All businesses want to improve sales and partnerships in their chosen area. One of the ways to achieve this is through diverse sales teams. We all know that workplace diversity is important for so many reasons. An inclusive environment can keep and attract its best talent. This can reduce the negative social effects of unconscious bias within the workplace.
The common types of diversity include race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, age, religion, education, political beliefs, disability, and socioeconomic background. Let’s look at the ways to improve sales team diversity:
- Address Unconscious Bias: It is possible that some managers could have unconscious biases that they unintentionally express in their employee recruitment processes. These biases can negatively affect candidates and employees from marginalized groups. For example, a hiring manager who loves athletics might find it easier to talk to candidates with similar interests. However, people who engage in these activities may have a different aesthetic look than the average person. Therefore, the manager who relies too much on “the perfect aesthetic look” in the hiring process might create unfair advantages for certain candidates.
- Host Recruitment Events: Managers can work directly with universities to host in-person and virtual recruitment events for underrepresented and underprivileged students. These events might include information sessions and panel discussions in which representatives from the organization discuss career opportunities. They might also have workshops to help underrepresented students improve their resumes and interviewing skills. These events will help in attracting talent who otherwise would not have the opportunity.
- Create Inclusive Job Openings: Managers should ensure people from diverse backgrounds have every opportunity to apply for open positions to help create a diverse sales team. Hiring teams should avoid gendered language (e.g. salesman) from job postings to help attract women and nonbinary candidates. The titles Sales Professional or Sales Representative are more gender-neutral titles. The managers should also avoid words like aggressive and go-getter, which reinforce the stereotype that sales is primarily a profession for ambitious men. Sales is a profession all people have the opportunity to progress, thrive, and achieve.
- Collect Diversity and Inclusivity Data: Sales managers should try to improve diversity and inclusivity in the workplace by collecting pertinent data to gauge the effectiveness of those efforts. These are ways to identify trends, sales managers can also evaluate the diversity of all applicant pools, interview pools, new hires, and new promotions. For example, if underrepresented groups rarely make it into the applicant pool, managers might reconsider their recruitment strategies and efforts.
Harvey MacKay said it best “To me, job titles don’t matter. Everyone is in sales. It is the only way we stay in business”. Even while improving diverse sales teams, we must remember that everyone plays a critical part within the organization. No role is too great and everyone is a contributor.