2022 Pay Practices and Trends Survey Readout:
The Future of Sales is Hybrid

Mark Donnolo
Okay. All right. So let's talk about what we're seeing ahead here and some of these things guys we like to to put together is storylines, visuals, because it makes it a little easier to to grasp the idea. But like you said, Michel, the future of sales is hybrid. And there was a big question a while back of is field sales dead right?

Mark Donnolo
Is field sales gone? And what we found about a year ago is field sales is not gone. Field sales actually was coming back strong and there were some other categories that were coming back even stronger. So let's take a look at that, at the height of the pandemic, we had about 60% of people working from home. Honey, I shrunk the presenters.

Mark Donnolo
It's we had about 60% of people working from home or working remotely full time. And we saw about a year ago hybrid sales roles come onto the scene. Now, you mentioned before hybrid sales roles are not just like regular hybrid roles where people are working half time at home, but we're really seeing they're spending about half their time working face to face with customers, about half their time on on video or connecting in some virtual way.

Mark Donnolo
Right. In hybrid is a little different here, too, because they're really trying to match up to what their customer does. So if they're customers working hybrid or their customers are working remote, the salesperson is probably going to work remote as well because they're not going to show up to an office with nobody there. Right.

Michelle Seger
Right.

Mark Donnolo
Okay. So big, big reveal of hybrid about a year ago. So we've seen that as the fastest growing sales job category. About 54% of companies are increasing hybrid sales role headcount. So that one is in the lead. It used to be, Michelle, inside sales to point number three there. Inside sales was the fastest growing up until the pandemic, but it's still second fastest now.

Michelle Seger
So, you know, Mark, and we go back to 2019, it was the hiring rate was 15 to 1 for every sales role. So our field sales role, so 15 inside to every field salespeople that was hired.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah. So so you can see these are growing in a big way. They're projected to continue to grow as well. And then you mentioned brick and mortar, Michelle. You can see 52% of companies increasing retail sales headcount. Okay. That that is a net increase. That's not just accounting for a lot of high turnover in retail, but it's a net sales net increase in retail sales headcount.

Mark Donnolo
So that's big. So what we're starting to see here and we'll talk about this, we go along is omnichannel is getting stronger right. So people want to buy in different ways. You talked about the clothing. People want to buy in different ways and companies are outfitting to do that. Right. So they're getting ready to do that. So so brick and mortar strong.

Mark Donnolo
And then let's continue on to see where else the story leads. The the organization hiring, though. And again, we'll color this with some recent news. The hiring has not been to the level that they predicted last year. So you see that these are big increases in headcount. They had actually projected faster increases in headcount. I think some of that is due to the whole war for talent that that things have been tight in terms of hiring.

Mark Donnolo
We're now seeing it swing around the other way, which is more layoffs. And and I will say, like every time we talk about this, it was about a year and a half ago we were doing our predictions. We said this is going to happen. We said this is a short run phenomenon and we're going to start to see a swing back around and we're going to find a new equilibrium, which we are starting to already see.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah, I.

Michelle Seger
Don't think we've reached it yet have.

Mark Donnolo
We. We have. We haven't reached the yet. No. No. So it's been you know, in short, without going on in my whole economic speech, it's been a it's been a short one. This disequilibrium where you've got a shortage in supply of of of from the sellers, the sellers being people that are selling their labor. And you've got a and then you've got a short run increase in demand from the buyers that's going to drive price up.

Mark Donnolo
So we're seeing that war for talent. Yeah. So point number six will get deeper into this in a few minutes, but companies are doing certain things to get people. So about 52% of organizations are increasing base pay. And we'll talk about that and some of the variables around that to reduce turnover and to get new people in about a third of organizations are offering things like sign on bonuses to get new talent.

Mark Donnolo
So they're taking some drastic measures and we'll dip into that in a few minutes. But the big question here, and we're dealing with this with a lot of clients is what do you do in terms of getting your organization ready for where things are going from an omnichannel standpoint? So how do you design the right coverage model in the right roles?

Mark Donnolo
And then from a talent standpoint, what's your value proposition? How are you going to hold on to the people that you need and how are you going to get new people without just throwing more base pay at them? And we have to start to look at how do we strengthen our messaging and our value proposition to our people about about what we offer.

Mark Donnolo
So really, really important point. And I want to take a look at a question here. Is the move to hybrid increasing sales rep capacity? In other words, with less travel, can they cover more accounts? Yes. From Steve. Yes, Steve. I mean, I think I agree with you and I think that you're getting more efficiency because you can obviously make more video calls than you can make individual sales calls.

Mark Donnolo
So that I think that's a big input to how do we calculate sales capacity. So when you're doing your sales capacity model, you should have probably higher frequency or higher velocity for those hybrid roles is.

Michelle Seger
When we ask people, though not don't make it a one for one. So if you believe you've saved, I'm going to make up 20 hours a week in travel time. Let's say that's what it was by being on a plane or driving or whatever you're not going to get a 20 hour a week capacity change. So just remember that, right?

Michelle Seger
It's not really going to be a one for one conservatively, mark, we usually put in about 50% depending on other activities or other things. You have the reps doing. We talked about they need to be better problem solvers and some companies are still ramping there. So we've gone as low as 30%, but you should see an uplift in capacity.

Michelle Seger
Yeah.

Mark Donnolo
And I think you've got to take a real measurement on that, that point, which is do your sales time allocation, we use sales time optimizer or whatever to use, but make sure you understand what kind of call volume or visit volume you're getting in those hybrid roles. Don't just guess at it. Right. And then and then update your capacity model for them.

Michelle Seger
Understand where your people are spending their time. Yeah.