stop talking about millennials

EngageSelling.com

Stop Talking AboutMillennials!

Colleen Francis

EngageSelling.com

Stop Talking About Millennials!Far too often these days, businesses are practically falling over themselves to attract Millennials to their sales teams, making compromises in all kinds of places where they shouldn’t. And I’m tired of it.Don’t get me wrong: every generation is important. And, it’s smart to achieve the right balance in your work force to reflect your buyers and your market. The mistake I see today is where organizations compromise on pretty much everything to attract younger generations without first understanding what’s already working well in their line of business.In other words: they fail to recognize what doesn’t need to change…and misdiagnose what does need to change.

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Alignment is KeyFinding the right people has nothing to do with age or gender. It has everything to do with matching skills with goals.You will not find that match if your recruiting strategy is built on the false assumption that an entire generation thinks a certain way or values a narrow list of rewards.You grow by finding good people—the right people with the right skills — and by offering them work (and a way of working) that is compelling to them. That happens only when you treat people as individuals and not as faceless members of a giant-sized generation.Let’s look at a few examples of how you should be matching skills to your goals and business structure.


Alignment is KeyFearlessness for startups: If you’re a startup or are moving into a new market, you need people with razor-sharp business development skills. They must be fearless, wildly creative and immune to rejection.Nimbleness for value-driven businesses: If you’re selling a value-priced product or service, you need people who are great at quick turnarounds and who can close a sale in a single call.Management smarts for complex organizations: Selling a complex, multimillion dollar product? You need to match that with people who can manage a long sales cycle and can work tenaciously though a multi-stage selling process.Eloquence for challenging products: If you have a challenging product line that defies a typical description of features and benefits, you need creative, eloquent people who can explain complicated ideas in ways that customers can quickly understand.


Clarity Means EverythingThere’s no generation out there—or any other demographic—that’s going to solve your need to grow through recruiting.Clear, consistent business goals, on the other hand, will give you what you’re looking for: accelerating sales, a well tuned highly skilled sales force and an utterly magnetic sense of purpose and opportunity that talented people will flock to join.


Final ThoughtsAs more millennials enter the workforce, it’s not likely that we’re going to stop hearing about them anytime soon.But, recruiting based on a label and brushing an entire generation with the same brush is not likely going to yield the results you’re seeking.


stop talking about millennials

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