I recently had the opportunity to co-host a session with HR leaders through the Philadelphia SHRM chapter to discuss how data gets utilized for business impact. In particular, the session was about how HR leaders can take the data they have at their fingertips every day and understand how that data relates to the rest of the business and company objectives.
My portion of the session was focused on putting HR data into the context of sales employees, and ultimately sales results. An overall theme was that while individual departments within a company can tend to get stuck in their own silos , it is critical that leaders across teams understand each other and work toward common goals. Sales and HR make for a perfect examination of how alignment across teams can make, or break, company success.
Here are some of the key ideas I took away from the class:
- Humans are behind the data – There are human stories behind any business metrics. Sales data is often linked to compensation. If sales are struggling, that often means people are making less money. That has implications for employee satisfaction and turnover, customer satisfaction and a host of other human-centric storylines. Before applying data to any strategic decisions, the human impact should be weighed. Sales and HR leaders need to be willing partners to have these conversations.
- Start with the objective and work backward – Leaders should know what their company’s broader objectives are. Any conversation about business metrics, should start with why the data is important and how it impacts the end goals. I shared an example around employee tenue and sales performance data. A former client had a significant sales turnover problem, but keeping employees was not the business objective. Improving sales was. It wasn’t as simple as saying the company needed to recruit better candidates or change the hiring profile. The problem was the support systems were not in place to drive performance, so people were leaving. Sales and HR leaders need to bring both of their data sets but align on what problem they are actually trying to solve.
- Look for one thing you can “amplify” – Progress with people often needs to start small. HR and sales leaders should be working together to identify where something is working, even if it is just one small thing, and build upon it. It could be one positive trend in the performance data, or an uptick in employee engagement surveys. Find out what is driving the momentum and share it so everyone can get excited about.
A strong partnership between HR and sales is critical for performance results. The hiring and developing of strong talent will go a long way toward a high-performing sales organization. On the flip side, sales teams can provide HR teams with perspective on what it takes to achieve results, and the challenges salespeople are likely to face. All of that context can impact their compensation, their satisfaction and their longevity with the company.
Both functions will have a perspective on data. The more leaders of each of these teams can learn about how certain data points are processed by their sales or HR counterparts, the better outcomes they can drive together for the business.