Sales and HR – the final frontier or the ultimate partnership? If HR really investigate how their organisations sell, and work out how best to support that – what a great way to quantify the value HR add. What if you could say – ‘HR helped to increase revenue by 10%’?
I’d love to hear about how HR’s relationship with Sales works in your organisation. Is it a source of pride, or of frustration?
Experience tells me the relationship can be a bit frosty. The drivers of Sales and HR appear to be at odds. I do recall many sales managers when I was in HR who really didn’t ‘get’ HR. We all know examples of sales managers who got promoted because they were great at selling – but proved to be poor managers.
I spent a lot of my time trying to resolve performance issues where the sales manager just didn’t have the patience or, apparently, the desire to turn the sales rep’s performance around.
Yet, the sales manager is under pressure to bring in the vital revenue. That’s reflected in the kind of person we recruit into the sales role.
It’s a conundrum. So we also need to ask ourselves – do HR ‘get’ sales?
Please share your views on this. Dave Ulrich, I’d welcome your input.
Many thanks to Treve Wearne for the inspiration.
