Welcome to Scale Your Sales Podcast, listed number 9 of 43 best podcasts for every sales

professional. I am Janice B Gordon, the customer growth expert, recommended by LinkedIn Sales as
one of 15 innovating sales influencers to follow.

Today's episode of Scale Your Sales Podcast, my guest talks about generational gain, the
generational gain. He introduced this subject at the, talking at the Institute of Sales Professionals,
Future of Sales events.

Really interesting conversation because in his workforce, a legacy organisation, there are a lot
Literally four generations of salespeople and how he's having to

to navigate the differences and preferences within the organisation, within the sales team, and
understand how he is future-proofing the sales team with apprenticeship schemes and recruitment
strategy going forward.

There are many other sales leaders that are not as far ahead in their thinking about the sales
workforce, so you're going to love what my guest has to say.

My next guest is the Group Sales Director of Royal Mail and Parcelforce, which is the largest delivery
company in the UK, representing over 250,000 business customers and circa 4 billion in annual
revenues.

Welcome to Scale Your Sales Podcast, Jon Nicholson.

Thanks, Janice. Good to be here.

Well, it's wonderful having you here. We met at the Institute of Sales Professionals, and you did this
amazing presentation under the banner of the future of sales.

And I was really intrigued and interested that I come and waited afterwards to grab your attention to
have a chat about what you talked about, which is the generation game.

So perhaps we'll use that as the starting point to just explain what your description or what's your
view on the generation games and how that impacts sales and sales leadership?

Yes, course, Janice. What this is rooted in for me is, I'm kind of responsible for the sales team to
cross-rule Mal and parcel force, both legacy organisations with a long history of having a sales team.

And of course, the bridge that comes with that is people that have been in position for quite a long
time.

And that's amazing, but it also brings another challenge, which is at some point, we're going to have
quite large groups of people come to the end of their career.

And in response to that, part of my role as a sales leader is of course to make sure that we're future-
ready and match fits continue the sales experience that we've been providing for years and years
and years.

2:16 From Baby Boomers to Gen Z: Navigating Generational Differences in the Modern Workplace
And what that really did for me in that context was shine a light on the differing needs of the
different generations that we have and

As I started to look into this more and it transpired on me at least, that for the first time ever we've
got four generations, identified generations in the workplace.

From baby boomers and generation X, generation Y or millennials and of course generation Z. And
the pace of change across those generations is of course increased hugely, largely driven by
technology.

And generation Z, the latest generation, are what we could turn digital natives and you could say the
same about millennials as well to be fair.

But of course the way in which they work because of that digital nativeness and the easy access to
the types of technology that we've all got access to today.

Fundamentally alters their approach to their day to day work. And where I think that's interesting in
the context of sales of course it's not just about our sales teams, our customer base is exactly the
same.

Regardless of the size of your customer base or the market you're in, what we're seeing is that age
profile widened.

So there is nothing to say you're not selling to a 19-year-old CEO. In the same way, there's nothing to
say you could be a fresh-faced 19-year-old salesperson selling to a 65 or 70-year-old CEO and
everything in between.

And really, the research and the work that was doing, trying to understand how do we best set
ourselves up to understand those generational differences, being very mindful that age
discrimination is a crime.

And equally, as we always should be with any of the protected characteristics, is be really aware of
our own biases and what that means to the way we approach our customers, what that means to
the way we approach our teams.

But also, as a sound lead to what's the environment that we're building for people, does it worked
for everybody, and maybe that's a utopia that we can't attain, but is there things that we think are
the right approach for younger generations, older generations, which in fact we might be getting
wrong.

So that was the context of the research and what we were talking about.

And this is research that you very much led on.

6:04

Yes. Yeah, I did this research as my dissertation for my MBA. But as ever, it was really relevant, and
sometimes the topics are blinding the obvious that you should spend some time looking at it.

It's a live challenge for me to understand in my context as in the drop that I do.
And I think it's really interesting because you know, you're a legacy organisation as you've talked
about, and your sales team, they have long tenure and many of them will be looking for retirement.

6:35 The Rise of Women Buyers and the Generational Shift in Sales

And I thought it was quite interesting this research that I found with AMANY The demographics,
because you mention that your customers haven’t really changed so I wondered if this was relevant
The demographics are changing in that women are making up 54% of B2B buyers under the age of
30, which I thought was quite interesting.

And most under the age of 25, which means that while men are still handling 75% of business
purchases over 100,000, the survey predicts that women will make up most of the B2B buyers in as
little as 10 years.

So the customer base is changing quite dramatically.

Oh, absolutely is. And I think maybe in a relatively luxurious position in Royal Mail, because our
customer base is so broad that actually we have been by default used to dealing with, men and
women, everybody of different ages of course we service the whole country and every community
within it

We have to be very mindful of that, almost to the point where we're probably quite blind to the
differences in a way, I think in a positive way, but of course that blindness, being aware of those
blind spots is equally important as well.

It's fascinating research, isn't it? We certainly see it particularly in logistics, which is the industry that
we're in. And if we were stereotyping on making an assumption, you'd assume it's quite male
dominated, but we certainly see, and we deal with the biggest retailers in the country and many,
many tens of thousands of business owners as well.

We're certainly seeing that mix of senior decision makers change to that view, both in that male
female mix and in terms of age demographics and so on.

And I think I mentioned in the talk, haven't we? All of us. Who might have been getting to a certain
age, who might have been guilty saying, aren't the policemen getting young nowadays and things
like that?

You know, and it's this point that we sort of forget that we're getting a bit older and we still assume
everyone operates the same way we do.

I think we're all guilty. Each of the generations are guilty of doing that.

How dare you? I'm still 25, Jon, in my mind.

Well, absolutely, that makes you about six years more mature in your mind than I am in mine. I'm
fine.

9:08 Diversity-Driven Utopia: Unleashing fresh perspectives for continuous success.

So, is your utopia to have a balance, you know, a balance in your sales workforce that reflects that
balance in your customer base?
So yes, but that's part of it, Janice, because there's always this challenge, isn't there, in making sure
we're representative of the communities we serve.

The ongoing debate, which is very challenging between positive discrimination and actual
discrimination and so on and so forth. My utopia here is to make sure that, let's say regardless of
characteristics for a moment, that actually what we've got is real diversity of thought and an
understanding and a group of different perspectives because of the differences in the people that
we've got.

So whether that's across age, whether that's across sex, whether that's across race, religion, birth
origin, whatever it might be. Because the other challenge you have with the legacy organisation of
course is on paper, quite diverse, or got about a 50-50 split between men and women.

We've got quite a good age mix now, from the people starting their careers to people coming to the
end of their careers.

Still got a challenge in seniority and tenure across those, but you'd expect that. These are teams of
work together for a long time.

So even if you've got an on paper mix of characteristics, know, male, female, age, religion, ethnic
monotone and so on and so forth, they can conform to type as well.

So actually they still start to have the same way of thinking and the environment in which we
operate in.

Certainly post-COVID of course, but generally is moving very, very quickly. And so even if people
started off with those different perspectives, if they've been in the same team, they're in the same
thing and using the same solutions for three or four years maybe, then guess what?

The benefit of those perspectives starts to wane anyway. So utopia for me is that how do we find
way to ensure that we're constantly bringing in those fresh ideas, those fresh perspectives,
constantly positively challenging each other to come up with different looking solutions, to come up
with different ideas to solve the problems that we now, we now face. I think we spoke, didn't we,
Janice? We spoke about the work of Matthew Siode and Rebel Ideas.

Some of that is rooted in that, which is, how do you take a group of intelligent people and of course
all of my team are incredibly intelligent, but make sure they're not an unintelligent team.

That's maybe a challenging label to give but I think that articulates the point really. In my world, very
fortunate, got very large teams, about 400 people.

The way that the new business team operates is quite different to the way the key account
management team operates.

But if I'm trying to do the same thing in reality, which is help the customer spend some more money
with us and get the best use of our services, but I go in different ways.

12:27 Building sales innovation through creating diverse teams and blending perspectives.

How are you leading the multi-generational workforce in adapting to the buyer preferences and
behaviours? Are you throwing a grenade every now and then? Just to mix things up.
Yes, Sometimes a small grenade, just smoke grenades maybe, there's a couple of things, Janice. One
of the things is trying to break down some of the barriers.

That constant challenge of thought. Is this really the way I'm doing things? We've got quite a well-
embedded coaching mentality across the leadership team, which is really helpful because it means
that we can coach our way through.

Some of those difficulties of thought. I'm currently running through a change program with my team
at the moment, which is effectively doing that.

It's effectively trying to create new villages or new communities within the sales team of the brilliant
people, but mixing them in a way to help them think differently.

To break down some of those silos. Now that level of change can be, like any change, will be quite
uncomfortable for people.

Because they love their teams and they love getting together and they're very comfortable in them.
But being able to do that and trying to explain that's the reason for the change.

This isn't a restructure for the sake of a restructure or a cost-cutting exercise. This is an ideas
generation exercise because our world has changed.

Our context has changed both in the business point of view and the macro environment point of
view. So that's helping continual training.

So we've been quite definite to try and address some of the age balance, bringing younger
apprentices in launching the first business-to-business sales apprenticeship scheme with Middlesex
University regards to the people coming in a really talented and brilliant.

Just that injection of use, frankly, brings a bit of enlightenment and some new ideas and some
positive challenges and bit of looking over your shoulder and that encourages some change.

I think it's all well and good to see I think we're going to do this, but I think what we've been doing
steadily over the last probably five or six years is really incrementally introducing that change and
being quite visible about it.

14:52 Maintain relationships, connections, and rebuild on them.

So what's the motive behind all of this? Why bother doing this? There must be a personal driving
force because after all you're doing research into this area, but also that I wonder what the business
culture message is.

Why bother? Is it about social change? Is it about social justice? Is it about, you know, actually is the
most profitable way of doing it?

Well, I'm it's about all of those things, Janice, there's no one single answer to this. Let's take the
ugliest of them all first, shall we?

It is to make profit. As an organisation, Royal Mail has been for a challenging year or so, and with
thankfully at the back end of that,
But we've not been able to give our customers the level of service that we would have liked to
through our industrial action dispute.

But as the sales team is the people that look after those relationships, regardless of what the service
we've been able to provide as a company, we've got to maintain those relationships and now rebuild
on them.

Now if we don't have those relationships right in the first place, if we don't have the relationship
capital to be able to say, right, we're now back to our best Mr.

Mrs. Customer, so you can trust us to come back with you. Then that rebuilding exercise is going to
take longer than we can do.

We're really proud of our heritage as an organisation and our brand and what we do for the country.
And of course a lot of people still assume we just deliver letters, but we don't.

We're the largest parcel carrier in the UK. And that's a really important connection point that really
came home through the COVID pandemic when we were delivering and collecting all of the test kits
across the country which allowed us to do that testing program. You know, that's a key part of the
UK infrastructure.

That's our core a bit. But the UK looks and feels and talks and acts differently this generation than it
did in the last generation.

And if we don't stay aligned to that, then actually we're failing in our service obligation. We're failing
as an organisation to do the very thing that we are here to do, which is connect people and
customers to their goods or their letters or their documents.

17: 15 What hasn't moved on as a society, particularly is our education approach.

There is a personal drive. I didn't come from an educated background. I didn't start with GSS and I've
been fortunate to build a career in logistics.

Now it is with Royal Mail. And I've worked for some great people who supported me to close the
gaps in my education, but allow me the opportunity to grow, try new things and do different
positions and work in different sectors and it's been amazing. What's really hard is I see and my
daughter's 21, my lad's nearly 15, is I see at their age it's quite difficult to get those opportunities.

What hasn't moved on as a society, particularly is our education approach and we are still wedded to
certification which for me ignores a huge amount of talent and for me sales is one of those career
paths that nobody chooses but actually if it was better publicized maybe there was more awareness
of it.

The type of career in life that you can build yourself as a successful salesperson is phenomenal. I
mean we're doing this now Janice off the back of sales careers, right? But young kids aren't choosing
it and what I want to be able to provide is an opportunity for those kids who might not have had the
best start, they might not have done that well at school but you know what they've got that bit of
grit, they've got that entrepreneurialism, determination, the bit of charm, theempathy that it takes
to build a relationship quickly and understand what customers want. Take that and build on it and
hopefully give them a career.

The challenge I've got is getting young people to think that Royal Mail and parcel force is a sexy place
to work.

Now I think it clearly is, but that's the...

Well you're biased.

Absolutely, yeah.

Well, this is a great segue because I really wanted to talk about recruitment. We mentioned about
that. I remember us talking like you can have a young lad or young woman that has sold things on a
market store.

And they weren't necessarily... They haven't got the degree that often a lot of these application
forms ask for. Why we need that?

I don't know. There's all these barriers to actually getting into sales and they may be perfect for the
job. They may not be comfortable with writing CVs and actually the predictive validity of CVs is only
18%.

I don't know why the recruitment industry still stuck on all of these methodologies that they use,
which is the worst way to actually recruit people.

20:00 We learnt from being exposed, we learn by failing.

So,you mention the apprenticeship, But how do you identify a wide source of people? Even if they
want to work in sales, there are so many barriers for them getting in.

So how do we begin to resolve this?

It's a really good question, Janice, it's one that we've not got right because for our recruitment and
we were looking for internships on paper, it looked quite attractive and we just weren't attracting
anybody really.

And that's really difficult. So it's something we and I have got to work on as well and understand
better. I think as an industry we've got to do more about talking about it.

Work we do with the ISP is really, really good. And trying to position sales through as a career earlier
in people's education, young people's education.

Whether that's as simple as working with charities, working with youth clubs, getting into schools
and sales leaders like you or any of the guests that you have in your podcast, for example, just
opening people's eyes to what it means to have a career in sales.
I'm not convinced there's an easy answer other than it's quite a hard slog and for those of us that
really care about it have got to do more about it.

And I think there should be an ability to learn about sales.

Ihave a bit of a challenge with what kids are being taught in school anyway. Don't we all?

It's very difficult, isn't it? Clearly, clearly it's beyond me to set educational policy, but I'd love to see
more relevancy in schools.

That's the bit that for me doesn't help kids. It helps kids pass exams, but beyond school when do we
do exams?

It’s not that many of them. But what we need to do as organisations as well is create that pathway.
So yes, somebody might not come in with the maths in the English GCSE or the history A level or
whatever it might be.

But we need to make sure that when people are starting at any age actually in our organisations,
that we are giving them the tools to do the bits that are relevant, because you do need to be able to
understand quotes and be business savvy and understand the proposals that you're putting together
for a customer, how they work and so on.

But a lot of that will come with experience. And in reality, like most of us, we've learnt that by being
exposed to it, and we've learnt it by failing,

and we've learned it by then understanding why we failed or why that deal hasn't happened or by
having great leaders or in fact having terrible leaders as well.

I've had a few of those.

That's the challenge isn't it? And you learn as much from the bad leadership.

Sometimes as you certainly do from the good leadership and I think a well-rounded career person is
someone who's had the benefit of both.

And I think these are the sales, sorry Janice, but the difficulty with sales is businesses, every sales
person has some money in their head. So, we bring them in and they will generate a million pounds
because that’s the target, but we need to give people space to ramp up and that is a difficult
business case for the way in which most organizations decide to bring on sales people or invest on
sales people. If they’re not paying for themselves, it can be difficult to justify. A lot of organizations
are cash-tracked, as they always are, they get to chose to spend their pens.

The research I did shows that you invest early, you might not get that payback in the first year, but
are 18 months to two to three years actually that payback starts to really ramp up.

So being able to afford that time early, allow people to fail, giving them room to test and learn. You
can bring on a brilliant sales person who will pay back 10 fold, 20 fold over time.

And I think when you do have the right leadership and management and coaching, and especially
when you're helping them to access opportunities, they always remember that.
And ideally they pass it on to others as well. So it's not only helping the organisation, it's actually
helping the wider community and society.

You've just demonstrated that in that you said where you came from, this industry has given you the
opportunity to continue to develop your work.

and now you're wanting to pass that on as well. So it's a good way to actually go about it.

24:50 Leaders need to create an environment where people can be nurtured.

I think in the past, many managers, not just in sales, are reluctant to invest in their people because
they'll say, well, if I do, they'll leave.

And it's a very now way of thinking, really, isn't it?

It is. And it's one of the things we've got to get our heads around as leaders. The generation
differences, there's a good chance that the Gen Z, and it's good chance generalising massively here,
Janice.

We’re going to be very mindful of that. But Gen Z typically are likely to have more roles, or six
different career type choices.

The ability to run side hustles, do business on the side and something. So, there's more access than
ever before.

Compared to Gen X and the baby boom is certainly where the notion was a job for life. We've got to
get our head around.

In fact, that's now different. Which means we as leaders have got to create the environment that
people want to stay in, acknowledge they might not, but once they’re there, us as the organisation
and them as the individual get the most out of it. And that's best we can hope for, you get five good
years out of somebody and that's brilliant, actually.

That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's interesting because the job for live contract we have, a
lot of companies started to break that contract.

You know, they wanted the extra flexibility, a lot of the laws change. But it's interesting how
companies are then complaining how people don't stay with them.

Well, actually, you're right. They're not really investing in their employees and making sure they are
happy. And it's not always in sales that money that makes people stick.

It's often training, it's coaching, it's good management and the culture where they feel that they
belong as well.

And there are all things that we can control.

Absolutely. And the other part that was stuck out for me in the research and I’ve mentioned it
before.
We've all got those superstars in our teams and we all know them. Research also says that those
superstars very rarely replicate that super-star performance when they go elsewhere because
they're superstars because they're talented, yes, but also maybe because of the product, the
environment, the pact.

There's all these other factors that all add up to absolutely superstar performance. And so I think
there's a word to the wise as well because it's easy to be seduced as top performing salesperson to
think I'll go over there and I'll get some more and that might be true.

But I think you've got to make that decision quite wisely actually if you are just motivated by the
money and the cash.

If you're earning it where you are, that's probably not a bad place to be.

Yeah, and also to sales leaders that often want to recruit the A players and understanding they were
A players there but it doesn't mean there's a guarantee and you're better perhaps to nurture
internally.

And also where do sales leaders come from, sell managers, they're promoted up and they're actually
often very bad.

It sells leaders, it takes a very different mindset and there hasn't been in the past that sells training
or appreciation that these are completely different skill sets.

They're totally different, they are totally different and I think it's incumbent on us and it's a
conversation I have a lot with high performance salespeople who want to move into leadership
because they want progression and that's absolutely right and worthy as let's make sure you really
understand what you're opening yourself up for because it's really easy when you're a high
performing sales person to then manage in quite a direct way because you're just saying well this is
what I used to do and it takes a while to undo those habits and become a coach or a guide or a
mentor as well as all the challenging things you have to do with those that you've done but not many
people see.

Yeah absolutely. So you know I mentioned to you that there is a database of, you know, that's been
going for over 25 years and it's looking at like 460 bits of data.

So a sales person will fill out a questionnaire rather than, you know, relying on the CVs. And what's
great, what I love about this is that you can cash your net much wider.

It knows what best looks like in a whole, you know, 200 different industries across different sectors
and countries. And so what I love about it from trying to recruit a diverse workforce, whatever the
age range, is that you can throw anyone at it and it will tell you whether this person from a
recruitment point of view is recommended or not.

Based upon that criteria of the whole history of data, but also the criteria you've set within the
organisation of what you're looking for and what's the best kind of fit.

But also within a sales team as well, understanding there are so many sales people who are in the
wrong role for their skills.
And you know, but also for the way that they sell and their view about money as well. So I'd really
like to understand what is your view about the balance of skills against mindset and motivation.

30:08 In recruitment, authenticity is what matters the most.

In terms of creating a really good five-year, ten-year salesperson that is coachable, what are the
things that you look for when you're recruiting that's of most importance?

Yeah, so it does depend on what you recruit tonight, of course, Janice. I think there's a difference
between entry level recruits, forms of a better word versus people who are maybe mid-year or into
their, into the promotion stages of their sales career. But fundamentally what we're looking for is
the same. I think I might have mentioned to you.

I could ask one interview question, get the CVs because I'm with you. I don't know what the
alternative is, but they're a horrible format.

I just want to ask one question which is, tell me your story and see how people articulate
themselves, what they come up with.

And it's those moments when you realise the interview, façade is coming down, And you see the real
person underneath it.

You see the person that's really going to be working with you and the person that's really going to be
in front of their customers.

And I, it's maybe it's an overused cliche term. I feel like there's an authenticity about that. And it's
that that really matters.

It's somebody who is genuinely interested and curious in the customer because ultimately that's
what leads to the right solutions.

And again, it's possibly overused. It's a bit of a cliche. But that demonstration of empathy, the
understanding of the wider world is really, really useful.

I know I've got young people within my team who have been in their careers for three years, started.
But they appear, well they do have a business maturity way beyond the years that they've worked.

And that's just innate in them. That's just something because of the way that they operate, the way
that they go about their business, the way they interact with people.

And that's really key. The challenge tho, Janice, and think this is where your articulation is, is how do
we get to that selection criteria in the face of, you know, 18% validity on CVs and some minimum
criteria that frankly just helps you get through the bulk of applications that you get.

That's a real challenge. That's certainly a challenge that we face in Royal Mail, I face in Royal Mail. It's
how we make that initial selection. The risk is you can burn an awful lot of quite expensive
leadership time during early sifting if you give everybody an early opportunity to come and sit in
front of you.

It's quite difficult, isn't it? Yeah, and often the interview teams have the innate bias anyway. So, you
know, there is a way in terms of giving a questionnaire, so it's completely anonymous and the
questionnaire can be comparative and look at the criteria for selection.

And this is before the interview, before, you know, CVs, all of that. So, actually, that does the first sift
and it's completely unbiased.

And it's measuring against this kind of bank of data. We just need to kind of like, I think, look at what
we're doing, isn't the best way of doing it.

And then we're going to find better alternatives and often recruiters are very stuck in the process
that we've had for a long time.

It's very costly in sales, minimum of 100,000 in order to recruit somebody that doesn't then work
out. That's a lot of money really that's been burned through constantly.

So we've got to look at a better way of doing it. We absolutely do. I mean, there's some real basics,
isn't there?

I think we need to be a bit braver to challenge some of our biases as well. I can't remember where I
heard it and I might misquote this, Janice, but I was either listening to something or reading
something which was around being able to pronounce people's names.

And actually, if I can't pronounce your name or not confident pronouncing your name in a way,
rather than insult you by getting it wrong, I just won't use it or I'll call Bob or Laura.

Because I know how to say that. There's this piece around a bit of embarrassment, around asking
some of the questions to help ask it a bit more comfortable with the people that we're speaking to
or the people that we want to engage with without fear of being vilified or exposed for being
potentially ignorant to it, because otherwise everybody suffers. It's a really difficult stigma to break, I
think, but we've all got to do better at it.

35:13 To truly deploy customer-centricity, start from the eyes of the final customer.

Yeah, yeah. I'm really interested in your third box thinking as a core focus. You mentioned about the
three year, ten year and the way that they're quite business savvy.

So this is a real core in a way that you deploy your customer centricity. So tell me more about that.

So third box thinking, I can't claim any credit for it. That came out of the work we do. We've gone to
our training partners, Consolia, Dr. Phillips Goyer and his team. The third box thinking effectively just
gets you to start from the eyes in our context of the receiving customer, so the customer's customer,
and then work backwards.

Because actually what we can do answers the customer's customer needs, then it definitely answers
the customer's needs. And it's a relatively simple, it's quite straightforward in concept, but it forces
you to think really about what are we trying to achieve, where do we really add value in this part of
the supply chain or which of the profit pools can we increase or what problems are we solving.

And I'll give you an example in the context of Royal Mail and the logistics industry that we work in.

When customers switch to Royal Mail, what they find is their customer queries, the where is my
item calls into call centres, just goes down because there's less

concerned typically because Royal Mail is a more trusted brand and they're more confident it will be
delivered. So therefore it saves money out of customer service.

It means that the customers' customer is more confident that their delivery is going to come on time
and so on and so forth.

But we might be 5p more expensive per item at the headline rate, but we might be saving hundreds
of thousands of pounds in customer query costs.

And so it's quite straightforward in that context. You can quite quickly equate a value to what we do.
But putting the money aside, it's just about saying, well, if we can solve your customers' problems,
surely we solve yours too.

And so we can think everything through that. The other part of course is being who we are. We’re
legally obliged and we're very proud to service the whole country just through the postal network.

And again, that's our core and our heart. So we are always working with the final customer in mind.

Despite the fact we are selling to the retailers and the big senders and the shippers and the
marketplace sellers of the country.

37:50 To scale your sales, do the right thing by the customer and it will pay back in space.

Yeah, yeah. So, what would you say is the one tried and tested strategy, you would offer listeners to
help them to scale their sales?

So, for us, is it a strategy? Is it a mantra? It's looking after the customer better than anybody else
can.

And if I give that a bit more colour for you, Janice, I mentioned earlier the industrial impact relations.
It's been more publicised, don't need to talk about that.

But the reality is we weren't able to offer our customers the best service. That wasn't the fault of the
salespeople or the account management, but it's their responsibility to manage the relationship and
be the voice piece of the customer.

It wasn't the dispute that the salespeople were involved in. It was a different layer within the
organisation. But it's still our organisation.

And the point being that even if it impacted revenue in the short term, or the ask to all of my team
was look after that relationship first.
Do the right thing by the relationship, even if it has an impact on revenue. Because it will pay back in
space.

If you don't look after that relationship, you've got nothing to trade on regardless of what happens.
Sometimes that's difficult to do in organisations large and small.

Because of course we've got hundreds of sales people who look after tens and tens of thousands of
accounts. You can't do everything for every customer.

You can't just have cart blanks for autonomy to say yes, you can have a credit for that or yes, you can
have that price.

We've still got to have quite strict controls because otherwise we'd be an unruly organisation and
we'd be in a right mess.

So it's not about total freedom. It's about the understanding that you can manage that relationship
the best way you can as an individual.

Regardless of what else is going on around you, and that for me is the key strategy.

I've got another question in terms of how do you actually manage that because it allows a bit that
some level of flexibility, but as you say, you're a profitable organisation, you have to be.

So how do you make sure that there's people in show initiative and do things?

How's that managed?

Well, it can be quite challenging and there's always going to be conflict points because again a
customer will always want something maybe they can't have and an account manager or sales
person will always want to give away something that they can't do.

You have to try to just try and be quite clear and pragmatic about it. Nothing's particularly off the
table in terms of asking for it, but what we do need to be able to do is justify the ask.

Because it's very easy when you're under pressure as a sales person or particularly an account
manager where you get caught in this world between service and sales, and so on. Particularly as an
account manager that you can come under fire from all of your customers. You've got to do this, this
maybe isn't good enough, but we want these claims.

Justify that ask, as that account manager, you've got a professional responsibility to work on behalf
of your customer, on behalf of in this contextual male or parcel force as well.

You've got to treat both sets of those money like it's your own. You've got to confidently articulate
the customer's real challenge and real pain points internally if we need to do something out of
process.

To the point where it's beyond down, you also need to be able to defend our internal processes
externally. But down the height behind them, you've got to own them.

And that's a lot about coaching, that's a lot about experience. It's a lot about confidence in your
ability. And it's a lot about that relationship.
How often have we heard across our teams? I've certainly had the customer say it to me. Look, I
know it's not you, I know its the organisation, but actually the response to that has got to be, I stand
behind the organisation but I also understand what you're wanting me to do and I'll do everything I
can for you, but I might not be able to.

We won't always be right, Janice. know when you're having thousands of customer conversations a
week, we'll get some of it wrong.

But you've got to just be able to provide that parameter and those coaching and those guidelines as
best you can.

Excellent. Excellent. Okay, so if you want to desert islands on your own, what's the one thing you
take with you?

So it might be bit of a cop-out, Janice, but I was recently, just last week, our family was stranded in
Spain because we'd had our high car broken into, our suitcases were stolen, our passports were
gone, our driving licenses were gone, my wife's mobile phone was gone, we were with some friends,
their phones were gone.

I just happened to have my phone still on me. And it was the only reason we managed to sort any of
the mess out because sadly, and back to almost where we started around the pace of change of
technology and what it means to us, it was almost impossible to operate without a phone,
particularly in a fun country and sadly I'll have to admit my knowledge of my command of the
Spanish language does not extend beyond ordering a couple of beers like most typical British people.

So I think if I was stranded on Desert Island I'd have to have me phone with me because I feel like it's
the only survival tool, only chance I'd have of surviving anything because it turns out I'm not that
resourceful without it maybe.

That's the problem.

Well it's a good thing to know then really isn't it? You can have your mobile phone and just think I'll
give you some internet as well so you can look at all the survival techniques that you need in order
to survive on your island, okay?

That would be brilliant and if nothing else I could order some armbands to swim off of it.

Now you're taking it a little bit too far, Amazon doesn't extend that far. You’re on a desert island.

Royal Mail does tho, Janice. I’m sure.

Oh, Royal Mail does, that’s a good one. Fantastic. Royal Mail goes everywhere, global organization
worldwide, and delivers on time as well, you know? Fantastic.

So, can listeners get hold of you, Jon? So, typically I hang around on LinkedIn, Janice, so listeners can
find your LinkedIn, that's where I will be.

Yeah, well, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge about
generational, I know a lot of sales leaders are not where you are, not as advanced where you are
thinking about future proofing their sales force.
I know a lot of them are going to listen and learn from this. So, thank you very much for sharing your
knowledge, Jon.

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me, Janice. It's been great, really enjoyed it. Thank
you.

In this week’s Scale Your Sales podcast episode, my guest is Jon Nicholson, the Group Sales Director
for Royal Mail & Parcelforce, which is the largest delivery company in the UK, representing over
250,000 business customers with an annual revenue of approximately £4 Billion.

Jon has over 20 years of experience in the industry and has recently presented his research at the
Institute of Sales Professionals, Future of Sales event.

In this episode, we talk about his research on the generation game. With four generations of
salespeople coexisting in the workforce, Jon sheds light on the challenges and opportunities of
navigating their diverse preferences and differences. We delve into how Jon is proactively future-
proofing his sales team through innovative apprenticeship programs and recruitment strategies. As
the sales landscape continues to evolve, Jon's forward-thinking approach stands as a beacon of
inspiration for sales leaders seeking to embrace and adapt to the multigenerational dynamics within
their organizations.

Welcome to Scale Your Sales podcasts, Jon Nicholson.

Timestamps

2:16 - From Baby Boomers to Gen Z: Navigating Generational Differences in the Modern Workplace

6:35 - The Rise of Women Buyers and the Generational Shift in Sales
9:08 - Diversity-Driven Utopia: Unleashing fresh perspectives for continuous success.

14:52 - Maintain relationships, connections, and rebuild on them.

17: 15 - What hasn't moved on as a society, is our education approach.

24:50 - Leaders need to create an environment where people can be nurtured.

37:50 - To scale your sales, do the right thing by the customer and it will pay back in space.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-nicholson/

Janice B Gordon is the award-winning Customer Growth Expert and Scale Your Sales Framework
founder. She is by LinkedIn Sales 15 Innovating Sales Influencers to Follow 2021, the Top 50 Global
Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience Nov 2020 and 150 Women B2B Thought
Leaders You Should Follow in 2021. Janice helps companies worldwide to reimagine revenue growth
through customer experience and sales.

Book Janice to speak virtually at your next event https://janicebgordon.com

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Scale Your Sales Podcast: https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/podcast

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