Episode 8 - Working from Home, The Mental Effect

Good afternoon, welcome to the Human Results podcast. My name is Ben Coates as always and as usual I'm joined by Alistair Hobbs, the Managing Director of Human Results. Good afternoon Alistair, how are you? Good afternoon Ben, yes, very well thanks.

I think we should begin with a quick acknowledgement to the sad passing of the Queen over the past week. It has brought up some HR questions of course which we are going to answer in a blog. I think certainly we should just acknowledge that, the passing and the sad occasion there is in the UK at the moment. Yeah, indeed, Ben.

I can't have anything that hasn't been added by a myriad of commentators in the last six days, five, six days. It's been, yes, it feels quite strange. You know, we've all, you know, I'm in my mid-50s and have known nobody different. She's been a constant presence.

And whilst I'm not a flag-waving royalist in any way, it is sad. And it's such a public display and seeing things like that vigil at St. Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh, where my daughter actually lives, seeing things like that, very somber, dignified and very public occasion like that. And you have to feel for those that have to carry on, who will be grieving personally, and we shouldn't be disrespectful for them, for the many millions, no doubt, who feel a sense of strong sense of personal grief.

And yes, it has, of course, thrown up issues. Another bank holiday. So many larger employers especially have been quite quick to be supportive of it. Others like CentreParks seem to have created a bit of a PR debacle for themselves in the last day or two.

But so many smaller companies, you know, that sort of SME size business who've already carried the cost perhaps of the Platinum Jubilee extra day. they they're faced with difficult decisions at a time of year of course when a lot of employees have already used up much of their annual entitlement and maybe just have a couple of days held back to tag on to their sort of Christmas traditional kind of periods where they maybe try and piece together a week off it is problematic but where where people can where employers can it's one of those national events that I think everybody really would like to to take part in or at least sit and watch on the telly.

It does kind of link to today's guest because one thing I think a lot of employers and employees did over the last three years is built up loyalty to each other through the pandemic. A lot of that of course was based from working from home and today's guest we have Paul Owen of Sales Talent and Paul of course wants to talk to us about working from home about it being detrimental to their mental health. Just to introduce you Paul before we bring you in, you are the Amazon best-selling author of Secret Skill Hidden career.

You are very experienced in seminars at universities and you've worked with over 10,000 people and we are now going to ask you to talk to our audience and tell us who you are, what you do and how people can work from home more effectively or work through the business more effectively. So Paul good afternoon, over to you. Thank you Ben and thanks to you and Alistair for having me here today. I love sales and I'm a sales evangelist partly because I turned my nose about sales for years and didn't think it was the job for me.

And then in my early 30s, when I was completely broke, I found sales, fell into it like most people do, and it changed my life. And I think everybody who goes into sales has their life changed by it. And since then, which is, you know, the last 20 years, I spent probably the first decade or so selling myself, and then the last decade, helping other people sell, although like all of us, I still sell every day myself. So people that work with me, I work with lots of sales teams, predominantly in London, but also around the UK.

And my job is simply to help them sell better. And if I may just include one more bit on my introduction on the company, the challenge in sales, and there are many, but the challenge in sales, first of all, is that how we as a British public think about sales is almost completely negative. And there are some reasons where, and sometimes when that's justified, but I think in every walk of life, as we've seen in the last 20 years, there are mistakes happen and there scandals that happen.

And actually, the vast majority of salespeople work hard and do the job properly. And I think when we can all start to agree on what sales is, and sales to me is about helping people make good buying decisions. And we do that by asking questions and effectively searching for the truth. So I often talk about sales actually being a mission.

And that mission is to search for truth. Once we understand the client's needs, then we can help them. And before jumping into our topic today, or before I ever go into details with clients about sales training we first of all have to talk about what sales is and sales is not talking at people it's not pitching it's not going on a bit too long as I am now it's actually taking time to find out if people have a need if we can help with that need then we try and position ourselves on that if we can't we wish people well and move on and it's it's pretty much pointless to talk about sales and how to do it until we agree what it is I think I think to summarize that as well Paul I think you'll agree it's it's about building relationships whether it's a five minute relationship or a 20-year relationship, it's all about knowing the person you're selling to.

Absolutely. And then you asked me about working from home and the theme of today. Listen, I don't claim to speak for the whole world. I work in sales almost exclusive.

I work with a few other functions where they want to improve their communication skills, but 95% of my work is the sales teams. And I think through the pandemic, what happened is we learned that we can, we are able to work from home successfully. and I think what's troubled me in recent times is that just because we could do it doesn't mean it's the most effective way to do it and now that we have a choice about it I think that the argument has very often been quite one-sided and it's been a universal good of working from home which is you know not commuting more family time work-life balance which effectively are all the same thing it's the lack of commute which which creates that and I get it but I don't think there's been enough talk, and which was delighted to come and join you today in particular, about the potential downsides.

And the potential downsides for salespeople in particular, is that in most cases, not all, but in most cases, salespeople tend to be extroverts. And what's I think often misunderstood about extroverts is not that they enjoy company, it's that they need company, they feed off company, it's the energy, the motivation, the spirit they get is partly being fueled by the people by whom they're surrounded. Whereas an introvert can also socialize in all the ways an extrovert can but they find they find it draining it takes energy away from them now with extroverts it takes time for that to show through and I found it myself working from home it took me quite I mean a lot of months to realize I was just losing that I don't know what you call it that va-va-voom that motivation that excitement that energy from not being around people and bear in mind I don't live alone I have a wife I have three children, the house is always busy, but it's a different kind of company.

Now, when you then consider that a significant proportion of salespeople are 20 to 35 years of age, certainly based in London, the Southeast, very often living in house shares, they are effectively waking up in the morning, sitting on the end of their bed and working with no change of environment, no change of company. And I think they've managed to do that. But I think long term, there will be significant mental health issues if that carries on not for everybody but for a significant number who are still currently working from home i think you're right i think that one of the biggest things is an office environment it couldn't be very positive and very negative of course and there is both sides of that element but at least then you you kind of are around people and you discuss the issues one of the biggest things of course we're working from home is the walls don't answer back and you've got nobody really to talk to unless you jump on a zoom or a team's call and that and of course brings its own issues and looking in the bites of people's eyes there's nothing like it really when you say it will bring issues in the future what kind of issues do you see and what kind of time scale do you see i think time scale is hard to sell um i don't know if you'd evidence to back it up but the issues i think predominantly i guess there's two issues uh but i think they probably end up in the same place one issue is going to be that and i think i think it's the gradual nature of it ben and i said that's a problem it's little by little by little by little over over days and weeks and months and maybe even years is people going into themselves more.

There's a weird thing. Sales is a weird world. And it's a weird world because you go into it normally because you're quite successful with people. You get on well with people.

You probably have a 90, if not 95% plus success rate of meeting people and getting on well with them. You then go into sales and it depends a little bit clearly on the kind of job then. But in many cases, you experience failure 90% plus of the time. That's a strange dynamic to go in.

And in many ways, you're supported in the office by having those people around as you mentioned so my greatest I think the number one challenge is that people start getting down and down and down and that in itself carries a problem with their happiness in life their health in life I think and the second the knock-on effect and I think I say they end in the same place is that their performance goes down and the performance goes down because of the how they feel about themselves not necessarily the skills not the economy, not everything else that goes on.

And so ultimately, it ends up is you lose those people. They leave sales, they leave the company. And if there's one thing that the sales world does not need, it's to lose, it's already relatively limited resources of outstanding salespeople. Well, absolutely.

Absolutely. It's interesting, you know, you say about feeding off others. Some years ago, now, quite a well known sales trainer in, in the West Midlands had at one point in his career had been selling private jets he talked about you know basically the sort of like celebrating the no you know he would he'd say you know i'm guessing he was describing a sort of an open plan office with a sales team and you know they would they would kind of like have competitions how many nodes could you get you know big ticket items you're not it's not like you're selling the daily press these could be big ticket items you're not going to land successfully on a continual basis it's you've got to keep positive haven't you so I can imagine that sitting on your own without the support of others seeing failure seeing failure learning from other people's experiences and I think it's that learning especially amongst those that are more inexperienced I think a lot of HR people in short-term basis perhaps especially in places like London and large commercial centres.

The ability to offer hybrid working or indeed largely home working is it throws the cast out talent pool net out a lot wider and gets people geographically well out of your range normally who would never think about spending the 12 or 15 grand a year plus commute. Talking to a friend of mine today in the car, talking about the joys of working in London and just the general feeling of feeling filthy when he got home after a day of travelling around on tubes and buses and walking down the street.

It's not for everybody, but of course the rewards are there. I do appreciate that angle of widening the net geographically. I wonder, and I've not thought this before, I've been prompted by what you just said, so forgive me for the 10% thought through idea. There's a concept of selection within that as well.

So I don't know that the majority of salespeople are people who want to be working from home all the time. So we can come to hybrid in a second. But the idea of being geographically all over the place and working all the time. I just think almost the nature of somebody who doesn't want to be around others might mean for many of them that perhaps not all that suited to sales.

And the example in a different world I'm thinking of. So Foxons, the estate agent, which is a name familiar if you're in London, the southeast, but less familiar, perhaps around the country. But Foxons are renowned for lots of things. One thing they are very strict on is working hours.

And they when you join Foxons as an estate agent, you work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

six days a week, which is torturous. I mean, they're pretty tough hours. Right. And I remember I don't know Foxons 50 well.

I'm neither speaking ill of them or well of them. But that straight away, when I looked at it, I thought there's automatically a selection criteria that's going on there before you've even walked through the door for the interview. So you know it's six days a week, 12 hours a day. So immediately anybody who, for whom that doesn't appeal for whatever reason, let's face it, there'd be plenty for whom that doesn't appeal.

You don't even walk through the door. I've worked with sales teams and sometimes I don't really get involved with recruitment, but a client might talk to me about advice on recruitment. I helped with a couple of sales management positions recently with clients. And they talked about a sales manager saying, well, I don't mind coming to the office sometimes.

And I was like, that to me is a massive red flag because if you want them to be a leader and you want them to be in the office, the fact they don't mind coming in. No no I want them to want to come in and I not forcing them to do that It just the wrong match If they not gravitating towards being there as a sales leader they probably selecting themselves out of being the right person Salespeople have to be hungry. That's obviously the key to sales. And they need to be sponges.

They need to learn every single time. If their mental health is not as it should be, they're not going to evolve as a salesperson. As we all know, if you stand still, you're kind of going backwards, aren't you, Paul? Yeah, you are.

And I think on that point and one you mentioned earlier about being around the office and learning from others around you, there's a fluency to sales. When by the time you go into a sales job, you probably didn't even get the job unless you are a relatively good communicator. All right. Normally a bit too much emphasis on talking rather than listening, but that can be trained.

But then you go into this new world and whether it's tech or finance or property, whatever it might be, you don't speak the language of it yet. so you've got this enormous amount of information about the market that you need to learn and your systems and how you approach clients and then there's an enormous amount of information about your clients you know what's going on in their world what their concerns are and how you can help them and I tend to find it takes at least three if not six to eight months to start becoming somewhere close to fluency and there is only fluency because years ago I spoke pretty bad French and I got a bit better then got worse again and I tried a couple of other languages And when you're not very good at a language, but you speak a bit, what you're doing is translating.

You're thinking in English, you're translating to French, and then you speak, and then you hear them, and you translate back. You can't have a conversation at that speed. That's what happens early in your sales career. You're taking on board what a client says, but you're taking so long to process what that leads to that the conversation is stilted.

And it takes time. It takes miles in your legs. And back to your question, your point earlier, Ben, it takes often being around people and hearing how they handle it and picking up on lots of stuff that I'm pretty sure we're taking in unconsciously around us. And you then start to have to join the dots.

And a regular lament that I hear from sales leaders and managing directors from new salespeople is to say, oh, don't they know that when a client says X, then we should be saying Y? And I say, well, in short, if you did a quiz where they had time to think about it, they would know that X leads to Y, but they're not fluent yet. So they don't make that link quick enough. and that link takes time and being around people you do that more quickly absolutely if you're sitting next to somebody and you're hearing them using the language that you need to be using it's helping you rehearse it isn't it yeah and I've always said when I train sales teams I say you know when you tell stories I'm a huge fan of storytelling as a as a sales tool because it's a communication tool and we all speak differently when we tell stories and we also listen differently when we hear stories but my rule is when you hear somebody else's story once you've retold it three times it's your story you know because you can just copy that stuff around you don't have to put a footnote like an academic paper of where your source is you pick up words and phrases and stories and case studies and examples from the people around you all the time famous phrase story sell and of course Alistair Paul working on this it's going to create issues for HR in the future isn't it is the mental health side of things because they're going to blame the businesses and the businesses that are going to end up falling out there?

Well, indeed. I mean, I think most employers' first concern is obviously going to be the performance of people, but it's linked undoubtedly. And I think it's easy to measure with the software available these days. You can track what people are doing for you in terms of time spent, number of calls made.

You can listen to conversations that they've had with people. If you've got the structure and the time to focus on doing all that, Paul says, if it's going to take longer for somebody to learn and develop, they're going to become very disheartened if they're not hitting the targets and if they're getting kicked. I mean, in the 30 years I've been in my profession, you know, one thing's for sure. Unsuccessful salespeople are a bit like Premier League football managers.

You know, they're gone pretty quickly. And very often without that kind of three strikes in your eight kind of attitude that maybe people in other positions might expect, it can be pretty brutal. And yeah, those that thrive in it do exceptionally well, are very much in demand. It must be awful to feel isolated and unsupported and struggling when you are solely a home worker, maybe with somebody listening to you, looking at your KPIs on a piece of paper and not actually helping you to get the right message out there.

I just think there are some things, Alistair and Ben, that work better in person. So, you know, for me as a trainer, I think in-person training in a room together is more powerful than anything else. It doesn't mean I don't do online training. I also do online training.

It's just not as powerful. It's not as engaging. It's very difficult to engage people online. Some do it better than others.

And maybe I could get better at it. But something suits. I was just thinking back to what seems, thankfully, so long ago now when we really were locked down. a couple of friends of mine hosted a few quizzes i mean they were better than not seeing not seeing each other but they were dreadful you know people talking over the top of each other all the time they didn't work i'm sure all of us had something like a birthday or an anniversary or christmas where we joined people online it was rubbish i mean it was better than not seeing them at all but it was rubbish none of us have gone oh that worked so well we'll keep on doing it we couldn't wait to get back uh to doing it now again as ben touched to know there's different kind of sales and there are people that have always worked from home I still think they are few and far between as far as percentage of salespeople and again definitely the ones earlier in career where you know that beginning and when say a beginning I'm talking first decade I'm not talking first year or so I'm talking you know years of learning your trade as a salesperson you are infinitely more likely to become better at it and enjoy it and stick with it if you're around people historically that kind of field salesperson they might be their contract might say they're at home work but that's actually only for the one day a week when they're at home trying to catch up with all their admin and appointment making and they're on the phones then but but maybe four days a week they're actually on the road seeing three four and five potential customers existing clients for tank management and and wheedling some more work out and that's that again is a very different thing and i've certainly We seen a number of examples where because of lockdown of course there been a huge transition from actually physical getting on the road to go and see people to getting a zoom call in the diary or just a phone call circumstances become such you know somebody decides that they're going to get a dog they are indulged almost in a way by employers allowing them to ease more into a homework life perhaps before they then stop and realize the negative side of it.

I also think as well, just going back to Ben, a question you actually asked of Alistair, and it's far more Alistair's expertise than mine about taking care of salespeople, particularly those working from home. And on my podcast, I interviewed a lady called Julia Rodoloso, who's a very successful insurance entrepreneur. And Julia has a sales team who work from home, but she said never has it been more important for employers to make sure they're taking care of their salespeople working from home.

Yeah, like you said, I think taking care is the key because I think a lot of field salespeople actually do want to go home and they do want to sit there and go through what they've done and prepare their reports and prepare their proposals. So like you say, it's very much considering the elements of the equation, so to speak. But in general, I think like you say, the salespeople in general do want to mix with other salespeople because they bounce off each other. I think from the employer's point of view, and actually you probably best to consider this, is that there needs to be a conversation.

communication is the key have a conversation understand the role say they're from tropship and they go to Newcastle and come back last thing they want to do is go back to the office for an hour because people can ask them questions if they want to go home do their proposal and end the day that's a total different scenario to you you need to go in and make sure that day isn't it yes I mean it's quite different to the the sort of call center that's no longer together in a sales team field sales people it's a very different setup right they're used to doing it it's almost back to the point I raised earlier about all the clients with whom I work where they were office based and are back office based and the ones who are still working from home were always working from home so there's a rhythm to a life and as Alistair alluded to earlier when you are a field salesperson you are out and about talking to people as well so you're not alone and even those little interactions of going to grab a coffee from somewhere I mean again going back to lockdown I can remember the joy of being in Sainsbury's and seeing a mate of mine in the milk aisle and stopping for what was about a 25 minute chat of just oh my goodness i've got someone to talk to a typical field sales person would probably have somewhere between one and four meetings a day being out and about so they've got a a human connection albeit not a a corporate connection to their own company wonderful that's been fascinating alistair how are things in the hr world i mean we are coming to september um parliament are obviously our back um so new hr laws will be considered any yes well we will see i mean that you know we've had um really post brexit and uh pandemic a lot of day-to-day or sort of six monthly kind of expected progress of legislation has largely been put on hold with it's ramping up again we've got a new prime Minister.

Let's see what the spring has and what announcements in April have. It's going to be a difficult time, I think, for a lot of businesses. I mean, at the moment, obviously, a huge recruitment difficulty has been for some time. Huge shortage of labour, especially in certain areas.

That's causing a lot of businesses a lot of problems. But we're going to see energy costs and things biting in business in coming months. I think inevitably, we're going to see us dipping into some kind of a recession how bad I don't know that always brings out challenges so I'm already speaking to companies not so much about redundancies at the moment but more about protecting what they've got and still on the recruiting side we are just trying to make sure that companies are protecting their goodwill not losing those good sales people still investing in staff where they can and when they can afford it but making sure that those staff realize that if they leave they might find that some of that investment has to be repaid by them so things like that are prevalent at the moment but really we're just getting back after a very long hot summer I think I expect I'll be speaking to business owners in the coming weeks who've been hatching plans but at the moment companies are still doing doing okay Ben but I am hearing that there is an increase generally in insolvencies and things as well so it depends on your sector I'm glad I'm running a professional services business at the moment than running a pub or a care home or something like that they say there are certain sectors who are feeling the pain before others perhaps it catches up with everybody and ultimately we in professional services are very much reliant on our clients being there and still needing us and recognizing that we're perhaps the last saving to make and isn't it funny how it all ends because if people have got the worry of losing their jobs you're back to the mental health issue and of course that it's not going to increase performance is it all feeds back in it is a concern for lots of people i think out there then i'm perhaps as natural as a salesperson i tend to be an optimist i don't think you can be in sales and not be an optimist i think i met half a dozen in sales who are pessimists and still good i'm a great believer within the confines of where i can not to worry about things that i don't know are going to happen and i think you know a lot of the work i do with sales teams at the moment is you never dictate a market all you can ever do in business is win market share and whether that's a large market or small markets and you know so much about sales in particular and probably sure of all of us in business is not to worry about things you can't control who is out there can I get to them have they got a need they're going to move forward if they're not ready then move on somewhere else but you you can drive yourself literally crazy worrying about things you don't control I never understand why Brits complain about the weather you know I'm a Brit that's that's our weather right it's not very good albeit this summer was a bit different and the sun's just come out again after morning of rain but just don't worry about things that you can't control, look at the things you can control and focus on then.

As a Welshman Paul, I'm still in shorts. One thing I can control is the length of a podcast and if the sun's out I think we'll end it there. Alistair as always, thank you very much. Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure to discuss your thinking.

As always, thanks for listening to our listeners, thank you Paul and Paul, just a quick one, how can people get They can find me personally easily on LinkedIn and the company's sales talent. And our website is sales talent, uk.com. Thank you.

We'll be looking you up. Thank you.