Salesforce laid off a woman on maternity leave

Published: Wed, 04/19/23

April 19, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Welcome back to this week’s edition of The Quota, where we'll distract you from the stresses of work by… talking about work!? In this issue, we look into whether generative AI (like ChatGPT) is likely to take your job, share a Sales Fail about thinking before you speak, and give some advice to a rep whose sales manager accidentally sent them an inappropriate message. Enjoy.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

Need and budget are the 2 biggest factors in whether a prospect connects with a rep

Source: RAIN Group

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

A dealership owner and car salesman in Owensboro, Kentucky were recently arrested and charged with 20 counts of tampering with odometers after a tip led police to Discount Motors. The two men were allegedly rolling back vehicle odometers before selling the cars to unsuspecting customers. Cops found (a lot of) cash, guns, and drugs when they searched the premises. You can read the full story here.
A (now) ex-Salesforce employee recently went viral after posting about her experience with the sales tech giant. McKenzie Gregory says she was out on maternity leave and was washing baby bottles and “humming a damn Wiggles song stuck in my head” when she got the news that she was losing her job. She was surprised, she said, to find out that you could still be laid off while out on maternity leave. You can read her LinkedIn post here and an article about what happened here.

FEATURE

VesnaArt/Shutterstock.com

Is Generative AI Coming for Your Sales Job?

In March, Microsoft launched Viva Sales, an application outfitted with generative AI technology intended to help salespeople draft tailored customer emails, gain insights about customers/prospects, and generate recommendations and reminders. A few weeks later, Salesforce launched their version, Einstein GPT.

Sales has long been viewed as a people-oriented job with many more unpredictable elements than, say, finance or marketing, so the industry has been slower to adopt digital technologies. But according to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, generative AI such as the now (in)famous ChatGPT, made by OpenAI, may well become every salesperson’s indispensable digital assistant.

Because sales interactions produce large volumes of data that need to be organized, such as written communications in emails or texts, recorded audio of conversations, or videos, generative AI is perfectly suited to capture and organize these unstructured and varied data sets. These AI models can then analyze these data sets and make customized recommendations for communications and other future courses of action in regards to a particular client.

But, as you may have heard, generative AI can sometimes be wrong, biased, or inconsistent. The ideal generative AI partner in a sales organization would be trained specifically on the company’s systems and data to lessen the chances of these kinds of errors. But this requires the (rare) expertise of those with knowledge at the intersection of sales and AI. Until then, what can sales organizations do to take advantage of AI without creating more work for themselves?

What AI Can Do for Salespeople

There are certainly a lot of benefits to using AI in sales as it now stands:

Reverse administrative creep. Generative AI can help write emails, respond to requests, organize information, and do other administrative tasks that pile up as organizations grow.
Enhance customer interactions. AI can recommend personalized content for communications with customers based on their preferences, behaviors, and past interactions. Salespeople can accept or reject these recommendations and give feedback to the AI, teaching it to make even better recommendations next time.
Assist sales managers. The time sales managers used to spend looking at reports and analytics can now be spent interacting with AI as a diagnostic tool, querying the system for recommendations on everything from where to focus efforts geographically to how to best motivate particular salespeople and give them constructive feedback.

Given these capabilities, AI has a lot to offer even without building a specialized model in-house for company use (which also happens to be a laborious and time-consuming task). Some companies may find it makes the most sense to develop an internal team of AI experts who are versed in sales, led by a “boundary spanner” – someone who, as the name implies, speaks the language of both AI and sales. Such a boundary spanner would be able to implement sales-friendly AI solutions that are also scalable and sustainable long-term.

“We expect AI-powered technologies to rapidly become every salesperson’s and every sales manager’s digital assistant,” wrote the Harvard Business Review. What generative AI is doing for copywriters and coders, HBR said, it can do for salespeople too.

The same way that inside sales have taken over many tasks that field salespeople used to do, AI is starting to take over tasks that digital and inside salespeople once had to spend precious time on. But complex sales still require a human touch for identifying needs, tailoring sales solutions, and navigating large buying organizations. After all, many people would still rather deal with a human than a robot in a lot of customer service and sales situations (at least for now). So you don’t need to worry about those robots coming for your job… yet.

AVOID THE NEW COMP PLAN BLUES

Rolling out a new comp plan can be a bear. Reps are naturally skeptical, and will push back if they don’t think the changes are for the better.

This is why sales leaders need an effective strategy when rolling out a new comp plan – winging it just won’t cut it.

Palette has put together a (free) guide on the six components of communicating your new comp plan.

Use this guide to get buy-in from your sales team and ensure that any comp plan changes go off without a hitch.

Grab it for free here.

Get the free guide here

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

What year was the Jordan Belfort book, The Wolf of Wall Street, released?

A. 1901
B. 1999
C. 2003
D. 2008

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

This happened at my first corporate sales job and is the biggest lesson I’ve ever gotten in doing research beforehand, as well as thinking before I speak.

I was an AE at an agency and our main client base was FMCG companies (P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, etc.). We provided a variety of services and we tried to visit prospects on-site for introduction meetings as much as possible. One time we went to visit Conagra Brands, my coworkers' account, and I attended as support because I had more experience.

We arrived at the office to meet the prospect. She was a really nice lady and we were walking to an office to pitch our services. On the way, I spotted a painting on the wall that looked very familiar. Out loud I said, "Cool, is that the KFC man?" to which she replied "No, that's Orville Redenbacher." One of the biggest brands that Conagra owns.

The meeting still went okay and there didn't end up being a fit, so nothing really came of it. But I'm sure my comment didn't help at all...

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- April 2023

WORTH A PEEK

As more and more prospects become open to texting with sales reps, it’s important to understand the do’s and don’ts of cold texting (including the fact that in some states, it’s illegal). Close.com put together a nice article about cold texting, which includes tips and examples for when you should and shouldn’t do it. Check it out here.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

I’m an inside sales rep at an (approximately) two-thousand person company. I’ve been here for four years, give or take, and I'm generally happy with the job. However, something happened a few weeks ago that's making me question what I should do and whether I even want to stay here long-term.

We use slack as an internal communications tool. There are different channels, for the individual sales teams, the larger sales organization, and other locked channels where the sales managers communicate between them.

A few weeks ago, I happened to be in slack when a new direct message popped up. It was from my sales manager, and it was obviously not meant to go to me, meaning, he sent it to me accidentally. I'm assuming that he meant to send it to another manager, because I doubt he would've talked like that to another sales rep.

In the message, it’s unclear who he is talking about, but he’s talking about one of the reps, and basically was mocking him in a super mean way. He even used a derogatory word for people with intellectual disabilities that I won’t type here. I was blown away. It’s possible that he was talking about me, but the things he was saying didn’t really line up with my performance, so I can’t assume it was about me (though I’m not ruling it out).

A few seconds after I read the message, it was deleted, or unsent, so it disappeared. But I definitely managed to read the whole thing once before it was gone. Now, I honestly feel incredibly uncomfortable at work, and see my manager in a completely different light. He hasn’t said a word to me about it, and didn’t really act weird or anything after, but it’s definitely changed things for me. Should I bring it up to him, or maybe tell somebody above him what happened? Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

Stunned in the U.S.

Dear Stunned,

Tough situation. Unfortunately, you probably can’t bring it up to him or anyone at the company since it was deleted, and you technically don’t have any proof. Of course, you could ask him about it, but the most likely outcome is that he’ll deny or (depending on his character) try to manage you out of the company.

If you’re looking to change the manager’s character by bringing it up, then good luck. This is who they are deep down, and all you’re likely to do is create more problems for yourself. Of course, if you feel strongly about it, you can go to Human Resources, but again, without proof (screenshot) of what happened, it will merely be your word against theirs.

If you don’t think you can continue at the company, then you might want to consider switching jobs. It’s really difficult to work for somebody who you don’t respect, or who you know is not a good person. And if you go this route, perhaps you can mention it during your exit interview. But the bottom line is that you just got a glimpse at the way some people talk when they don’t think anybody's listening. And, as you just found out, sometimes, it’s not pretty.

Quiz Answer: D – 2008

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Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

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