'Out there in the blue'. Why mentoring your sales staff makes business sense

Extending the quote from 'Death of a Salesman' most sales staff these days rely on much more than a "smile and a shoeshine" but the feelings of isolation and dislocation combined with high expectations of performance are in many cases still very real.

There are reams written about what mentoring is and what it can achieve. I’m not going to try to add a new definition but it seems to me that mentoring should combine 3 basic elements; skills and knowledge transfer, role and career guidance and a degree of emotional support. Throughout my own career in sales and account management I've benefitted from a lot of training and development but, when I think about it, very little that would count as true mentoring. There were definitely times when I could have used the psycho-social connection that many experts consider to be key to successful mentoring outcomes.

How does your organisation motivate and retain sales staff? In many companies it comes down to a combination of remuneration, reward and recognition. Don’t get me wrong, these are all extremely important but are these traditional approaches to generating staff loyalty and commitment enough?

During some recent meetings with a number of high performing UK companies I was struck by how few had specifically developed or targeted mentoring at sales staff. In any organisation experienced sales staff with depth knowledge about their clients and customers are a highly valuable resource and their accumulated expertise and skills are hard to replace. This is equally true for large and small organisations but for smaller businesses the potential disruption from sales staff churn may be more damaging. There are some stats that suggest sales staff turnover may be up to 30% and it may be even higher for the millennial age group. Is sales force mentoring a solution?

It's impossible to say categorically because, generally speaking, data on the impact of mentoring sales staff in both large and small organisations is thin. There are a number of possible reasons for this. Persuading high performing sales people to become mentors and diverting them from their primary function may be a challenge for the business. There is also some evidence that sales people are ‘lone wolves’ and often unwilling to act as mentors.

Ensuring that sales staff are committed to the organisation and thereby retaining their skills and knowledge makes sound business sense. In many companies sales people work with little oversight and, especially for remote or field-based employees, have to contend with physical and social separation from each other and their colleagues in other departments. Research suggests that sales people are more affected by role ambiguity (the lack of clarity about expectations) than other employees and have an inclination to work alone which can increase their feeling of isolation. The absence of control and interaction may lead to stress. Could reducing this stress have a beneficial impact on sales performance? There is evidence that roles which require or receive less supervision, such as sales, are more positively impacted by mentoring.

Businesses large and small in which there is currently no formal or informal mentoring for sales staff should seriously consider setting up a programme. The costs and time investment is relatively low and the benefits to the employee and the organisation can be significant.