Why it's our duty to invest more time in our young sales people

Those of us in the hiring industry must adapt and change our expectation of the time and effort it takes to develop our young sales people now so many work remotely. We need to set realistic goals and we must also stop living in a pre-Covid mindset, despite the infancy of years since it ended. Put simply, it's our duty to make more of an effort to engage with our inexperienced team members.  This will involve hours of sharing cameras, while both parties are working, and the manager listening to their calls and watching their body language.

If we can retrain ourselves to accept that how things are now isn't the ‘new normal' but simply the norm, we will go a long way to get this next generation to be successful. We need to make sure they don't feel like a lost generation and help them become a generation of disrupters, who changed work for the better.

The power of being there in person

As I write this, I feel very lucky that the first few years of my formative sales training was 100% office based.  Whilst there were fewer channels, in terms of both learning and communication (we only had the desk phone and fax), the value of the 1-2-1 direct feedback I got from my boss at the time hasn't changed in 25 years. 

I can see in my own family, where my son is in the second quarter of his Sales Development Representative apprenticeship, that he is progressing. His boss is fantastic, the amount of time taken to learn and be effective has increased.  In addition, on the down days we get in sales, because I work from home, I can give my son the boost he needs where his boss doesn't see it, because they are remote themselves. But how many other new sales people have their mom or dad sitting nearby coming from a sales background that can fill this void?

Supporting the disruptors of the future

Of course, we need to give credit to this new generation of sellers who are used to multiple channels, used to the digital world and who are generally more tech savvy than my generation was. Unfortunately, though, there is no substitute for managers being in the same room when you hear a bad call has just happened and you can create a way out by sharing your experience.  Be sure to do what you can to make this happen for them, even if it is not as easy to do as it once was.