Just like for many other industries, hiring sales positions has inherited problems because of the pandemic. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Brian Trautschold, COO and co-founder of sales management platform Ambition, to discuss three things companies can do to navigate a hybrid sales workforce. Whether you’re a huge company or just a dozen people, COVID is evening the hiring playing field, and integrating these three components can help you acquire the kind of employees you want.

Build a company culture, whether it be virtual or in-person.

• Some company cultures are just fake - think Michael Scott trying to build a culture at Dunder Mifflin.
• When creating your own company culture, the key is to be authentic.
• Recognize people as they reach their milestones, and show genuine care for your employees and their aspirations.
• Especially when employees don’t have the support of an in-person team, it’s easy to lose motivation without recognition.

Engage your workforce to overcome distractions.

• There are no shortage of distractions in the virtual workplace. Whether it’s an extended lunch or a quick Netflix binge, the typical 9-5 is more elusive than ever.
• To give your employees the greatest chance for success, provide easy-to-use tools to hold themselves accountable.
• People are better at holding themselves accountable than management, especially in a virtual setting. So equipping people with the tools for personal accountability to yield better results than a never-ending stream of Slack messages.

People crave development, coaching, and investment from their employers.

• Pre-COVID, a great relationship with management is what kept many people working at their current job. (And vice versa.) The introduction to virtual work has broken this. 
• While Slack can be helpful in communication, you need to have a more proactive approach.
• As a manager, how do you optimize coaching interactions? The key is to keep track of what you discuss with your employees.
• Make action steps to help your employees reach their goals. Coaching can’t be a one-off; it’s a part of a narrative.
• Consider creating KPIs based on the coaching to set actionable steps towards their goals.
• One major takeaway? Consistent, data-driven coaching is the way of the future to develop happy and productive employees.

Want to get in contact with Brian? Find him on his company website, LinkedIn, or Twitter.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

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Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder, written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

hubpspot.com/marketers

bluemangostudios.com