The Sales Hacker Podcast
The Sales Hacker Podcast

Episode · 3 years ago

Friday Fundamentals EP 17: How to Build Diversity Into Your Sales Team


On this episode of Friday Fundamentals, we discuss how to build diversity in your sales team. You will WIN at sales if you add diversity. By adding a diverse team to your roster, you learn the perspectives of others... and you'll increase your sales along the way? 

Hey everybody, it's Sam Jacobs. Welcome to Friday fundamentals or super excited to have you. We've got our guest from this week, Simon Tate, who is the founder of heartspace consulting, Heart Space and why, and she's here to talk to us about how to build diversity and how to emphasize diversity into your hiring process because, as we've seen and as we know, the more diverse you are, the more you're going to grow revenue. I think diverse companies grow twenty percent or nineteen percent faster than nondiverse companies. So we're going to ask that question, but first we want to tell you, of course, about our sponsors. They're the reason why're here. Friday fundamentals is brought to you by outreach. Outreach triples the productivity of sales teams and empowers them to drive predictable and measurable revenue growth by prioritizing the right activities and scaling customer engagement with intelligent automation. Outreach makes customer facing teams more effective and improves visibility into what really drives results. Now, without further ADO, and by the way, March is women's history months or we're super excited to have Simon on.

But Simone, how do you build diversity and how do you make diversity a focus of your hiring process so that you can achieve your diversity goals for Your Business? Hi, Sam, thanks so much for having me and that's a really great question. I diversity is in the forefront and, if it's not, should be at the forefront of all of the hiring efforts that are happening in your organization, in your sister organizations. Thinking about the tech industry as a whole especially, I'd say the very first thing is look for the talent. I think there's this I'm debunking, that the talent isn't there and that they get caught up in the pipeline. That's simply not true. There are so many women, so many people of color, so many really talented just entry level, mid career, senior leadership that's out there and part of...

...your job and part of your fiduciary responsibility to the company you're with is to find that talent. If they're not coming to you, be really intentional about how you're finding them. I mean it could be as simple as linkedin. Of course, it could be putting and investing some of your recruiting dollars into working with the third party recruiter that has access to a more diverse pipeline. It could be in some cases just not hiring into that position until you have someone with a more diverse background or a woman or someone along those lines in that position, and that's okay to do, I would say. The second thing is definitely in the interview process. So I'm a big fan of pros functional interviewing and also peer to peer interviewing. So making sure that in their...

...interview process they're not just interviewing with the hiring manager in the HR person, if you have HR person right, they're actually interviewing with the manager, someone that would be their pair, someone that they would be working with, one or two people that are not in that function at all from a different team to interview them as well. That's really important because what you are hopefully combating there is unconscious bias, right, and we all come with influences and stereotypes and unconscious bias scenarios definitely infiltrate the interview process. The third big thing, sticking to the interview I would say, is making sure that your questions aren't just all about skill. That's really important and there are ways to figure out if that person is the or has the right skill set for the function, in the job that you need them in their take homes. They're all sorts of things that you can do. But ask some of the behavioral questions and,...

...of course, in line with like you know hr and what it means, you shouldn't be asking someone too personal, you know too much of their personal lives, but you can certainly ask them about the last book that they've read, about, I think, have any hobbies. Things like that are really important. There's a really fun question that I tend to ask sometimes in interviews, and I do it with all my new hires anyway, and that is, you know three people, dead or alive, for your dinner guests. WHO WOULD THEY BE? You know, and that that's a really interesting one. I've learned about plenty of people that I didn't know about just from asking that question. But really giving the interview were and the interview wee a chance to break down those walls of bias or conscious bias that might be happening there, I would say you know, definitely. The fourth thing, and this happens, is that companies it's never too early to institute diversity training.

And you know I'm using the word diversity training, but I don't even want to call it training anymore. It should be the golden threads throughout an organization. So I'm not talking about one time having a diversity training for the entire organization. I mean doing things throughout the year, every single quarter. That our core to the mission of the company that's committed to diversity and Sam you're right. There is Forbes reported on this at last year that companies that have diverse teams also have nineteen percent more revenue. And that's not a drop in the bucket. That is that is a major correlation between having people with different backgrounds, you know, different places, geographically, different races, gender, all across the board. That is directly tied to their revenue. So it...

...behooves all of us and it is totally our responsibility to influence how how we're hiring for more diversity. That's great feedback, Simone. Thank you so much so, if you were, if you're listening at home, make sure you're sourcing diverse candidates and then build it directly into the interview process. Use questions that don't cross over the line in terms of HR appropriateness, but questions like Simone mentioned, which are who are three people you might want to have dinner with to understand the diverse backgrounds of the candidates that you're working with and break down some of that unconscious bias and then make sure that diversity training is an ongoing part of your company, not just something you do once a year as lip service to the idea without the substance. If you want to get in touch with with Simone, she's at heart space and line consulting. That's Info at heart space and ycom. Simone, thanks so much for being our guests with the salesaccer podcast this week. We really appreciate it. Sure my pleasure. Awesome, everybody. Thanks for listening. If you want to reach out to me, I'm in Linkedin. That's linkedincom forward. Slash the word in...

...and then forward, Sam f Jacobs, and I'll talk to you next time. have a great weekend, everybody.

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