Enterprise Sales Hiring – COVID Times

The shift to remote work has happened en masse.  The digital wave is sweeping over every industry, and the way we sell is changing with it.  

How have these changes impacted the types of Enterprise Sales skills in demand by SaaS hiring firms? 

What selling skills are SaaS companies now looking for when hiring Enterprise Sales candidates?  What impact has COVID had on the selling skills in demand?  With the acceleration of Digital, are many individuals being left behind and finding it tougher to find new jobs? Are salary levels going to fall for Enterprise sellers as they are now 100% home-based?

What has changed in the last 12 months due to the acceleration of remote selling? 

With the impact of COVID now 12 months in, we have now listened to many stories of how hiring decisions and choice of shortlisted candidates have been impacted.

One of biggest challenges we have identified, concerns the group of Sales Executives whom up until COVID spent most of their working week travelling on the road to meet and sell to customers, partners and prospects on a face-to-face basis.  Literally overnight, many of this group have had to switch to selling exclusively via online tools such as Teams or Zoom.  This was a totally new experience for many in this group who often excelled in a face-to-face selling environment.

 

Many such Enterprise Sales reps have been caught like rabbits in the car headlights and are struggling.  For instance, they can be slow in their use of screen-sharing, are poor on camera, and can have appalling backdrops during calls – struggling to adapt to remote, video-selling in the “new normal.”  Some seem to be waiting for the “old-normal” to return so they can resume their field selling activities.

 

 The Death of the traditional Enterprise Sales Rep?

 

Upskill an SDR or retrain an Enterprise Sales Rep?

A common and topical question for SaaS companies looking to hire a home-based, remote seller:  

“Do you upskill your Sales reps who are already great selling B2B via video or hire a traditional Field-based, Enterprise seller who can instead adapt to  selling extensively via video-calling?”

 

On the other hand, there is a group of sellers who have embraced remote selling via video for a number of years.  Often at Sales Development Rep (SDR), Account Executive (AE) or MidMarket level, they have solid experience of selling remotely.  

Fluent with screen sharing, at ease on camera, the video call is their stage and they are often head and shoulders above in their sales performance compared to many of their Enterprise colleagues when it comes to video selling.

What this group often require is the latest Digital Age Enterprise sales training and support to elevate to the Enterprise selling level.

 

Conclusion

Unless Enterprise Sales Executives can adapt, they may well find it incredibly difficult to find their next role.  Their salaries are often much higher than the SDR / AE level candidates.  What we have noticed is much demand to hire the “in between” candidate.  Someone who has provenly sold via video and is ready to take the plunge of Enterprise Selling.  The salary levels tend to be in between the two profiles meaning salary levels could start to drop for Enterprise Sellers.  Interesting times ahead…

 

Register for our Webinar, Tuesday March 23rd @ 4.30pm GMT:

“Enterprise Selling in the Digital Age”