Are your salary and benefits packages attractive enough?

Compensation is an important factor when attracting and retaining talent for your sales team. That's why getting your organisation's sales compensation and benefits offering right is crucial to your success.

For the majority of salespeople, a significant portion of their income is made up of performance-related bonuses, commissions and benefits. To stand out as an employer of choice in today’s competitive market, it’s crucial to you sell these additional benefits as well as future career prospects, and the opportunities on offer at your business to attract the best talent. You want to give the best talent a reason to accept a position on your sales team and stay with your company long-term.

Not every candidate or employee is the same, however, and it’s also important to make sure your employee benefits are diverse enough to attract a wider talent pool, and that your company is being inclusive enough in the additional rewards on offer. In this article, we’re going to cover the importance of diversifying your employee benefits packages so that they appeal to modern-day salespeople, enabling you to win the war for talent and watch your business thrive in 2022. 

A shift in mindset

The Covid-19 pandemic forced entire workforces to stay at home, but it also gave many people time to reflect on what they really want. Off the back of this, there’s been a clear shift around what candidates expect from their employers and what they deem as valuable and attractive compensation packages. 

As well as this, there’s also a much stronger understanding of cultural differences amongst sales teams in recent years, whether those differences are in age, gender, or background. If as a company, you’re still offering candidates the same salary and benefits packages you were pre-pandemic and offering all your employees the same benefits without consideration of individual lifestyles, wants and needs, you may be limiting your talent pool, and cutting yourself off from a wider range of top candidates on the market right now. 

Getting the basics right 

It all starts with sales compensation, which typically includes a base salary, commission, and additional monetary incentives to encourage salespeople to meet or exceed their targets. A sales compensation program should encourage high performance in a sales team and delineate increasing salaries for higher-level sales reps and managers.

When it comes to basic salaries, it’s important to match them with market or industry standards and ensure they’re competitive enough for your sector. To make sure you’re staying in line with salary trends and inflation, download our Salary and Skills Guide for Sales in 2022 where we highlight the industry salary ranges across all regions of the UK.

Clear commission structures

On top of an enticing basic salary, employers need to be strong on target earnings, bonuses, and commission, all of which elevate salespeople's annual take home. Introducing targets based on individual performance, but also company or business unit performance, are often the most sought after with the candidates we speak to here at Michael Page Sales. 

Interestingly, younger candidates also tend to be more enticed by higher basic salaries rather than additional benefits such as more robust pension schemes, as more personal goals like getting on the property ladder are now harder than ever for the younger generation. Therefore, better commission and bonus structures are more lucrative in the long run than sacrificing money from their monthly paychecks. 

However, more experienced candidates, who may be in a better financial position, will often be flexible around the basic salary as they’re less dependent on that type of monetary benefit. Therefore, alongside the high commission structure, they will also request high pension contributions as this gives them more incentive and better focus during work hours. This shows that the profile of the candidate you are hiring is very important when recruiting for a new role. Learning about their situation could mean they empathise more with the negotiation element of the hiring process, and you can land on a salary package that works for both parties. 

In the sales sector, candidates are generally offered low basic salary packages but with high OTEs. This is the right way to go for the most part, but what some candidates push back on is when that bonus is only being paid twice or once per year. Monthly commission structures are becoming much more desirable with candidates of all demographics.

In-demand benefits 

In order to stand out as an employer of choice, you want to make sure you're offering a broad range of benefits that will help your business attract a wider talent pool. The current benefits in demand right now with candidates we speak to include: 

• Health insurance
• Pension schemes 
• Cycle to work schemes
• Salary sacrifice schemes
• Childcare vouchers
• Ability to buy/sell annual leave 
• Electric cars 

In today’s market, good sales candidates are not short of offers. In addition to their basic salary, and performance-related bonuses or commissions, ensure you sell these additional benefits as well as career prospects, support, and the opportunities on offer at your business to attract the best talent. Different candidates will be attracted to different benefits, so it's important you showcase everything that's on offer in order to diversify your employee packages. 

Are you being ‘hybrid’ enough?

In a recent Talent Trends survey, we uncovered that junior and experienced sales professionals
have different expectations around hybrid working. This is in relation to how many days they’re
expected in the office, how likely they are to accept a new role without hybrid working and their confidence in their current employer to facilitate hybrid working efficiently. 41% of employers want their junior sales professionals (1-3 years’ experience) in the office full-time, compared to only 11% for salespeople with 10+ years of experience. 

Now that restrictions have once again been lifted and you will be bringing your people back to the office, it’s important to retain hybrid working measures. You want to encourage salespeople of all seniority levels to come back into the office – but also offer a level of flexibility that will attract and retain a wider range of talent. 

Equity talks 

More companies are currently offering candidates share options in the business. This is particularly popular in the tech space or with start-up companies. Similarly, we’re seeing more and more junior candidates wanting this as contracted compensation in their employment package. Offering this kind of equity in the business means that the salesperson you hire will be engaged not only in their own personal development, but also in the overall performance and growth of the business.

The round up 

One of the main developments to come out of the last two years is that whatever the benefits – employers have realised that they need to fit in with the candidate's lifestyle. It’s tough for large corporates to adjust and amend benefits on a regular basis, but they need to keep a modern, flexible approach to their benefits packages. Whilst interviewing candidates, learn about what makes them tick, what they are looking for from an employer and their work/life balance preferences. This is how you’ll get the very best performance out of them and also retain the new hire for a much longer time.

- Matthew Drewell, Senior Business Manager, Michael Page Sales
    
With the help of Michael Page Sales, you can gain access to a wide range of top sales talent. We can also offer your business specific and legally sound services to support diversity and inclusion, including a more diversified candidate shortlist for any role you’re recruiting for. 

For more information on how we can help, get in touch with one of our expert consultants today.