Partner Article

HR and Sales: Can you spot the difference?

It’s HR focus week on Bdaily. Here, Lee Durham, partner at durhamlane, reveals the symbiotic relationship of sales and HR.

I have often said that all business professionals could improve their performance by adopting tried and tested selling techniques.

This is particularly true for anyone working in HR – a profession that requires excellent people skills, top quality communicators and the ability to win boardroom buy-in on often alien concepts ranging from workplace wellbeing strategies to the latest employee benefits.

HR professionals are tasked with earning the commitment and motivation of employees by showcasing opportunities for career progression and training.

What’s that got to do with sales?

Well, in the same way that sales people must ensure they are always cultivating new leads and managing relationships with potential clients, HR professionals are required to energise and retain employees in order for talent to progress up and through the organisation.

Attract, then retain

HR professionals need to sell their organisation as a great place to work in order to attract the best talent. They need to create a pipeline to ensure there is a constant flow of talent joining the organisation and progressing through it.

Successful Sales Professionals are not only natural communicators, with experience in managing relationships across a variety of people; they are also very good at planning for the future to ensure business continues to flow. It is these people who will benefit first when the economy starts to improve.

We believe these are exactly the kinds of skills HR professionals need if they are to convince employees to stay with them for the upturn.

Thinking ahead

When you think about it, succession planning and building up a sales pipeline of future prospects are just two of the strategies embedded in the sales professional today that can be utilised across the board in the HR department.

Sales professionals retain customers by keeping in touch and up to date with their consumer or business needs, and by providing them with relevant information about the product or service they are selling. Similarly, HR professionals need to keep hold of their top talent (which, come the upturn, could become more of a challenge) by nurturing their ability and interests, ensuring they are provided with adequate training and support and are engaged in their role.

Just as sales professionals sell the ‘vision’ to their clients, HR needs to look long term with employees. Managers with a ten-year career plan will be far more likely to commit to the business than those surrounded by insecurity or no idea of what their future looks like.

A clear communication plan is essential when implementing an effective succession planning strategy. This will ensure employees understand how they can use it to their advantage whilst also appreciating the value and opportunity provided to them by their employer.

As the economy picks up talent management will become even more important because employees will have more opportunities to move jobs. And news that UK’s GDP increased by 1% in the third quarter, the fastest recorded growth in five years, certainly suggests that the economic outlook is brighter.

So, what can HR do to drive this attitude and culture into everyday performance? Here are FOUR useful take-aways:

1. Target focused

Love them or loathe them, sales targets provide focus and are highly measurable. While a ‘targets structure’ might not work right across an HR department, having clear goals and measurable outcomes is key to driving successful business. Effective sales teams get this right every time.

2. Win-win negotiation

Having the ability to put your feet in the shoes of your customer is a key sales skill. Working hard to understand what the other party (let’s say, a new recruit or focus group) is trying to achieve will allow HR to react more personably and to encourage growth of personnel right across the business.

3. Adopt a pro-active, hungry and ambitious outlook

HR Directors should encourage their teams to develop a culture of ‘what else can we do?’ Successful sales professionals are always thinking this in order to ensure their pipeline continues to grow and they continue to win new business.

4. Planning for success

Sales professionals have to plan. Without planning it is not possible to know where time can be spent most productively. HR professionals can build a strategy for success in the same way. How much work goes into project planning, whether that is introducing new benefits to rolling out flexible working practices? Without planning, success will be hard to deliver.

Are pro-active selling strategies running through the HR team at your organisation? If not, it could be worth starting to think about how close the two professions live to one another, and asking: If HR could sell, how much more effective would it be?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by durhamlane .