Seona Tully is a regional sales director at HubSpot. In this episode of the Sales Leadership Show, Seona uses data and real case studies from the Hubspot CRM to explain how COVID has changed sales leadership.
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Transcript
Will Barron:
This episode of the show is brought to you from the salesman.org HubSpot Studio. Coming up on today’s episode of the Sales Leadership Show.
Seona Tully:
Yeah, absolutely. I do think that relationship building from a team perspective is great. And when you know your team at that different level of depth, you have an idea of the perspective of where they’re coming from, even in conversation in communications. I think there’s a lot of really big positives that can be taken in terms of post-COVID, the impact that has had on business structures and the way that we operate as businesses.
Will Barron:
Hello, sales nation. My name is Will Barron and welcome to today’s episode of the Sales Leadership Show. In today’s episode, we have Seona Tully. She’s a sales director over at HubSpot, and on today’s episode, we’re getting into how COVID has changed sales. We get some excellent case studies and data from HubSpot, and we also cover some data from the HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey, which you can find in the show notes of this episode. There’s tonnes to go out, tonnes of value. And so, let’s jump right in. Seona, welcome to the Sales Leadership Show.
Seona Tully:
Thank you so much, Will. Great to be here.
46% of Businesses Have Made Changes to Enable Successful Remote Work. Seona Talks About How Hubspot Have Handled the Remote Work Transition · [01:23]
Will Barron:
It’s great to have you on. Okay. So, we’re going to dive into how COVID has changed sales. Well, I’ll pose this to you in a second, wherever you think it has or hasn’t, we’ll look at some hopefully some case studies from HubSpot itself. We’ll have some data from a recent HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey, but I think the place we should start this conversation as Seona, it is we have a number that shocked me, right? The survey said that under half 46% of businesses, I’m quoting here have made changes to enable successful remote work. Now, two things here. One, does the number freak you out to the only 46% of businesses have made these changes? And what did you do over at HubSpot when I guess all of a sudden you just hold one day that your team doesn’t come to work anymore?
Seona Tully:
Yeah, absolutely. The number really does shock me and to be honest, Will, I think it’s a changing number. I think if we rerun the survey in 12 months time, we’d be in a very different scenario. Most companies have realised at this point in time that they need to adapt the way that they’re working. But yeah, let’s dig into the data a little bit and how we dealt with it here at HubSpot. I mean, we were pretty lucky already at HubSpot, we were on the right track. So, from the time I started in HubSpot about eight and a half years ago now, I believe we’re a very flexible working environment already. So, we already had many of the team working from home a couple of days a week. I certainly leverage that. And even before COVID we had it by 10% of the employees were working remotely.
Seona Tully:
So, we were a fairly remote friendly. It’s probably a nice way to put it before the pandemic. When COVID first hit, yeah, it was definitely a shock. We shifted to remote very, very quickly. Needed a few big changes. So of course, technology, people, culture, what were we going to do from that perspective? And from a technology perspective, as I mentioned, we were fairly lucky. We had a lot of the tech stack in place. We leveraged a lot of our own software, of course, and we didn’t have to make sweeping changes there. I think most of our changes came on the people pillar as such was a bit more complex. It was new for everyone new for managers. It was certainly new for all of the team that were managing this and it wasn’t just working remote. It was coupling that with the pandemic and how people were feeling in a pandemic.
Seona Tully:
So, we took two main viewpoints or guiding sales principles if you want to call it that. The first was leading with empathy. So, that was basically everything we heard in our manager meetings or the director meetings, working with customers, working with each other with colleagues. And that was huge. And as a parent, I certainly appreciated that one as well, because I felt I was in the receiving end of that as well as of course, managing with empathy with my team. And the second big one was communication. So, how would we communicate with the team? How would we ensure that people received really regular communication and that they felt comfortable, that they knew what was coming. Of course there’s a lot of unknown in a pandemic. So, we tried to take that away from the work environment and maybe over communicate as such.
Tools and Best Practices Used by Hubspot to Improve Remote Communication · [04:11]
Will Barron:
Is there anything you did to implement this? We all understand the empathy side of things. So, we can touch on that if you like but I feel like the communication side of things is interesting here. Is there anything that you used, any tools, any best practises from your own perspective to over communicate with your team who perhaps were used to once an office environment and now stranded at the kitchen table?
Seona Tully:
Yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve always used Zoom, for example, in HubSpot or some form of online meeting software. So, that was normal. We definitely flexed a bit more to video. So, with the video or recordings, from a messaging perspective, it gave people who were working from home, maybe people who had families at home a time to actually view the recordings in their own time. It gave them time to listen to the recording, process and come back with questions. I think a lot of people maybe didn’t have their questions ready if they were hearing a message in the moment in a team meeting, but using a recording, allowed them to process and then come back with ideas, questions, or any points on that. So, that was really helpful for us. We also used obviously our frontline sales managers to tailor the message.
Seona Tully:
So, there was a lot of communication to our global teams and some of that communication was the same across all countries, but it may have been different to receive in Dublin versus Japan versus the US. So, our frontline manager has got a lot of training on how to communicate with their teams. And also some of the things like how to run remote meetings, how to run inclusive meetings in this environment and how to keep the culture alive as well in that environment.
How Hubspot Team Leaders Coordinate Empathy and Communicate with Employees From Different Parts of the World · [05:38]
Will Barron:
I’ve never thought about it on that before, but as different countries and locations are locking down and opening up and locking back down again, I guess that must have been a struggle just to even coordinate where people are, what people are doing and coordinating, and I’ve thought about this before, but coordinating that empathy that you are pushing out to your team of their situation and their circumstances.
Seona Tully:
Yeah, absolutely. We are very lucky to have a fabulous leader in Katie Burke who kind of really spearheaded this. And she had a team I believe of about eight people at the time who kind of made all those decisions on communication on a company level. And then they collaborated and communicated with all of our country leads and heads of our different teams. And they were able to then kind of tailor that message down. But as you can imagine, I mean, it would have hit our Asian offices much more quickly than it hit Europe, I believe was next. And then the US offices. So, some offices were working as normal while other offices were already feeling the impact of it.
Cultural Changes Within Hubspot That Improved Communication, Selling Styles, and Remote Working · [06:40]
Will Barron:
Sure. Well, we’ll come on bring it back onto the data in their part in a second, but I’m fascinated by this. Is there anything that you think has happened culturally within HubSpot, the company culture, and you guys are quite open about the culture that you kind of build and you’re proud of it. So, it’s all over the kind of homepage if anyone’s check it out. I think there’s a link in the footer on the homepage that talks about the company culture and kind of values and that side of things, I’ll link it in the show notes as well. Is there anything that’s changed internally within the company culture, because empathy in communication and over communicating, perhaps things that can be added on top of the [inaudible 00:07:11]. Is there anything that’s changed, especially when you’re dealing with your sales managers, salespeople, is anything change, change culturally with communications selling style, anything like that?
Seona Tully:
There’s probably been a lot of changes. I think if we take kind of culture first, we’ve put as I mentioned, a real emphasis on empathy, obviously, and I suppose it showed its face in multiple different ways across the company. So, I’ll use my own example. I’m working parents. I was eight months pregnant at the time and I came home and my two year old was that out of crash. So, I was trying to juggle work as well as home life, as well as obviously being late in the pregnancy. So, lots of things coupled together. And there was really nice examples of them putting on family programming. So, for parents who were homeschooling, they had videos, dance classes and education sessions, storytelling. And I used to put them in front of the TV to watch some of those which gave me a little bit of time to do work.
“I think HubSpot was very proactive. We had a lot of staff who may have felt isolated, may have been in apartments on their own or in countries away from their home place, or at just different scenarios that we find ourselves in with COVID. And they, again put on lots of programming, lots of wellness, examples there, exercise classes, fitness classes, and opportunities to socialise.” – Seona Tully · [08:39]
Seona Tully:
And it also brought people together because we had all of the kids on at the same time and parents really bonded. And I think it gave us an insight into each of those lives to just a different depth than you normally get. And maybe that bond is quite special now that we have those relationships that were more of a work relationship in the past and have definitely deepened. And the other big one for us was kind of mental health, physical health and just wellbeing. So again, I think HubSpot was very proactive here. We had a lot of staff who may have felt isolated, may have been in apartments on their own or in countries away from their home place or at just different scenarios that we find ourselves in with COVID.
“We launched modern health recently, which has an employee benefit that it gives access to coaching and therapy and mental health resources. And it’s a really nice example of that.” – Seona Tully · [09:10]
Seona Tully:
And they, again put on lots of programming, lots of wellness, examples there, exercise classes, fitness classes, and opportunities to socialise. And I think that was really important for people too. And again, built bonds that may not have existed beforehand. So, we launched modern health recently, which has an employee benefit that it gives access to coaching and therapy and mental health resources. And it’s a really nice example of that.
Relationship Building and Other Positive Things That Have Come Out of The Pandemic · [09:50]
Will Barron:
That’s amazing. The reason I asked and I wanted to dwell on that point was I’ve experienced the same with our team over at sales into org. I now know them. Everyone’s remote oversized dog by now I know them better from just asking for updates about how things are going along with the pandemic and what’s going on in the different countries, because the team’s all over the world at this point, I now know them better than if I would have prior, probably just plodded along what we were doing and kept this more formal kind of business relationship going. So, the reason I asked those questions Seona is, there’s probably a few positive things that have come out of all of this? We talked about the negatives all the time, but the impact and clear the impact of COVID globally has been, is still crazy, right? It’s insane on a negative perspective, but there has been a few positives come from this, right?
“I do think that relationship building from a team perspective is great. And when you know your team at that different level of depth, you have an idea of their perspective of where they’re coming from, even in conversation and communication. And I think people have been helping each other out even more.” – Seona Tully · [10:06]
Seona Tully:
Yeah, absolutely. I do think that relationship building from a team perspective is great. And when you know your team at that different level of depth, you have an idea of their perspective of where they’re coming from, even in conversation and communication. And I think people have been helping each other out even more. It’s always been that environment and HubSpot where we help each other rise whether it’s coaching someone, helping onboard new hires or our customers as well, but that’s definitely been extended within COVID. It’s been lovely.
Is There Any Evidence to Support The Claim That Salespeople Who Went Remote Quicker Perform Better? · [10:43]
Will Barron:
For sure. Okay. So, staying positive here as long as we possibly can, is there anything that’s happened while salespeople have gotten remote that is positive for the performance? Has I know there’s some of this is, it depends on the marketplace and the economy and of things that are out of our physical control a lot of the time, but is there anything that’s happened? Is there any evidence that salespeople, for example, who went remote quicker have performed better? Is there any evidence or is there anything that sales people should be doing right now to leverage the fact that customers are remote, we’re remote, and anything we can do to improve selling performance across an organisation?
“Many companies are already embracing remote working by hiring people who don’t live immediately in the vicinity of their offices, for example. We certainly are here and broadening that potential pool of employees. It’s a really great thing. Not everyone can move inter-city for work. And therefore it opens up a really great pool of candidates for companies and it opens up nice work opportunities as well for candidates.” – Seona Tully
· [11:37]
Seona Tully:
Yeah. I mean, in terms of things that have kind of gone well, post COVID and staying on the positive note, yeah. I think there’s a lot of really big positives that can be taken in terms of post COVID, the impact that has had on business structures and the way that we operate as businesses, where if we take location as an example, I suppose, where we’re all working from home, I don’t think that’s going to change. As many companies are already embracing remote working by hiring people who don’t live immediately in the vicinity of their offices, for example, we certainly are here and broadening that potential pool of employees. Is a really great thing. Not everyone can move [inaudible 00:11:50] city for work. And therefore it opens up a really great pool of candidates for companies and it opens up nice work opportunities as well for candidates.
“And the survey we did recently showed about 78% of people felt that improved flexibility, allowing working parents and carers to take on roles that they may not have previously been able to do. So, a really nice uptick there.” – Seona Tully · [12:34]
Seona Tully:
So, a win-win there and a great value add from a diversity perspective as well. I do wonder this is not something I’ve read coming up anywhere [inaudible 00:12:07] as a fellow or a pass backpacker, I do wonder for people who love to travel. Is it going to open up the opportunity for people to travel while working and some more interesting opportunities like that to rise in the future. But the flexible hours and flexible work arrangements, I think is going to be the biggest positive for salespeople from that working environment. It’s been really freeing for employees, especially those with children or families. And the survey that we did recently showed about 78% of people felt that improved flexibility, allowing working parents and carers to take on roles that they may not have previously been able to do. So, a really nice uptick there.
68% of Sales Leaders Will Implement a Hybrid Model In Their Organisations. What is a Hybrid Model and What Does It Mean For The People at HubSpot? · [13:17]
Will Barron:
For sure. And we could perhaps touch on flexible working hours and things like that in a second. So, I think that’s really valuable to salespeople and it gives you a lot of the freedom that perhaps we talk about it as the cliche, all the time of salespeople should treat their territory or their customers like they’re an entrepreneur, they try and grow with [inaudible 00:12:59] business will being more flexible if your work hours perhaps allows a bit more of that entrepreneurial elements to Salesforce, perhaps call [inaudible 00:13:06] in a second, but you brought up the, or you brought it back, I appreciate it, to the HubSpot sales enablement survey. And another data point from it that I thought was interesting and worth drilling down with you Seona, was 68% of sales leaders are going to implement a hybrid model moving forward. The reason I want to ask this question is we talk about remote selling, digital transformation, what does a hybrid model mean to yourself and HubSpot?
“So, a hybrid model, I suppose, would mean to me that you would have people who are working fully remote, people who are working from the office and you may have people adopting something in the middle.” – Seona Tully · [13:37]
Seona Tully:
Yeah, absolutely. So, a hybrid model, I suppose, would mean to me that you would have people who are working fully remote. People are working from the office and you may have people adopting something in the middle. So, that’s something that we’ve actually recently launched here in HubSpot, where all of our staff since January this year are able to choose one of the three options. They can be a fully remote, a member of staff. They can be a flex staff or they can be an office-based member of staff. So for me, I’ve chosen flex. So, it’s nice to have a few days in the office, get all of the benefits and perks of that, and also have all of the benefits for being at home and that environment as well. So, the flex from a company perspective, there’s a few challenges around it.
Seona Tully:
How do you treat everyone who is outside of this office in the same way as people within the office from a career development perspective, from a culture perspective, from a perks’ perspective. So, we’re really rolling out everything kind of hybrid for us to reflect first where we’re trying to think of encompassing everyone in the organisation with any initiatives that we roll out or benefits that we roll out and I think that’s something that we’re working on at the moment.
Percentage of Hubspot Employees Who Took Up The Three Types of Work Environment: The Flex, Fully Remote, or Office-Based Roles · [14:47]
Will Barron:
I find if you do it in a second, perhaps gather some data on this and put this in the show, but do you know what percentage of people have chosen each one of those routes of fully in the office, flexible or remote?
Seona Tully:
Yeah. I won’t give you the exact data percentage, but give or take just over 40% of our employees chose the flex row. And then just under 40% chose the fully remote option, which left us with a by 20% choosing the office based role.
Seona Reveals Why She’s Not Surprised By The 20% of People Who Chose To Work Fulltime In The Office Environment · [15:15]
Will Barron:
Sure. Does that 20% choosing to be in the office surprise you?
“There are lots of benefits of being in the office. Some people love the social side of being in the office and the camaraderie of being in the office. There’s a great learning opportunity in the office.” – Seona Tully · [15:20]
Seona Tully:
It doesn’t surprise me. There are lots of benefits of being in the office. Some people love the social side of being in the office and the camaraderie of being in the office. There’s a great learning opportunity in the office. Certainly as a sales rep, I loved the learning bias. Most is just hearing people around me at doing a great job and picking up tips and tricks there. And then also considering the environments that people live in. Again, some people may have a very busy household and find it difficult to engage in work from their home, or some people may be living on their own and be really craving that company as well from an office environment.
Will Barron:
Yeah. You sold me. That makes total sense. I think I always have a bias to this because I’ve always been in field sales, working for medical device companies. So, we’ve never really had an office to the point of Seona, that the Christmas party that would be down [inaudible 00:16:08], the North of England for yourself in the audience, the Christmas party that was down in London every year, they would almost try and pay us off by giving us a bonus if we didn’t go. That’s how little they wanted us to come to the office. But yeah, you’re right. But learning by osmosis, clearly the office environment can, especially if you’re in a small flat, you’ve got kids running around, I’ve just got a puppy chewing and attacking everything. So yeah, that would probably not be the most useful environment for [inaudible 00:16:30] trying to sell out of that and deal with customers as well.
The Performance Difference Between Remote Salespeople and Those Working From The Office · [16:42]
Will Barron:
So, I’ll ask you this, but this is clearly going to be somewhat confidential information and the data probably isn’t there yet either. So, we can perhaps ponder on it. Do you feel that there’ll be any performance difference between people who are in and office remotes and flexible from the quota-carrying salesperson perspective? Because the reason I ask you this is, do you feel like some of this not necessarily HubSpot we’ll talk wider across the sales industry here, do you think some of these changes is offered to work remote could pivot back to an office environment if perhaps performance isn’t quite the versus people who are remote versus people in an office environment in the future?
“It’s interesting, I think giving people the opportunity to work in the best environment for them allows them to kind of fulfil their potential as such and being able to tailor the environment that they work in based on who they are, based on their home environment.” – Seona Tully · [17:35]
Seona Tully:
Yeah. I can’t speak for companies in general in terms of the data points here, but it’s can certainly give a viewpoint on HubSpot because we’ve had this environment where we’ve had remote employees in the past, even pre COVID, as well as our workers who worked a few days from home and fully office space employees. We didn’t see any difference in terms of attainment there. So, it’s interesting, I think giving people the opportunity to work in the best environment for them allows them to kind of fulfil their potential as such and being able to tailor the environment that they work in based on who they are, based on their home environment. And I do think people will flex. So for example, as a mom of two young kids right now that extra 30, 40 minutes in the morning, or the evening that I would use to commute is so valuable.
Seona Tully:
It’s that extra time with them before they go to bed and they currently go to bed at seven o’clock in the evening, fast forward, maybe five or six years, I might be in a very different scenario, be delighted to get out of the house in the summer holidays when they’re home, I love to go to the office and it just, I might decide to choose something different. So, I do think we’ll flex over time.
Will Barron:
Sure. And I guess some of this comes down to perhaps personality as well. Perhaps the more extroverted individuals, whether there’s a sales management, whoever might really thrive and gain energy from a busy office environment, perhaps a slightly more introverted individuals like myself on occasion. Once I do these interviews Seona, I want to sit down and read a book for five minutes and recharge. Maybe I will do better do my calls, emails, client and customer facing conversations and then being able to just have lunch by myself with a bit of peace at home, as opposed to in a busy office environment. So, maybe the personality comes into some of this as well. So, talking about performance here was one of the things that really stood out to me.
The HubSpot Survey Showed That The Percentage of Women Offered Financial Bonuses Dropped by 8% And 1% For Men. Seona Explains Why This is The Case · [18:58]
Will Barron:
And having you on the show as a female sales leader, I think you can give some, you can talk about this perhaps more than what I can and being HubSpot and probably having a good idea of the data here as well. So, the HubSpot survey showed that the percentage of women offered financial bonuses has dropped 8% whilst only dropping 1% for men over this period that we’re talking about. Why I know there’s not going to be a clear answer to this. There’s going to be many, many variables, right, clearly. But why do you think that is the case? What was going on here? Is it just men are outperforming women at the moment? Is there other factors involved what’s going on?
Seona Tully:
Yeah, that’s a question that could start many a debate Will.
Will Barron:
Did you see how careful I was when I tried to set it up though?
“In terms of our survey, we find actually that all signs perform to women are outperforming their male colleagues since lockdown, which was interesting” – Seona Tully · [19:48]
Seona Tully:
You did, right? Very well played. Now I might refer back to the data on this one. I mean, in terms of our survey, we find actually that all signs perform to women are performing the male colleagues since Lockdown, which was interesting and finding maybe I wasn’t expecting there to be a difference really. 60% of women agreed in particular that they had excelled during the pandemic. And I think that was quite interesting that it was put down to maybe leading with empathy while engaging with customers. And also some data to show that women were actually doing a little bit less of the face-to-face engagement, pre Lockdown. So, they didn’t need as big of a shift when we went, moved into the lockdown itself. But it doesn’t, I suppose, change the fact that the data on the financial incentives and the gap there in the same period of time, the gap in financial incentives had widened to 23%, no referencing that drop of 8% for women and that’s obviously something that isn’t great to hear as a woman in sales.
Seona Tully:
There’s a few factors that might come into us. Men very much still occupy a lot of the senior positions. I think we’re all aware of that in businesses. And there was definitely a recent analysis I’d read from Mercer on that, that show to somewhere just over a 1,000 organisations had only by 23% of their executives were female. So, if we think about the cuts that have taken place during COVID, these financial incentives are more like, or financial cuts are more likely to affect the junior staff. So, I think that may have taken something into us. I’m pretty confident companies are not maliciously cutting their female staff salary, but equally they might not be considering how financial incentives affect different people within their workforce. And in sales, especially if the performance-based business bonuses are part of the culture, they just need to be very sensitive when they handle it, I think, and maybe reading reports with date on the topic will help some companies to explore their own data and start a conversation within their business.
Will Barron:
For sure. The reason I wanted to bring this up is, and you’ve outlined the, a lot of this is muddled and I see a lot of headlines especially on LinkedIn, from individuals rather than brands or companies like HubSpot to have to be perhaps a little bit more conscientious with what they put out into the world, because people will call them out on it. And I think it’s fascinating and it seems like the should, it seems that’s an opportunity for, as you described the, a actual real in-depth study that has things like positions within an organisation normalised. And using salespeople is a great example here because you can normalise on performance. And I’d really love to suss out where the gaps are in here. I’m sure that there’s massive gaps all over at management, but for salespeople specifically, and as you said, I’ve read studies and data that shown that women are perhaps performing better than men at the moment.
Women are Outperforming Men During the Pandemic. Does This Mean That The “Sales Bro Culture” is Coming to an End? · [22:30]
Will Barron:
The perhaps, and this is a stereotype, but there is evidence to show this, all kinds of psychological studies that women perhaps are better geared and set up to have empathy like natural, like true empathy, as opposed to a sales bro, pretending that he gives a about what’s going on in the conversation. So, I really looked to source of this out. And the reason I’m pointing this up now Seona, is do you feel like women are going to become not better, but more how to say this? I feel like sales is a bro culture. Is that fair to say? Not necessarily HubSpot, but a lot of companies. And I can use myself last come I worked for, I didn’t even fit in as a dude, right? They had mainly athletes and ex military personnel and I’m certainly not even one of them.
Will Barron:
So, I was slightly not kind of fitting in with the company culture. Do you feel like that is coming to an end as women clearly can outperform male sales specials at least perform alongside them, do you think that there’s from coming from a female sales leader, do you think that that is perhaps the future of sales of a truly kind of a balanced Salesforce across the two genders?
Seona Tully:
I definitely think it is the balances is what we want to see between male and female in the organisation. We know those teams overall perform better in terms of that kind of bro culture that you’ve referenced. I couldn’t comment on companies in general there. I’ve certainly read some of the articles you’ve mentioned as well online that may reference that for companies, but actually my experience has been incredibly positive in sales. I actually see sales as an incredible place to be as a woman. I’ve always been really welcomed in it and that’s not just in HubSpot, that’s in the other companies I’ve worked in as well. And I think it’s always been embraced being a woman in sales, be at the male colleagues on my team or management male or female that I reported into. So, I’ve actually been lucky enough that I haven’t had any lack of experiences there, but I do think we need to be very conscious and very deliberate in terms of as leaders in the business, how do we ensure that every person who joins the team is feeling that way?
“There are differences that sometimes my own experience could lead to bias. If I’ve had a great experience, perhaps I’m not then recognising that it’s not the same level playing field for everyone.” – Seona Tully · [24:40]
Seona Tully:
Because there are differences that sometimes my own experience could lead to bias. If I’ve had a great experience, perhaps I’m not then recognising that it’s not the same level playing field for everyone. So, how do we ensure and think about our culture from the moment that we interview people right through to the moment they’re onboarded, how we include them in our team and how we progress and develop our staff as such into leadership? How do we ensure that there’s that balance across the board there we’re investing all of our people to say?
Parting Thoughts: Company Culture and Leading with Empathy · [25:20]
Will Barron:
I’ll leave you with one final question before we wrap up and that is as a sales leader, sales director, is there anything you’d want to instil from HubSpot into the sales leaders who list in the show right now? Is that if you had to choose one thing, whether it’s a culture, whether it’s been data driven, whether it’s a great product, whatever it is, what’s the one thing that you’d really post COVID wants to share with our audience because tens of thousands of people are going to be listening to this, what’s the one thing that you’d want to share with them?
“Ultimately, if you create the right culture for your team, an inclusive culture and a culture that people kind of can grow in and be themselves in, ultimately you’re going to retain staff. We’ve had incredible retention rates, and obviously it costs an awful lot to hire and to train your staff, so you want to retain them.” – Seona Tully · [25:42]
Seona Tully:
I think it would be culture. Ultimately, if you create the right culture for your team, an inclusive culture and a culture that people kind of can grow in and be themselves in, ultimately you’re going to retain staff. We’ve had incredible retention rates, and obviously it costs an awful lot to hire and to train your staff, so you want to retain them. And that culture means that people have been a HubSpot for a long time and the value that brings to an organisation is just incredible. So, lead with empathy, build the culture that people want to stay in and it’s only going to pay dividends for your business.
Will Barron:
For sure. And to really emphasise that I think work with HubSpot for six years now [inaudible 00:26:15] really supported sales into org and the different podcasts that we produce in and the content we produce for our audience. It’s actually slightly bizarre, the fact that the people I worked with five, six years ago are the same people that I’m working with now, because this doesn’t happen in any other company. So, clearly you guys are doing something right with culture. Because as I said, it’s almost bizarre when I go to email someone a couple years down the line with this new project coming up and it’s the same person that I emailed years before.
Seona Tully:
Yeah. I love to hear that. It’s a special place. It will take a lot for them ever to get rid of me. I’m here for, I’ve been here a while and certainly fun to be here for a lot longer.
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well, I will link to the HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey in the show notes episode, over at a sales leadership to all come. With that Seona, can where find more about you? Can we add you on LinkedIn could be a fireable message on there?
Seona Tully:
Yeah, absolutely on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much for the time today, Will.
Will Barron:
You’re welcome and with that Seona, thank you for joining us on the Sales Leadership Show.
Seona Tully:
Right. Bye-bye.
