Turning Challenges into Opportunities as the Great Reshuffle Threatens Relationship Continuity

Have you felt more turnover among your buyers and within your own company recently?

You aren’t alone. Globally, turnover among sales professionals is up 26% year-over-year. And, among buyers, it’s even higher, with turnover up 28% year-over-year, according to insights drawn from the Economic Graph.

In an industry that’s as dependent on relationships, trust, and continuity as sales is, all of this churn and turnover poses a particularly profound challenge: 

How should we adapt our understanding of how sales works to keep up with a professional network that’s always changing?

To answer that question, we pulled together an A-Team. Episode 1 of Sales Think Tank, “Selling Through the Great Reshuffle,” features host Liam Halpin asking Donald C Kelly, Jake Dunlap, and Mitali Pattnaik for their thoughts on how workforce disruption is changing sales, and their best advice on how to change with it.

Catch the full episode here. Or, if you’re short on time, read on for a highlight reel of insights and ideas we found most striking. 

What sales team challenges are surfaced by this period of higher employee turnover?

In simplest terms, the Great Reshuffle presents two main challenges for sales teams. Kelly summarized these as:

1. Retaining a continuity of trust in the professional relationship when a buyer and/or seller leaves a company
2. Forecasting at a time when decision-makers and salespeople alike are leaving their companies mid-pipeline

“It’s very challenging for sales leaders to predict the future when the people who are supposed to be carrying their pipelines are leaving.” - Donald C Kelly

How can sales leaders manage these new risks within their pipeline? 

Multithreading your relationships in client accounts has always been important, but during The Great Reshuffle it became absolutely essential. Sales teams need to make sure they have multiple sales reps establishing multiple, diverse relationships within any client or prospect’s organization to prevent a “single point of failure.”

If a key decision-maker leaves the organization, it's important to have rapport built with other individuals who can sustain your connection with the account. It's also important to have multiple members of your own sales team threaded into the account so you won’t be left in the lurch should one of your reps leave unexpectedly. 

Today, selling is a team sport and so is buying. Don't leave yourself vulnerable with one-to-one relationships.

“Multithreading shouldn’t just happen on the customer side; it should be happening on your side, as well.” - Jake Dunlap

What part does technology play—and what part CAN it play—in mitigating risks of the Great Reshuffle?

Technology can play a pivotal role in successful multithreading. Tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator help establish internal and external multithreading by giving all salespeople a central database where they can upload and access all prospect information across accounts easily.

These tools allow for the creation of account maps depicting relationships and company hierarchies. Use them to keep track of pipeline process and relationship history, onboard new prospects and hires alike, and share prospect information across the entire team.

The trick to utilizing this technology is creating a culture of sharing and collaboration using the tools you have. Get your sales team to use their CRM—it’s more important than ever! 

“As a sales leader, you have to encourage your teams not to hold back their relationships and interactions to themselves. There has to be a culture of collaboration and sharing within a sales organization. The tools can’t create that culture, but they can definitely assist.” - Mitali Pattnaik

What are some of the new opportunities created by the Great Reshuffle?

It’s not all bad! In fact, according to Dunlap, the Great Reshuffle could make for the best year to be in sales… ever. 

“When do you think decision-makers make new purchasing decisions?” Dunlap inquired. “When they’re new at a new company — by day 60 or day 90. So there will be more decision-makers going to new companies and buying new things than ever before.”

As Kelly notes, the Great Reshuffle and the shift to remote work offers a huge opportunity for talent acquisition, as well.

“Hiring has totally opened up,” he said. “You don’t need to get people to move to headquarters anymore. You can open up your hiring rader to a much wider cast of people. Getting outside of that bubble helps. You get a better diversity of ideas, race, and gender … and a more diverse team sells more.”

How can sales teams capitalize on these opportunities?

The experts were in agreement: virtual selling isn’t going anywhere, and the Great Reshuffle probably isn’t dissipating anytime soon. The best way to find success in the “new normal” of sales, therefore, is to embrace it. Don’t just anticipate high turnover internally and externally — turn it into an advantage. 

“We have teams setting up Sales Navigator to include lists of all their companies, all their points of contact, and all their influencers, looking at the people who changed jobs, and flagging those people for new business. There’s a massive opportunity for companies to grow this year just by paying attention to who’s leaving jobs and going to target accounts.” - Jake Dunlap

For more tips on navigating the Great Reshuffle as a sales team, including how to approach meetings, how to build relationships, and how to use technology to create a multithreading culture, check out the full episode: Selling Through the Great Reshuffle.