The rise in sales people working from home has not seen much of a shift towards flexible working. Photo / File
The rise in sales people working from home has not seen much of a shift towards flexible working. Photo / File
Most sales leaders are cautiously optimistic about their business growing this year despite it being more challenging.
That's the findings of an annual Mood of the Sales Leader report carried out by Indicator - a company set up to increase the quality of sales and sales leadership in New Zealand.
Mike Stokes, chief executive of Indicator, said the upbeat view was a good sign. He said the survey was its fourth edition and when it first started in 2017 there was virtually no pessimism among the industry at just 1 per cent.
Then it rose to 8 per cent in 2018 and 10 per cent in 2019 - the most pessimistic he has seen, right before the full force of the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
This year's survey, undertaken in December last year, found pessimism had dropped back down to 6 per cent.
"We see that as a very positive element."
Stokes said confidence had been boosted in the second half of last year with many sales teams a lot busier than they had expected to be.
"If you were to have checked in with us in May/June we probably thought the world was falling around us and it didn't for most industries. Most of our clients said they had a really really good end of year.
"Most sales leaders are feeling that we have been very fortunate. Things seem relatively well managed in New Zealand and we can feel that doom and gloom is hopefully not just around the corner."
The biggest worry for sales leaders heading into this year is clients with reduced sales budgets, followed by responding to the challenges of Covid-19 and competition.
Stokes said it was a big concern for all businesses in New Zealand that companies would hold back on spending because of concerns about the economic situation or what is around the corner.
"We heard anecdotally from a lot of our clients that big businesses were the ones pulling back on spending last year. That was a real concern to us."
He said confidence was key to getting companies to continue to open their wallets and keep spending.
"It is a confidence thing. I think that is so important for us economy-wise, that confidence remains and that we all look to get on with business.
"Some of it may be taken out of our hands of course. But I think we should all have some confidence about what has happened in the last six months."
Competition remained an ongoing challenge, Stokes said.
"Competition is always an element that has really, apart from the last 12 months, always been sales leaders' biggest challenges - it is getting harder from a competition perspective in this country. More companies are coming into NZ, we have all got that at the forefront."
Stokes said another major issue was the supply chain. "We all know that has caused considerable problems. The challenges between sales and operations has been significant."
He said that was why he was very keen for sales leaders to push more towards a closer relationship between sales and marketing.
"We see in terms of revenue that connection between sales and marketing has never been more important - customer experience, telling the right stories, being well positioned on digital - that is just a must."
The survey found 45 per cent of businesses were looking to increase the size of their sales teams this year, slightly ahead of last year (43 per cent). A further 50 per cent said it would stay the same while only 5 per cent were planning a decrease down from 7 per cent.
Stokes said because confidence was relatively strong at the moment there was going to be pressure on finding good sales people again.
"It has always been a challenge for sales leaders, we haven't seen that reduced from last year. We all thought there was going to be amazing people everywhere to employ. And in some industries of course [there were job losses], but finding great people has never been easy and we don't see any change in that."
One surprise from the research had been the lack of change in attitude around working remotely.
Mike Stokes, chief executive of Indicator. Photo / Supplied
While 77 per cent said they would encourage it that was only up 2 percentage points despite sales teams having to work from home last year.
"We were expecting an increase in that. We felt what happened in 2020 was sales teams proved they could work remotely."
Stokes said one reason it didn't change could be the challenge of building culture when people were working from home.
"Working with the team at home it is harder to build that great culture.
"We saw a lot of talk going on in the marketplace, people talking of removing offices, it didn't seem to happen so much with a focus on the sales perspective."
He said salespeople had to be pretty motivated to be successful and potentially they could lose that motivation when they were at home to a point.
