Many businesses are now reassessing their sales budgets due to the Cost of Living crisis and economic uncertainty with the hope of cutting losses.
The great resignation has shown us what it means to onboard new candidates. From talent searches, interviews, checks and training all taking months to accomplish, the hidden costs of a bad hire is a costly risk that many businesses cannot afford in this climate.
Did you know that nine million UK workers have changed jobs since the start of the Covid pandemic and that the UK employment rate was lower than the previous quarter according to the Labour Market Overview Report?
The sales sector has not been immune to the recruitment challenge and it can impact results. On top of how to navigate through the recruitment challenge, here are some strategies to buoy your business during uncertain times.
Cutting sales budgets can be counter-intuitive
Many businesses choose to cut sales and advertising first in order to preserve other departments. Mistakenly, a lot of leaders think that sales is an optional part of business, but in reality, your sales team helps you turn your leads into paying customers.
Without them, you will have no system in place to convert these leads and your sales will effectively drop.
Review your sales strategies
Instead of cutting your budget, why not consider these other methods below?
- Reassessing your current sales strategy
- Automating any non-essential steps in the process
- Outsourcing completely to a ready-made sales team which can save you time and money
These methods can really help you in changing the course of your business and also show you just how important your sales team is.
The hiring strategy for sales employees are critical
The REC posted a great article detailing the hidden costs of a bad hire which included:
- 40% of hires turn out to be bad hires within 18 months
- UK businesses are wasting billions every year because of the volume of hiring mistakes being made.
- A poor hire at mid-manager level with a salary of £42,000 can cost a business more than £132,000
- The hidden costs involved in bad recruitment include money wasted on training, lost productivity, and increased staff turnover
It can take a minimum of 2 months to recruit and onboard a desk-based sales person. By the time that they have a sales pipeline together, you may find that you’ve spent months of your time and energy on a recruit that will leave the role for another opportunity.
The ONS provided an extensive study from 2010-2018 which followed those who stayed in their roles and those who changed. It found that, on average, around 9% of people changed jobs each year in order to have better salaries or progression opportunities.
Especially during a recession or economic crisis, many employers simply cannot afford to raise salaries or hire new recruits who will leave shortly after being onboarded.
There is another option for effective sales
Outsourcing your sales to a fully established sales team that is heavily experienced in media sales and selling print and digital media is a huge advantage to a company and also keeps business leaders safe from the risks and expense of hiring an internal sales team.
This is why Pitchfire offers tailored strategies and plans for businesses needing to find a budget-friendly and reliable way to keep their sales strong in the face of a crisis! Contact the team today to start your journey.