The recruiting firm’s latest salary survey reveals that even those sales managers are satisfied with their current employers, they are still open to new opportunities.
Take a look around at any dealership, and you’ll see every member of the organization hustling to serve customers, meet sales goals, and drive consistently higher revenues year over year. Amid this hustle and bustle, it may be easy to overlook the satisfaction and sentiments of a copier dealer’s employees as long as they are meeting their numbers, but copier channel recruiter Copier Careers’ recent survey of sales managers’ salaries indicates that would be a grave mistake.
According to the 2018 Copier Careers’ 2018 Sales Manager Salary Survey, more than half of respondents (57%) indicated they are either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their current employer. While that data point may appear positive on the surface, digging deeper, the survey revealed nearly all respondents (93%) are looking for a new job.
Looking at sales managers’ priorities can give dealerships some clues as to why their employees are keeping their eyes and ears open to new opportunities. According to the survey, some of the most important factors that matter most to sales managers include wanting to work on creating innovative IT solutions (99%), working with leading edge technology (98%), and wanting to acknowledge the importance of IT (88%).
You’ll note the key word in each of these priorities isn’t MFP; it is technology.
“Sales managers understand that their job is to help the company achieve its goals,” said Jessica Crowley, business manager and senior recruiter at Copier Careers, in a press release. “The more they are involved with IT solutions and services””being able to teach their team to identify, sell, and support the IT solutions””the more they can benefit the overall company.”
As the industry has begun to skew further away from hardware, innovative IT-based solutions are becoming essential not only in driving revenue for dealerships, but also in propelling compensation for sales managers.
“As new offerings are available through direct manufacturers or other companies, they’ll take a look at them and evaluate how their company has evolved when it comes to innovative IT solutions because that all leads to what they can sell and what they can train their sales forces on,” said Crowley in a phone interview. “If they don’t have the support and infrastructure for these solutions, that may be one reason sales managers may look at another company to see what they have to offer.”
While being part of a more dynamic company has increased in importance in the eyes of sales managers, compensation and benefits remain among the most vital factors in retaining and recruiting employees. This year’s survey showed an increase of 1.5% in the average sales manager salary to $162,168, well above the national median for sales managers of $117, 960 (source: U.S. News and World Report, 2016).
At the same time, however, sales managers are noting they are working more hours””66 hours per week, an increase of five hours over last year and an increase of 20 hours since Copier Careers began collecting this information in 2002.
Some of this can be attributed to managing more people, which the survey indicated, as well as more time spent recruiting sales reps, which Crowley commented is among the hardest roles to fill at dealerships.
Sales managers are also more educated, with more respondents indicating they have acquired “some college” education (60.3%), as well as having obtained an MBA (5.2%).
When it comes to compensation, salary and bonus opportunities are linchpins for any sales manager, but benefits such as healthcare have bumped up in terms of importance. For the first time ever in a Copier Careers survey, 100% of respondents indicated “benefits” as mattering most.
Crowley offered an example of a recent recruit who was entertaining other employment opportunities. Having to pay a significant sum out of pocket for his healthcare coverage, he was looking for an opportunity that would reduce this monthly expense and was even willing to take a pay cut for improved healthcare coverage.
For dealers looking to retain and recruit strong employees, Copier Careers’ President Paul Schwartz recommends being prepared to opportunistically snap up candidates when they become available. Schwartz and Crowley both agree it has become more and more challenging to fill roles at dealerships, due to the competitive employment environment.
“What’s become really interesting about our salary survey is that it’s interesting to see how the role has grown, how the industry has grown, and how different revenue channels have grown,” said Schwartz. “As recruiters, we’re now seeing it’s a candidate’s market and there are more positions available than qualified candidates.”
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