One of the best things about humankind is that we’re all weird and wonderful in our own way.
We’re all different, experiencing different things, learning different skills, coming from different places and wanting different things out of life.
We can benefit from learning from one another. Absorbing knowledge from those around us. Being shown the world from a new perspective.
Yet, all too often, whether consciously or not, we ‘stick to what we know’ and cluster with other people who are similar to ourselves.
While it’s good to have people around you that you can relate to, you’re far less likely to grow as a person if you’re not around people who offer something different to you. Challenging your thought processes and pushing you out of your comfort zone.
This too is true for the B2B sales landscape.
Diversity within your sales team can help drive business growth by capturing a bigger chunk of your market.
Think about it - if you have a sales team who are all exactly the same, have the same approach, outlook and skills, then you’re only going to be successful with a certain subset of your prospects.
Not to mention your team will have a limited view when trying to solve problems.
But if you broaden your horizons and diversify your sales team, you’re going to open yourself up to a much wider pool of interested parties who aren’t put off by a specific sales style, personality type or approach to communication.
Plus you’ll have a lot more angles for creative solutions if and when problems arise.
As this is such an important topic with a vast opportunity to drive business growth, we wanted to find out more about what sales leaders can do to foster diversity in their teams. We sat down with resident sales expert, Ryan Reisert, for his take on diversity in sales.
Keep reading to find out more ⬇️
What does it mean to have a diverse team?
Diversity goes beyond the token gender and race inclusions - although there’s still a lot of work to be done in these areas in most industries.
What we’re referring to by ‘diverse teams’ is hiring and retaining staff members who span a vast number of backgrounds, such as different:
- Upbringings/Experiences
- Skills/Industry expertise/Previous roles
- Gender/Sexual orientations
- Personality types
- Race/Ethnicities
- Education/Academic courses
- Languages
- Ages
- Religions
- And more
In outbound sales, arguably the most important thing that differentiates you from your competitors is how you can communicate your message to your buyer.
But how each prospect hears, interprets and reacts to your message can differ widely. So it’s important to have a sales team who can relay the same core message in a way that suits each customer profile. This way, you’ll maximise your market reach.
An easy example of this is to consider the modern business landscape where everyone is online.
Your prospects could be working from anywhere in the world; they may be from different countries, speak different languages or dialects or have cultural differences in how they like to be spoken to.
A diverse sales team is more likely to have team members who can cater to a wide range of languages and cultural differences.
Ryan points out the cultural differences that can occur just in the United States alone, not to mention across the rest of the world:
“Even if you want to expand your company regionally, you would benefit from having a more diverse sales team.”
“If I’m in California and I want to expand into the East, there’s already a cultural difference. Multiple languages, dialects and more.”
“By nature, people want to connect with people they trust and like. If you’re able to meet them on the same level and communicate in a way that makes them feel comfortable then you have a higher chance.”
Diversity for growth
Other than being able to offer everyone equal opportunity to join your organisation, there are a number of benefits to prioritising diversity.
The most important being it expands an organisation's opportunity to grow.
One of the biggest examples of this is from the B2C world, from a company you might’ve heard of before… McDonald's. 🍟
Now Mcdonald's has been very successful at expanding into most parts of the world. But there have been a number of times when this powerhouse company has struggled when entering new countries.
What’s stopped them from expanding into certain territories?
It’s often been down to a lack of understanding of the cultural differences and diversity of this new host country.
Apply this logic to sales, and you can see how outbound becomes easier when you have a team of people who understand the differences among the prospects in new verticals or geographies.
Ryan explains why diversity is so important for growth:
“If you only cater to one customer persona, then you limit yourself to one persona, for the most part. If you’re diverse and you can cater to a larger variety of personas, then instantly you’ve increased your chances of growth.”
“Take me for example. I’m American and I’ve noticed some of the comments I get from people in the UK on content I create is like:”
“This American opener, I don’t get his style.”
“Now that’s not to say that I wouldn’t be able to break through with some people in the UK using my approach, because people respond differently but I would struggle with this particular persona.”
“With time and practise, I could probably figure out how to adapt my approach to suit these people, but it’s much easier to be able to do it with someone who better understands the landscape.”
“They can suggest to me ways to edit my call sales script, tone and more in order to be more effective. That’s the advantage of diverse knowledge.”
Ryan’s point here is that no matter how good you are at what you do, you won’t suit everyone’s preferences. That’s just the way it is. But if you have a diverse team then you’re more likely to be able to appeal to more people.
What about if your team isn’t diverse? What happens then?
You may have success. You may become profitable. You might grow too. But there will likely be a cap on how far you can take the organisation before you stagnate.
Ryan tells us about an organisation where he’s seen this happen:
“I worked with one company over several years and they all used this hyper-aggressive, talk track approach and they’ve been sitting at the same level of revenue for years now.”
“They’ve only hired people who fit the same list of criteria as the rest of the organisation and the culture is very much ‘its our way or the highway’.”
“They’ve been successful with a certain subsection of their audience. But if they diversified their approach, they could be 3, maybe 4 times bigger.”
“Other companies in this space have grown past them while they’re kinda stuck.”
In other words, diversity could be the key to unlocking millions in extra revenue.
Diversity in personality
Forget growth for a second - not every company is ready to grow yet. So what’s the benefit of diversity for those staying local?
Well, it’s easy to assume that your target prospect is a similar customer persona - but you may be neglecting to acknowledge the differences between prospects in the same geographic area.
Even if your prospects have the same job titles, live in the same area and speak the same language as you - that doesn’t mean they have the same background, personality type or experiences as one another.
Ryan explains that even in the regions he is used to working in day-in and day-out, he will still only be successful with a certain chunk of them.
“I know what works in my local area, I’ve been doing this a long time. But even still, the best I can do is to capture 50%, maybe a bit more than that, simply because not everyone will like my personality type and won’t do business with me on that basis.”
“Consider elections - so often there is a big divide in who favours who because they have polarising ideas. Half the people like it, half the people don’t.”
“You can’t be everything to all people.”
“If I can access 50% of the market, diversity in my sales team is what opens up that next bucket.”
There are a lot of different theories and studies on personality types and a variety of tests you can take to establish what personality type you are.
Ultimately, as long as there is a good mixture across your sales team, then you should be in good stead.
Commitment to diversity
If you want to be successful with diversity then it takes commitment. You can’t half-ass it.
It starts from the top down. Hiring other people who also want to encourage diversity - especially sales leaders who are willing to commit to hiring a diverse team and managing it over time.
It needs to be embedded into the culture of the organisation.
But we can’t sugar coat it - it's going to make processes more difficult.
It means the hiring process will likely take longer to allow for additional vetting to take place.
It means communication within the organisation might take longer as you’re communicating with lots of different personality types.
It means you may have more resistance and feedback when decisions are made as not everyone will agree.
You may also have to manage the different personalities within the organisation itself.
It’s not the easy way, which is likely why lots of companies choose to sit it out. But following the process can have grand results and make all the difference between average and brilliant.
Ryan says:
“You should be able to capture a larger part of the market and you should have more perspective to bring in better feedback from customers from a variety of personas.”
“Yes, it will be more difficult. You might have to learn to do things differently. It’s a lot of work. But if you’re not committed to diversity, nothing happens. That’s why most people fail at it.”
What can you do to cultivate a diverse sales team?
Okay - so you’re willing to put in the work to commit to building a diverse team. But what the heck are you actually meant to do?
Here are 5 things you should think about when cultivating your SaaS sales team.
1. Define what success looks like
Firstly, you need to be asking yourself a few questions:
- What does diversity look like at your organisation?
- At what stage would you consider your efforts to be a success?
- What are the outcomes you’re looking for?
Once you’ve got answers to these questions, use them as your ‘north star’ to guide you on your sales diversity quest. Refer back to them during your decision-making.
2. Identify your milestones and metrics
Next, you need to consider how you’re going to track the success of your journey.
Map out the lead gen metrics you want to monitor and which priorities you want to tackle first.
3. Create resources to fulfil the vision
Develop a step-by-step plan of how you’re going to make your diversity dream a reality. What resources are going to be crucial for you to get there?
Conduct an internal audit to assess how diverse your team is currently. You may already have some resources in-house; others you may need to bring in. You may need to abandon resources that don’t align with your future plans.
It’s important that your organisation’s infrastructure is able to support your commitment to a diverse team.
4. Hire your dream team
This is the part that is arguably the hardest.
Recruitment can be tricky at the best of times, but now your process will likely have to become more rigorous than before. Diversity can’t happen without people and you’ll need to ensure you’re actually hiring a diverse team.
It’s best to start from the top-down: recruit people in management positions who are committed to prioritising diversity in their hiring decisions.
Then develop a hiring process that can assess the suitability of a candidate for your diversity goals, alongside job-specific skills and experience.
5. Introduce workplace policies and processes
The work isn’t done after you have your diverse team - now you have to retain them. No company wants high staff turnover - it's expensive and time-consuming.
Workplace policies and processes need to be ready and equipped to manage people with different learning styles, personality types and much more.
We’ll let Ryan have the final word:
“Bringing diversity into your sales team isn’t the easy route. But if you want to grow your sales long-term, it’s a no-brainer. It’s so much harder to expand into new territories without it.”
“Start by hiring a leadership team that’s devoted to diversity. Everything else follows on from that. Diversity is a culture change that starts from the top. As long as you have the right people in place, it will happen.”
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