Increasing Revenue Through Diversity

A Team That Looks Like The World

How do you increase revenue with the same amount of people leveraging a population that is diverse? Diversity is about race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age… and looking at your workforce through a wider lens that can increase revenue, creativity and individual responsibility.

We recently completed a Senior Account Executive Diversity search. The decision for the search was driven at the board level with an objective of acquiring Top Talent that would both look like and think like their customers…The World.

Hiring Sales and Presales leaders has changed over the last few months. Questions about a leader’s approach to hiring for diversity and leading diverse teams are now becoming a staple of the interview process. It is not seen as hitting minority quotas, rather hiring top talent from outside their networks. 

There are a lot of reasons why diversity matters, including research that shows heterogeneous teams outperform homogeneous teams. Concerning the diversity search we just completed, the VP of Sales maintained their high standards when deciding on the candidate.

Essential Revenue Generation roles: Sales & Presales

Harvard Business School’s US Competiveness report identified that technology sales and presales positions are among the hardest to fill. As a consequence, most sales and presales teams are built homogenously through the network of the leader and their team.  

Conversely, the unknown of hiring talent from a different network, lifestyle or culture has risks. Since the career potential of a leader is dependent upon the performance of their team, leaders have a vested interest to acquire a team of A-Players.  

Hiring talent that is only in your network can insert a bottleneck into the talent pipeline by limiting exposure to A-Player talent that could add a different perspective and wisdom. Unlocking Diversity increases your talent pool, addresses our changing environment and reduces the risk of falling behind.

What is an A-Player? 

• A desire to compete – No excuses. They put themselves on the line and take responsibility for their performance.
• A champions mindset - Unwavering faith in your company’s ability to achieve and the belief that winning is inevitable, not a remote possibility.
• Accountability & Confidence in their ability to endure failure, recover from it, and persevere.
• Integrity - If they lack integrity, there is a cost to winning today and in the long run.
• Think ahead, anticipate and act - They anticipate what’s coming so they can adequately prepare. Moreover, they have an innate sense of urgency to move quickly.

In addition, they are role models for your company’s core values and beliefs.

Missing from the aforementioned definition is research which suggests that leaders too often have a perceived bias that A-Players look just like them. That bias impacts their decisions on how they evaluate talent, and can blindly use entrenched ways of thinking to make errors in hiring decisions. 

How Does Diversity Work?

Research has shown that by breaking up workplace homogeneity, diverse teams are more likely to constantly reexamine facts and remain objective. They also encourage greater scrutiny of each member’s actions, keeping their joint cognitive resources sharp and vigilant to cover each other’s blind spots. 

What does your definition of Diversity look like? Does it revolve around gender, ethnicity or age? Gender and racial diversity may be the most talked about, but there are other kinds of diversity that can enhance your organization. When thinking of diversity, do you also include thought patterns, upbringings, past experiences or simply people outside of your network?

People view the Diversity of their homogenous group as sufficient based on the array of colleges/universities represented, regional representation i.e. east coast, west coast, southern, etc. These homogenous groups of different “thinkers” are incorrectly considered diverse. This keeps leaders from seeing the sameness on their teams. 

One of the key business advantages of diversity is the ability to apply a range of perspectives to the problems your company needs to solve. In the McKinsey report “Why Diversity Matters”, a sales team that looks like the World will perform at least 35% better than their homogeneous counterparts. In addition, the report talks to the best companies for gender diversity were 21% more likely to enjoy above average profitability. HBR also found that an employee who shares a customer's ethnicity is 152% more likely to understand their customers and needs. 

There is not a lot of empirical evidence to suggest that minorities will only trust other minorities in the buying process, however, more diverse teams can help craft further relevant and lucrative messaging for a wider contingent of customers.

The HBR study further discovered that having a lack of diversity in leadership presented a significant barrier to diverse perspectives seeing the light of day. Without diverse leadership, women are 20% less likely than straight white men to win endorsement for their ideas; people of color are 24% less likely; and LGBTs are 21% less likely. This costs their companies crucial market opportunities, because inherently diverse contributors understand the unmet needs.

Putting Diversity to Work

When it comes to the bottom line, as mentioned, there are hundreds of studies that prove diverse teams outperform more homogenous ones. That’s because diverse perspectives and experiences add value in a variety of ways, from messaging to ideation and beyond. If your team is a study in sameness, you’re leaving money on the table.

Benefits of diverse teams are numerous, especially if you find it challenging to hire Top Performers that consistently exceed their quota. Going outside of your network:

• Eliminates “Groupthink” and fosters a culture of different perspectives that drives better relations with customers and close deals.
• Increase diverse ideas to drive innovation. Sameness, on the other hand, results in staleness.
• Significantly expands the talent pool and increases your chances of landing A-Players. 

Sales and presales teams need to find and nurture great athletes. Balancing the talents and skills of a heterogeneous team that can play off each other creates a strong and resilient team that will exceed their quotas and get the leaders promoted.

 90%+ Hiring Success Rate

 Does anyone not want an expanded talent pool with A+ Players to select from? To ensure you hire the right talent, there are a number of factors you need in the interview process including having a structured interview process that injects Truth Serum into the interviews.

Dr. Brad Smart, author of Topgrading states that the most effective part of the Topgrading process is the "Truth Serum", which has worked to scare away undesirable candidates for decades. And no, you don't need Sodium Pentothal. Learn how to administer the Truth Serum HERE. 

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Are you looking to eliminate your team’s blind spots, improve your hiring process or build high performing teams? Schedule a call and learn how we can help HERE.

Steven Shaffer is the Founder/President of GRN Beachwood, Ranked by Forbes Magazine as a Top 20 Executive Recruiting Firm. Follow us on LinkedIn or at Global Recruiters of Beachwood.