We welcome February with this month’s state of the industry focus on finding and maintaining quality employees—long viewed as one of the most vexing challenges for not only the office dealer ecosystem but all businesses. As unemployment levels hover at historic lows across the country, the ability to recruit candidates—particularly for technical and sales-oriented positions—becomes more essential.
As does maintaining your existing staff. And no one area of a dealer’s operation is more susceptible to turnover than the sales team.
So how do dealers ply their star account representatives? Let’s turn to our panel of dealers.
Rebecca Graham, HR manager for Nashville, Tennessee-based Novatech, doesn’t believe a one-size-fits-all approach can be applied across the board. Account representatives value having autonomy in their roles and appreciate having supportive and knowledgeable leaders at their disposal.
“Monthly and quarterly promotional programs have been successful for Novatech sales professionals,” Graham said. “We also have an Employee of the Quarter that entails financial and paid time off perks, as well as a Circle of Excellence award, an annual, all-expenses-paid trip for the employee and a guest. That’s a nice motivator.”
For Fraser AIS of West Reading, Pennsylvania, employees can see and feel the contribution their work makes in the direction the company is growing, notes Lauren Christman, HR generalist. Beyond an excellent total rewards package and compensation structure, Fraser AIS offers internal incentive bonuses including President’s Club trips, tickets to Eagles and Flyers games in Philadelphia, an annual awards banquet and achievable sales promotions each quarter.
“Being able to impact the trajectory of an innovative company while being compensated and recognized for your efforts and having the resources and support to be successful is how we are able to attract and maintain our top team members,” Christman said.
Flexibility Perks
Having a highly-competitive compensation plan is a good starting point, but Kevin Fries, human resources manager for Eakes Office Solutions of Grand Island, Nebraska, notes that representatives also place a high value on a flexible work environment and having time to take care of personal matters. Small perks, seemingly insignificant on their own merit, tend to carry considerable weight for sales reps.
Fries notes that finding quality reps from the field of available candidates has become more difficult in the past two years. That prompted the dealer to change its approach. Rather than seeking experienced reps to indoctrinate into Eakes’ system, the dealer now looks for a good cultural fir, first and foremost.
“We look for the desire, the underlying skills,” Fries said. “We use a lot of pre-employment testing to see what their motivators are, along with personality and behavior tests. Now we’ll find a good candidate and just teach them the rest.”
While imageOne of Oak Park, Michigan, boasts employees with tenure ranging from five to 25 years, cultivating long-term sales reps is a process that’s difficult to “figure out and replicate,” according to Josh Britton, vice president of operations. It’s a process of seeing what works and what doesn’t, but also offloading non-revenue generating activities from their plate.
“We all have activities that sap you of energy, and others that energize you,” Britton said. “It’s understanding what the makeup is of each person. The more things that give them energy in the sales space, the more productive they’re going to be and how happy they will be in doing it. The most important thing is to make sure that we throw in every support possible for them to be successful.”
Constant Engagement
An aggressive bonus and commission structure that is highly exponential has been critical in keeping representatives engaged, according to Matteo Recanatini, director of marketing for Offix of Gainesville, Virginia. The dealer sets challenging but achievable goals which are “dialed up or down” depending on their performance. But they tend to become easily bored when not challenged, he said.
“Continuous education is important, and working for a company that is prestigious helps,” Recanatini said. “As a company, we enter to win a lot of awards and recognitions, so that when the reps share their business card, they do it with pride.”
Arming reps with the necessary tools to be successful is essential, and Offix recently switched to Salesforce and built a tailored customer relationship management platform based on feedback from the representatives. “We’re trying to make what they consider the most boring part of their job easy as possible so they’ll use it well and become more successful.”
