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The Benefits of Sales Team Diversity

The Benefits of Sales Team Diversity

The subjects of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are leading conversations surrounding best business practices. While discussions about diversity in the workplace have increased over the past few years, these topics are more than just trendy buzzwords. Research suggests that diversity in sales can increase return on investment (ROI) and improve customer satisfaction ratings.

Staying competitive in the sales industry starts with creating a company that attracts diverse talent. Accomplishing this takes more than simply acknowledging the need for a diverse sales team. To benefit from DEI, companies must work to provide welcoming environments that offer a pathway for professional success for employees of varying backgrounds, genders, races, and ethnicities.

Keep reading, or use the links below to see how sales team diversity can help your company succeed:

Diversity Drives Increased Sales

Reasons to create more inclusive work groups

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Every business to business (B2B) company shares one major goal: increasing sales. Successful companies work hard to drive higher sales each year. 

A diverse sales team can be the key to higher numbers. According to a study by Forrester, 60% of sales teams surveyed attributed increased sales to having a diverse and inclusive sales force. 

Creating a diverse work environment means more than hiring from underrepresented groups. Successful teams will create a culture that celebrates diversity and allows these differences to become a driving force for their sales process.

Racial and cultural diversity has been at the forefront of these discussions, and with good reason. According to a 2019 study, only 5% of employees at Silicon Valley tech firms were people of color. The same study found women filled just 28% of roles in the tech industry. 

These numbers provide insight into the glaring DEI issues many industries are still facing.  Along with obvious race and gender gaps, diversity in age and life experience are important for driving increased sales. 

The Census Bureau notes that an annual $4 trillion dollars in buying power comes from Millenials, African Americans, and Latinx populations. Having a diverse sales team that is representative of these groups can help you tap into this lucrative market. 

On top of achieving higher sales numbers, diverse hiring practices can help bridge the gap for unfilled positions. Many companies struggle to fill sales roles with employees who meet or exceed their quotas. By expanding the candidate pool outside of the usual network and into more diverse groups, the time it takes to fill these open positions can decrease.

Sales team diversity also leads to innovation in the workplace. When collaboration is needed to explore new sales tactics, having a team with members from different backgrounds can make a huge difference. 

The Harvard Business Review reports that companies leading in diversity are 45% more likely to report market growth from previous years. This research suggests that sales team diversity drives innovation and allows new ideas to be heard.

Widening Your Lead Pool

Leads are vital for any B2B sales model, and most companies spend time and resources to widen their lead pools. Sales team diversity is another tool to help add leads to your pipeline, and research suggests diversity leads to higher conversions. 

According to Forrester, teams leading in diversity see a conversion rate of 54% for leads to opportunities. In contrast, other teams only see a 26% rate. 

When more groups are represented on your sales team, it is easier for customers to connect with salespeople. This helps engage leads and nurture them throughout the customer journey.

Harvard Business Review found that salespeople who share ethnicity with a potential client are 125% more likely to understand their needs. This statistic shows how vital diversity is for converting leads. When new prospects enter the sales pipeline, being able to provide a positive customer interaction is crucial for landing the sale.

Customer bases are diverse, and reaching out beyond your immediate network can help introduce your team to new leads. It’s important to acknowledge that American consumers expect brands to embrace DEI practices. Forrester found that 55% of consumers will buy from a brand that reflects their personality.

These statistics show how important it is to employ a diverse pool of salespeople. For your sales team to succeed, it is crucial that it be made up of different ethnicities, races, ages, and backgrounds your customer base can relate to. 

40% of Americans identify as diverse, based on race or ethnicity. With such a large group of diverse consumers, sales teams must reflect this reality. 

Increasing ROI With Diversity and Inclusion

Successful sales practices are an investment for any company. These costs include hiring, software, lead generation, customer retention resources, and marketing. The goal of these business investments are to see a higher return due to increased sales conversions.

By attracting a diverse sales team, the ROI for your company can increase. Through higher sales forecasts, lead conversions, sales attainment, and customer satisfaction, DEI can play a huge role in bolstering B2B sales success. 

During a 2021 study, Forrester found that the sales team leading in DEI initiatives had already hit 43% of their sales attainment goals, while other groups were sitting at 31%. Understanding the value of DEI can help set your team apart from those who are lagging in diverse hiring practices.

Among those businesses who lead the way in DEI, 44% believe diversity will continue to play a larger role in business decisions for the next two years. Investing in

inclusive practices will pave the way for future success.

While creating a diverse sales team with an inclusive environment does not happen overnight, taking the necessary steps can pay off by leading your team to higher sales. To begin, analyze the demographics of your existing team and look for areas where improvements are needed. Survey current employees to better understand how their gender, race, or background affects their experience at your company.

Harvard Business Review found that in the absence of diverse leadership, underrepresented groups are less likely to see idea endorsement compared to their counterparts who are straight, white, and male. Women are 20% less likely, LGBTQ+ are 21% less likely, and people of color are 24% less likely to have their suggestions seriously considered.

Understanding how these numbers can harm your business will help unlock insight into ways to drive a higher ROI. Establishing a culture that encourages innovation from diverse employees will help tap into underrepresented markets. 

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Importance of inclusive and diverse marketing ads

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Customers are the most important part of B2B sales. Retaining customers helps increase ROI, as it is five times more expensive to attract new customers than it is to engage current customers. By improving customer satisfaction rates, your company can save money and increase sales conversions.

Sales teams leading the way in DEI report a 24% increase in customer satisfaction scores. Having an accurate representation of your customer base on your sales team can help improve customer relations. 

Leaning on the ideas of your employees can help engage customers in a personal way. By diversifying your sales team in age, race, and gender, each customer can interact with a point-of-contact that understands their needs. 

Along with customer representation, sales team diversity helps bring fresh ideas that can appeal to other demographics. For example, having older employees on your team can help engage customers in the same age group through proper marketing channels.

With multiple generations in the workforce and a diverse American population, understanding motivation is the key to customer success. These varying viewpoints can allow your team to see what types of sales pitches, products, and marketing materials different groups prefer.

Marketing and sales work hand-in-hand to identify and qualify leads. Creating targeted audiences for marketing materials is important for a personalized customer experience. Through DEI practices, these resources are more easily refined to appeal to each target base. 

Through research, Facebook found that 71% of consumers want to see promotion of diversity and inclusion in their online marketing materials.Yet, 54% don’t feel represented in online ads. Utilizing diverse sales teams can help encourage marketing that accurately represents an equally diverse consumer base.

By representing customers accurately, customer loyalty will follow. In fact, 59% of consumers are more loyal to brands with inclusive marketing practices. Incorporating DEI into your hiring practices and customer experiences can have a huge, positive impact on customer loyalty with your brand.

Key Takeaways

Sales team diversity is not just the right thing to do, it has a direct correlation to success in the current market. Investing in the resources, tools, training, and employees who can bring diverse outlooks to your sales team takes time and money, but ultimately increases sales and ROI.

The consumer base wants to feel represented when buying from companies, and diverse sales employees can lead to improved customer experience rates. Alongside marketing tactics, inclusive practices will help engage underrepresented communities and generate brand loyalty.

The research is clear: diversity in the workplace leads to more innovation. Remaining a competitor in B2B sales is vital, and leading teams in DEI see higher sales attainment coupled with longer employee retention. 

Understanding and acknowledging the importance of an inclusive company culture is the first step to creating sales team diversity. Next, listening to employees and improving DEI practices can help launch your B2B sales to a higher level.

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Codemotion 2017 Amsterdam | LeadBoxer

Codemotion is the biggest tech conference in Italy with an international network of 40,000 developers and 350 speakers; It is organised by developers for developers; an ecosystem devoted to innovation and coding.

Codemotion 2017 Amsterdam

On 16th and 17th of May, Codemotion came to Amsterdam for the first time and LeadBoxer was invited to participate as part of the Startup representatives during the event. We had a blast, so we decided to write a short piece on the best moments of the event.

During the two days we got to meet and talk with some of the great tech minds that attended as well as listen to amazing speakers such as Twitter’s Terri Burns, Uber’s Dustin Whittle, Atlassian’s Vincent Kok, and IBM’s James Thomas. We also loved the closing keynote speech by Nathan Marz – “Build it and they will not come: being a programmer in the 21st century”.

Start-up Corner

In our corner of the “room” were some of the most highly disruptive startups of the Amsterdam scene, as well as old friends from the Rockstart accelerator program such as PastBook, Cupenya,  and Impraise. We got to meet many developers, engineers, pitch and showcase our product, as well as network with international companies that were visiting the venue.

We heard there were also some amazing labs to attend but unfortunately we had to tend to our booth and talk with visitors. Next year for sure!

Which were your favourite Codemotion moments? What is the most provocative idea or quote that you can’t get out of your head?

We really enjoyed our two days and can’t wait for the next Codemotion! Thank you for the opportunity to show LeadBoxer to the developer scene and talk Big Data with all of you!

If you follow LeadBoxer’s travels, you can check our previous article from when we visited the Dublin Tech Summit, here.

Cheers,
LeadBoxer team

codemotion-2017-leadboxer-booth

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LeadBoxer Insights Vol. 1: Dublin Bound

It all started 23 years ago when I was born in…just kidding. Hello, my name is Yordan Tachev. I came to Amsterdam from Bulgaria almost 5 years ago to pursue a bachelor’s. Since then, I’ve worked here and there mostly in Business Development and Sales. I recently jumped the opportunity to work at LeadBoxer just a couple of months after graduating, because I’ve always found the start-up environment thrilling. I am currently working as a Sales and Marketing professional, assisting both teams with operational activities and witty jokes.

This is the first of many blogs I will be writing to show some insights into life at LeadBoxer. I am very excited to share the ups and downs of getting a startup to the next level. This week I am delighted to share with you, our recent trip to Dublin and the Tech Conference we attended as well as the start of my time here at LeadBoxer.

It was just another normal day at work when out of nowhere my team asked me if I would like to join them in Dublin for the Tech Summit. You can imagine my surprise when I heard that! My answer was, “Hell yeah, when do we leave?”

Fast forward two weeks to the 14th of February, and I was anxiously waiting at work, with my travel suitcase packed and my mind full of all the improbable scenarios which I will face with LeadBoxer, like closing at least 10 deals in the first hour or talking with investors and impressing them…yeah, as if.

We arrived in Dublin around 20:00 PM and although we worked the whole day before our flight, I was full of energy and eager to explore. The plan was to find some food and delve into what this vibrant city has to offer. Well, the only things we found at that late hour were burgers and beers, which was more than perfect for us! After rewarding ourselves for surviving this far, we walked around the busy streets trying to absorb in mere hours a culture that has existed since the 10th century AD.

However, we were there to work and not on vacation. Early in the morning, we were ready to conquer the world…eh, the tech summit, I mean. We quickly set up the booth, and with coffee in hands, started probing our surroundings. Surprisingly, there were not a lot of people at 8:00 in the morning, go figure!

Around 11:00 AM people started pouring in and overrunning the defenseless salespeople all around us. After that, everything was a bit of a blur. I don’t think I have ever spoken with so many people in my life! But I can say one thing for sure, it was amazing! Everyone was buzzing around, exchanging ideas, demoing products, and talking tech!

The craziness continued for several hours. When I wasn’t talking with people, I was updating our followers on all the social media channels in existence or drinking copious amounts of coffee. When I managed to finally look at the time, it was already 18:00! We had been standing for almost 10 hours. I couldn’t even remember the feeling I was having, but I’m pretty sure it was something that rhymes with wired.

Surely, it should be over, right? Right? Apparently, it is customary after a long day at work to go drink and socialize with the other companies that attend the event. After several hours of drinking and appearing on all of the venues we were invited to, it was time to head home.

The second day was a bit slower. Most people did not appear before 10:00 AM, it was almost like they stayed up late or something. But as coffee and croissants were swirling around, people started to appear from all the crevices of the building. After lunch, our Co-Founder, Cralan Deutsch represented us at the StartUp100. The presentation was heart-warming and informative, you should have seen it!

We only had a couple of hours left as we had to leave for our flight around 16:00 PM. Therefore, we decided to give it all we had left. We mustered all the strength we had and the business cards started flying.

Before you know it, it was time to leave. We packed our bags, closed the laptops, and with pockets full of contacts and heads full of new adventures, we headed towards the airport. It was my first conference, and before I even realized it, it was over. We ate only junk food, we were up on our feet the whole day, we didn’t sleep much, we couldn’t see all that Dublin has to offer, but it was one of the best experiences ever, and I wouldn’t change it for the world! Check out the post on Codemotion at Amsterdam we participated in too.

Goodbye, Dublin. I hope to see you again soon!

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