looking to outperform the market. Every hit of styles, every CRO, et cetera, every sales leader, every sales manager is under the pump to make sure that their business can meet or beat the right that the economy bounces back in Q2 Q3 three. What I mean by that is if the economy rebounds it four or 5% as the chief revenue officer, you better be making a seven to 10% bouncy. In order to do these most we'll need more sales capacity. That means they're going to need more salespeople. So as they scrambled to fill those vacant roles up, go sales wages, and the pressure to fill those vacant roles. As a result, they end up filling those roles with anyone who has a pulse. Have you done any sales jobs in the past? Yep. Perfect. You'll be great to go and lead this new sales team, right. To fill this void sales reps are jumping into new roles and why wouldn't they some with the promotion again? Why wouldn't they? However, many of those people have not been truly tested in their current sales role. Just look at the current ramp tone. So what, what do I mean about ramp Toms? So when you employ somebody and you put them into a business, how long does it take for them to be successful in that. Compare the ramp time to the time people spend in roles typically, and the quota attainment, right? How many times or how often people make their targets. So if we look at an SDR, for example, what the ramp time is typically three months. So 90 days. So that's from going from zero revenue to, you know, or from, from their zero from their meetings book. For example, to meeting their quota is about three months. The time in. The time that they spend in their SDR role is a total of 15 months. This is the data from breeds group. So you will all know them as a research agency. Okay. And quota attainment is 56%. So roughly half of your SDRs are making quota. Um, and they're going to last him. They were all 15 months. They're going to ramp for three months. So there's some things that work. The sellers are working at their capacity for 12 months and they hitting their head on their target half that time. I share this because it means that sellers are being promoted and moving into more senior sales roles without having a demonstrated ability to be able to sell at a repeatable and high level in a doomsday scenario, there could be a lot of under-skilled sales talent that have an overinflated ego, or at least an overinflated understanding of this sales capability and their revenue producing category. To be clear, this is not their fault. It's the system's fault. So you all those things that we just talked about. All right. So the great resignation CEO's being desperate to hit revenue. Um, The lack of migration, all those things have impacted us to get us where we are. So I think in a very short period of time, so let's say may 20, 22 senior executives are going to place revenue, expectation, pressure heavily onto the middle managers. So that's the head of sales, the VP of sales, sales directors CRI. So, you know, they're going to turn around and say, Hey, Mr. Sales director, you promised us these numbers, what's going on. Stop putting pressure. They will then divert that pressure downwards on the. And the team will do one of two things. The team will either leave that organization as well, because they're now they're being, trying to, to, you know, onboard, get some skills and then move or try and increase their current activity to match their results. And this is where I think things get really sketchy. So if you're not getting responses from your current 10 poorly worded emails, or you can badly worded phone calls, you're not going to get any more results. If you simply increase that to a hundred, right? No results equals no results, no results. Tom's mine is zero times about a hundred, still equals zero. As sealer sellers get increasingly desperate, they'll continue to do. And sales leaders getting incredibly, uh, increasingly desperate. They'll do what salespeople and sales leaders have done. For Tom and immortal. Whenever we get desperate, what do we do? We offer discounts. We spam or people. We use automation. We check in and follow up endlessly on deals that will not, and won't progress or move, never progress. Basically, we're going to win, annoy more prospects and more clients. And this is where I think we get to the real challenge. And this is the quality of, um, customer experience. Because the sales process will be so bad. The real-world customer experience will be in the toilet for most of our buyers. Right. They will be pestered to within an inch of their lives, pitched at every meeting and spanned across more channels than I have foxtail channels. Right now we know buyers will do everything they can just to avoid interacting with a sales person. That's why outbound is so hot, mostly because the expenses. It's just so bad. And what we're going to tell you is that the experience is going to get worse because we're going to end up with a whole bunch of people who don't have the skills or the experience or the leadership to create great sales interactions. So we're just going to ramp up. More of the same poor sales activity. If we fast forward to 12 or 18 months, and buyers will be asking their vendors to create a way for them to buy that does not include any sales, persons interaction. So there'll be doing that by things like. Um, online purchasing or private vendor carts, that sort of thing. And if you want to look back, listen back to I podcast, we had with Adam Thorpe, he talks a lot about the death of B2B SOPs. So sales people, risk being pushed further away from the buyer through their own poor sales behavior. And I think this has being sped up as a result of the great resignation, the lack of. And the end of the pandemic, or what we're saying is the end of the pandemic, who knows what the future will hold CEOs and CFOs of software companies having paid handsomely for their salespeople who are largely not performing and switching roles every 15 months. And I suspect that we'll come down to 12 months, we'll have very little loyalty towards, towards what they consider the be their mercenary Salesforce. That we'll start to look for faster and more efficient ways to go to market than what we have available now through their sales function, I'm concerned that this is going to be the inflection point of where cell is astounding to be replaced. Is the coronavirus, the catalyst for this move further away from seller led sales to non-sales transactions. I don't know, but that's what I can see potentially happening. And what has me concerned? All right. That's enough of the doomsday scenario. What can you do and what should you do? Because it would be terrible for me to just to paint a picture without providing what I think would be a reasonable, um, way out of this. If you want to move roles, or if you haven't had a decent pay rise for awhile, you should definitely move and you should definitely move roles. ISA. If you accept the promotion, make sure you have a clear path plan for supported training to help upskill you into that role. Important. Because of the current lack of available talent, you want, need to talk yourself up and over promise, which I think is a real risk for a lot of salespeople. Right now. You hold all the cards at that point of guiding or switching employment. During that point of switching employment, negotiate a personal personal development, allowance, or budget so that you can continue to grow into your new role. And you're not left to Flint. When the inevitable management attitudes change from let's get as many salespeople as possible to let's get rid of all of the sales people that aren't working. All right, right now, while when you negotiate, moving from one role to another, or during this, this, um, talent gap, the great resignation now is the time to negotiate your personal development, allowance, budget and budget. Okay. Take the, take the training away from the corporate and put it into your own hands. So you're in charge of developing your own stuff. Thirdly work to be in the top 10% of sales performance. The theory of evolution is sound the weakest and the slowest to adapt are going to be those who are left behind first. If you're in the top 10% of your industry and the top 10% of your business, you'll always have a place at the table. If you've listened this far. That fact alone says that you'll probably investing in yourself and you're an above average player. So keep doing what you're doing to remind or to get into the very top of your game in the end time will tell. And I'll either look like a fool or I'll look like a mini Nostradamus with this prediction. If you think I'm wrong, send me a message and tell me how, if you think I'm right, send me a message and tell me why you agree. The bulls and your cow, God, but thanks for listening. And I promise we'll go back to normal transmission with great sales, tactics and strategies on the very next child. I'm not going to thanks for listening to the boss podcast.