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Diversity in your sales team can improve the employee experience while increasing your organization’s bottom line.
When sales reps interact with customers from diverse backgrounds, they must find ways to quickly connect with and understand those customers. Organizations that employ representatives from a variety of industries tend to form well-rounded teams that can build strong client relationships with a broad customer base. However, sales managers must create a safe and inclusive work environment where all team members feel comfortable and respected in order to retain them.
To build the right team, sales managers should understand the benefits of diversity in sales and best practices for finding diverse talent.
What is workplace diversity?
Workplace diversity is about hiring and retaining employees from diverse backgrounds. This approach requires organizations to attract candidates from all walks of life and ensure they feel understood and included. Workplace diversity can reduce the negative social impact of unconscious bias against marginalized groups and improve business metrics such as employee engagement and innovation.
Common types of workplace diversity include:
- Race.
- Race.
- Sexual orientation.
- gender.
- age.
- religion.
- educate.
- political beliefs.
- Disability.
- Socioeconomic background.
4 Benefits of a Diverse Sales Team
In addition to helping marginalized populations overcome barriers, sales diversity can improve customer connections and increase brand loyalty.
1. Improve customer relationships
An organization’s sales team should reflect its diverse customer base, as sales representatives must build rapport with prospects and earn their trust. A diverse sales team is better equipped to build these relationships quickly because reps who share characteristics with customers, such as race or age, are more likely to understand their perspectives, needs and challenges.
A diverse sales team can help an organization expand into new regional or international markets. For example, a technology consulting firm based in Nebraska might want to expand to the West Coast, which has a larger Asian and Latino population than the Midwest. A diverse sales team with Asian and Latino representation can help the company acquire customers in this new location.
2. Improve employee engagement
Sales departments that cultivate an inclusive culture can improve employee engagement by making employees feel comfortable and valued at work. Over time, engaged sales reps are more likely to stay with the organization, exceed their job requirements and exceed sales quotas.
Diverse sales teams can also leverage diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, such as career development programs, to improve employee retention and engagement. These programs increase employee satisfaction and productivity by providing sales representatives with diverse opportunities to grow within the organization.
3. Promote innovation
Diverse sales teams often find innovative solutions to problems because they have a broad perspective on understanding customer needs. For example, a visually impaired sales representative at a software company might share ideas for improving accessibility on the company’s website. The web development team can then use the sales rep’s input to make the site more friendly to older and disabled visitors.
Diversity in a sales team encourages critical thinking as team members challenge each other’s assumptions and ways of seeing the world. This critical thinking can lead to innovation in products, services, and sales strategies, giving the organization an advantage over its competitors.
4. Build brand loyalty
As customers increasingly prefer doing business with socially sustainable brands, organizations with diverse sales teams and practices can increase brand loyalty. Customers who show loyalty to a brand will choose that brand’s products over those of its competitors, even if competitors offer lower prices.
Millennials and Gen Z, in particular, expect organizations to take a stance on social issues and address systemic injustice and unconscious bias in their operations. Sales diversity can help organizations gain the loyalty of these younger demographics, thereby increasing customer retention and revenue.
4 Ways to Increase Diversity in Your Sales Team
Sales managers who want to create diverse teams can follow best practices to remove systemic barriers and retain diverse talent.
1. Address unconscious bias
Sales managers may unintentionally display unconscious bias during the employee recruitment process. These biases can negatively impact candidates and employees from marginalized groups. For example, a recruiting manager who enjoys golf and skiing may find it easier to talk to candidates with similar interests. However, people who engage in these activities tend to come from middle to higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Therefore, managers who rely too heavily on personal relationships during the recruitment process may give certain candidates an unfair advantage.
To help sales managers and other team members avoid unconscious bias, recruiting teams can create interview panels that include multiple employees from various departments—ideally from diverse backgrounds. These groups ensure that employees are not selecting candidates based solely on personal relationships.
Organizations can also implement blind hiring practices, in which recruiting teams remove identifying information such as candidate names and genders from resumes to help teams focus more on qualifications. In addition, organizations can provide DEI training to help sales employees become more aware of their unconscious biases.
2. Create inclusive job postings
Managers must ensure that people from diverse backgrounds apply for open positions to create a diverse sales team.Recruitment teams should avoid gendered language such as salesman, to help attract female and non-binary candidates from job postings.They should also avoid using words such as Provocation and go-getters, This reinforces the stereotype that sales is primarily a career for ambitious men.
Recruiting teams can post recruiting messages on different recruiting boards to ensure they are visible to candidates from all backgrounds. Organizations can also partner with external DEI organizations to identify potential candidates.
3. Organize campus recruitment activities
Sales managers can partner with universities to host in-person and virtual recruiting events for underrepresented students. These events may include information sessions and panel discussions in which organization representatives discuss career opportunities. They may also hold workshops to help underrepresented students improve their resumes and interviewing skills.
Organizations can host recruiting events at local colleges and universities or work specifically with historically black colleges and universities. These events can help sales managers find a steady stream of diverse talent ready to join their teams.
4. Collect DEI data and employee feedback
As sales managers seek to improve diversity and inclusion in the workplace, they should collect empirical data to measure the effectiveness of these efforts. To identify trends, sales managers can assess the diversity of the applicant pool, interview pool, new hires, and promotions. For example, if people of color rarely make it into the applicant pool, managers might reconsider their recruiting efforts.
Organizations should also conduct employee satisfaction and engagement surveys to ensure all sales employees feel heard and respected. These surveys can help sales managers build an inclusive work environment and prevent costly turnover.
Tim Murphy is the deputy website editor for TechTarget’s customer experience and content management website.
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