Your competitive edge is the advantage you hold over your competitors. In sales, the competitive edge means the difference between winning and losing deals. Good sales leaders know that you need a combination of speed and insight to gain the competitive edge.
Deals are made or lost based on who reaches a prospect first, which is why sales automation has become a new mainstay for organizations. Sales teams also require knowledge about a prospect’s problem or interest level — a need being filled with emerging buyer-side engagement analytics.
There is a third element that has been proven to give businesses a competitive edge, but it’s one that a majority of sales organizations overlook — to their own and the sales industry’sdetriment.
That element is diversity.
Leadership diversity has been proven to contribute to an organization’s success. Studies show that gender and ethnically diverse leadership teams positively impact a company’s financial performance. According to McKinsey & Company, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity outperform those in the bottom quartile by 15 percent.
Yet today, only one in five women hold sales leadership roles — despite comprising 40 percent of the sales workforce. Lack of gender diversity in sales leadership hurts performance. Women sales leaders rank higher in effectiveness than men — and higher in more leadership traits.
Sales organizations need to commit to gender diversity in sales leadership — to attract top talent, improve employee satisfaction, and increase financial performance — in other words, to gain the competitive edge.
Jennifer Brandenburg is chief revenue officer of LiveHive, Inc., suppliers of sales acceleration software as a service.
