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The New Millenials - Tips for their Sales ManagersThey’re moving in and we can’t stop them. They’re beginning to take over and we can’t prevent it. We are being invaded and we don’t know what to do. No we are not a war with another country, but maybe sometimes it feels like it, as a sales manager who manages a team of 20 somethings. This article will give you some tips and ideas to help you manage the New Millenial workforce. Let me start by reminding you who the New Millenials are. They are young people who were born since 1980 and many of them have now left school and University and are entering the workforce, and some are choosing to join the sales profession. Things that influence them are technology, natural disasters, global terrorism, manufactured pop, diversity and non competitive sports days. They are very globally concerned, cyber literate, and “personal safety” is their number one concern. They are confident people and this helps them enter our sales profession. They value diversity and change and have been involved in everything all of their lives because of the way parents have brought them up. I got caught out doing this the other day when I asked my daughter who is 6, where she wanted to go on holiday this year. When I was 6, my father would never ask me such a question…I just went where I was told to go and had to enjoy it too. In work the New Millenials want their job to be meaningful and expect constant encouragement. The word expect is crucial here. Many people like it or desire it – the Millenials expect it and will move company if they don’t have it. Constant encouragement is important here as a sales manager. Please don’t be a hands off manager – “my door is always open if you need me” approach doesn’t work because our newest generation have been reared by helicopter parents, as it’s known as. I didn’t have a clue what this meant until I saw it before my very eyes. Taking my daughter to swimming lessons revealed it to me clearly. Along the side of the pool were the helicopter parents hovering over their darlings shouting encouragement and praise. “Good boy, well done Simon…you can do it…yes kick your legs more…” The swimming teacher was rather bemused by it all as was I, but you can see clearly why Millenials have this need. Being bought up by helicopter parents giving constant advice, guiding, encouraging all the time has made them want this in their workplace too. Sorry I got this wrong, the word should be to expect it. Lets have a look at what turns them on and also what turns them off and relate this to sales managing them. They desire recognition and praise on a regular basis and we need to be really specific when praising them otherwise they’ll see right through you. Time with their manager is a key ingredient. Time well spent with coaching and giving feedback. All of their lives they’ve had attention drooled all over them. They will be more loyal to you than your company and that’s the truth. Events in their world have made them sceptical of institutions and companies. People and relationships are more important to them. They seek out mentors – people they can learn from and trust. People who will be there for them just like their friends. Remember the theme tune to the Friends TV programme “I’ll be there for you…” As their sales manager you have an opportunity to become their mentor as well as their coach. Work with them, help them, coach them, guide them, be there for them all the time and they will reward you with much loyalty…until it’s time for them to move on if your organisation doesn’t have the right morals and corporate citizenship ideals or the work just doesn’t seem satisfying. If they ever get a hint that you’re stacking your products up high to sell them cheap, they’ll leave you like a bat out of hell. If you’re selling ideals smack of hard sell or trickery, you won’t see them for dust. Being individual turns them on. Ask any teenager about this and they’ll assert the fact how individual they are. When they grew up, large families were and still are very rare. Being an only child or one of two siblings does make you feel individual and having attention on you fosters the need for individualism. Treat them as individuals, learn as much about them as possible. What they like and dislike beyond typical manager knowledge. Make a file on each of your sales people so you can refer to their individual tastes and needs. You can then use this to help in your coaching and feedback. I saw a really good idea recently. A sales manager friend of mine has a small pocket diary for each of her sales people and she has a team of about 10 Millenials. In the diary, which fits neatly into a pocket, she notes down all the information she gains from their meetings. Who they like to hang out with, their interests and tastes, conversations they’ve had, their favourite this and that. She tells me how useful this diary is as it’s almost impossible to remember all these things as all of her team are just soooo different to each other. Fun at work not only turns them on but is something that we can
all enjoy. Other generations feel this is unnecessary preferring to
be pragmatic about time. But the Millenials seek fun out. Fun is
cool. Ask yourself, how fun is work? How is your sense of humour? Right now I’m writing this article in a hotel lobby about to drive to the airport to return home after a working trip in Iran. I’ve been teaching selling to about 120 people over the last couple of days. I thought I had a good sense of humour until I met my new Iranian friends. They love it as it gives them a chance to forget about their political woes and the security situation here in Iran. I was told by the conference organiser to turn up my sense of humour volume and the audience will enjoy themselves. As a Sales Manager, managing a team of Millenial salespeople, you’ll want to turn up your sense of humour volume. Or dare I say it….switch it on first! Be innovative in your fun, for example, when rewarding your sales people for good performance, rather than the £25 Marks and Spencer voucher, learn how to Bluetooth to their mobile phone a really funky ring tone that has value attached to it. The value isn’t cost but that no one else has the ring tone. On the subject of mobile phones…please please please don’t stop them using these during sales meetings. They will want to text their friends at every opportunity. They will be listening and taking it in and at the same time, they’ll be texting the idea to their friend. They can multitask well. Rather that the traditional approach of brainstorming around a flipchart, you can use their mobiles during sales meetings by asking them to text you the information. I saw this happen once and it was fantastic and well received. The sales manager wanted innovative sales ideas from everyone and instead of asking for these around the table, she asked each salesperson to text her with the idea. They loved it. She made it even more memorable by reading out the idea and asking her team to guess who wrote it. This was so funny as people wanted to attach the idea to their friends character. Very individual, very funny, very engaging and very clever. And the ideas that were circulated that day were really good too. Whilst we’re chatting about Sales Meetings, question yourself for me. Are they really sales meetings or meetings? We know the difference and we also know what they ought to be but it is so easy to not have the time to prepare and end up with a rather monotone and dusty old meeting. Sales meetings ought to be renamed sales gatherings or something
like that. New Millenials appreciate the need but they want them to
be rewarding and give them some sales ideas to take away. They also
want them to be shorter too and punchier. Remember that time is
important them, not because they want to get back to work, but
because they value time away from work with their friends. You may
be the best sales manager ever but you’re not necessarily one of the
their friends. They are not the work all hours mentality that other
generations are. They truly do work so they can play afterwards. My sales manager friend of mine did another neat sales meeting trick recently which I thought was brilliant. She ran her sales meeting using Yahoo’s Instant Messenger service and text messaging using mobile telephones. No one had to leave their laptops or their desks for her rather enjoyable sales meeting. She also arranges Teleseminars where everyone is on the phone. This is not new at all but her clever trick is to have the meeting recorded onto an MP3 file so they can listen to the ideas again on their iPods later in the day. The MP3s are instantly created and emailed. This is not difficult to do – there are plenty of companies who let you arrange these calls for free. It’s just different. By the way my friend the Sales Manager is also a New Millenial so I guess she naturally understands them. I respect her though because she hasn’t fallen into the trap of being a Sales Manager just like her seniors. It can be so easy to look exclusively above us for advice but this advice might be biased towards an older generation’s way. Pressure to conform is very strong but in the 21st Century we
have to be different. Hearing about the past really grates them. The past is so last century and they know that the world is different. They don’t really care how it was they want to know what it is like in the future. I guess this kind of mentality works for all new generations but Sales Managers can easily fall into the trap of rambling on about how things were in the past. Just because we sold more endowment mortgages in the 1980s makes not the slightest difference to them. Inflexibility about time. Millenials value time as we mentioned earlier and they don’t have a 9am to 5pm work mentality that others do. I still feel guilty when I finish a course off before 5pm. But our 20 somethings don’t have this view. To them getting results justifies taking time off and if they work smarter not harder, this should be rewarded. Talking about rewards once more, try giving the top performers time off rather than money or bonuses. It’s the same thing for us but to them having a day off during the week will allow them to do all the things they want to do and this will probably involve friends or hobbies or both. Workaholism really gets them down. If you are the kind of Sales
Manager that works all the hours and sacrifices everything for
career progression. Fine – carry on doing this as I don’t want to
influence you on this as I’m a bit of a workaholic myself I’m
afraid. The trick is not to make it known as your Millenial sales
force will mark you down a notch or two in their estimation of you.
Just keep things quiet. Feeling pressure to convert to traditional behaviour is something they despise. This pressure normally comes from the top of organisations who want to ensure the whole firm works with traditional values and beliefs. Now this is a good thing believe me please but sometimes the pressure to conform to these values is quite excruciating and can suffocate some Millenials who have always been allowed to make their own decisions about values and beliefs. Hopefully through, most of the values firms have match the same values of the younger generation workforce. One value that I saw the other day for the Simplyhealth Group was
“be yourself today”. This is a great example of a company value that
appeals to the Millenials big time. Being left to get on with it. I love this but then I’m not a Millenial. I was brought up with the management by “leaving me alone” technique. If I didn’t hear from my Sales Manager, to me that was good news. No news is good news. But our Millenials want structure and direction in a concise manner. Not to be overly managed or constrained against their individuality but to be given the boundaries and end goal. Modern parenting ensures that we’re always there to help our off-spring and assist them with all of their decisions. Modern parents coach their children rather than tell them what to do. We provide the boundaries and then we help them make decisions in a classic coaching style. I do to my son who is coming up to 12. As a lad myself, my Dad basically told me what to do all the time and I guess I’m providing a backlash to this by giving my son a little more space. I will help him make decisions and they must be his decisions and I will guide him along the way all the time. Right now I’m sitting in the hotel lobby in Iran and I’ve just had an email from him asking for some help on an issue he has. This is modern life – like it or not – it won’t go away. So coach your Millenials and provide guidance, structure and the
goal posts. They know that goal posts can move because they respect
the need to change. They are change heroes and really like this. We
must let them know what the ultimate goal is though. When you next interview new sales staff include the phrase “we want you to have a life” at least three times. And stress self-development opportunities through training and development at your company. I mentioned the same issue when running sales meetings and we talked about making them into training and development opportunities. This is great but we also need to ply plenty of training opportunities on them as they see this as a great way of making them more marketable. Because they will leave you one day, that is certain and their work currency is how marketable they are to other firms. Remember they are constantly texting their friends comparing jobs and development opportunities. Training to them is like oxygen, as soon as it runs out they will be off looking for a new supply. Beware. A final thought when interviewing Millenials. They are giving
their time to us as an investment and that’s how they regard it.
Selling the job to them is the key. Give them the latest technology and they’ll use it. And I don’t just mean a laptop and mobile phone. I mean the latest software they can use to contact clients. Get them Instant Messenger for their laptops, get them the latest versions of Microsoft Office, give them Windows Vista now. Get them a webcam for their laptop. Get them unlimited access to the Internet and company Intranet. And if you can influence the powers that be, put absolutely every piece of data your company has on the Intranet and let everyone have complete access to the lot. Bill Gates promoted this idea in his book “Business at the Speed of Thought” and it is so true. The worse sin is to restrict access. Restricted access dialogue boxes will drive your Millenials away. They’ll be able to use these tools to the maximum and they’ll
laugh at companies that don’t supply it. I know there are problems
but overcome them. It’s us that should control IT Departments not IT
Departments control us. (Oh I got that off my shoulder didn’t I) New Millenials. They are the future and will begin to enter your
sales teams in increasing numbers over the next few years. They are
fun, exciting and brilliant to have around but they need sales
managing in a completely different way to maybe how you were managed
or how current management training courses teach us.
Paul is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK.
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He specialises in rapport selling and rapport
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