How Workplace Diversity Boosts Revenue

Practising diversity isn’t just the ethical thing to do for your business. More and more data shows how different applications of diversity in the workplace can result in increased profits and revenue growth for every industry.

Customers want to see their image reflected in the branding, identity, culture, employees, products, and services of the businesses with which they interact.

In this article, you will learn how practising diversity in your business can:

• Drive sales
• Increase productivity
• Improve global awareness
• Build reputation
• Improve your work environment
• Attract top-notch talent
• Uncover new sales opportunities

“Understanding how potential clients connect to your branding through diversity can help you unlock new growth opportunities.”

What is diversity in sales?

Diversity means more than just increasing a hiring quota for women or people of colour. Diversity in sales refers to maintaining a balance of employees with different strengths and weaknesses to complement one another. A diverse team will have many employees with varying backgrounds from different walks of life.

True diversity comes from considerations other than just gender or race. Age, culture, sexual orientation, and religion are all equally important. Diversity can also include experience, socioeconomic background, exposure to foreign cultures, and more.

So, how can diversity help businesses grow sales?

When a problem arises, working with a diverse team can afford you many different potential solutions.

Outside-the-box thinking can frequently come from living outside the box: being free from traditional or predictable patterns of behaviour or thought.

Think of it as having many different tools in your toolbox. You can not use the same tool for each job every day. But having an assortment of tools in your talent pool allows you to access various ideas, opinions, and experiences, which can lead to unique solutions, new inventions, and improved methodology.

Building strategically and structurally diverse teams can equip your sales force to overcome many problems, obstacles, issues, and objections.

How customers identify with brands

How do you appeal to a customer base when you, as an organisation, don’t align with their expectations and preferences?

It is ultimately the consumer’s decision who they work with when they choose providers, vendors, partners, and services. All consumers desire to do business with entities that share the same values. If your customers value diversity, then you should, too, if you want to win their business.

A brand is an identity. It is the way you connect with customers. You can inspire loyal and lifelong customers by creating an emotional link between your brand and your customer base.

But how is this connection made?

The answer is shared values. When you convey values through your messaging that your customer can identify with, it can inspire loyalty.

Reflecting diversity can help customers emotionally connect to your business. Brands represent more than just the hard or soft goods that carry their label. Tapping into multiple cultures and their markets can increase your bottom line by opening the door to more loyal customers and repeat business.

Increased productivity and sales growth

Diversity can drive sales in unexpected ways. Building rapport can be critical for advancing the sales cycle or getting your foot in the door. Studies show that customers connect with sales reps of the same ethnicity and background up to 150% more than other associates.

You don’t have to have overwhelming charisma to persuade a customer to close a deal. But they have to like you, and part of that process is identifying with the salesperson. Having a diverse sales force allows you to connect with more customers from diverse backgrounds and build multiple connections through various markets.

Because technical sales jobs take longer to fill, it is crucial to explore a broad talent pool when recruiting your sales personnel. Inclusivity is important to millennials, the largest and most diverse generation in our nation’s history. Millennials are 42% minority in terms of racial and cultural backgrounds. As such, they demand diversity in the workplace, and it is a requirement that every up-to-date organisation is expected to fulfil.

Inclusivity attracts higher-quality applicants, so target the broadest range of talent possible.

Diverse teams outperform other teams in sales and productivity by allowing for more ideas, a more comprehensive range of skills, experience, and creativity in their work.

While diversity can drive sales, it can also help you identify the potential for underserved markets.

Female consumers make up well over half of the $35 trillion global economy, yet the market is underserved in some industries. Could your industry be one of them?

Suppose you manufactured tools for the automotive industry. What percentage of your marketing would target anything other than your ideal consumer demographic? This is easy to do, and the consequences are easy to foresee. You would lose all potential profits, customers, and opportunities to promote your brand awareness further than your current target.

Don’t wait until sales decline to tap into new market growth. Being mindful of diversity is the key to discovering new marketing demographics and maintaining alignment of diversity amongst clients, potential clients, sales reps, and employees.

The value of building a reputation

Over time, your reputation reflects your brand messaging and image consistency. However, customers may perceive a business differently than a brand or product line they provide. Moreover, your brand is distinct from your reputation because brands can change overnight. In contrast, reputations can take years to build or rebuild.

Diverse customers want to do business with suppliers, vendors, and sales organisations who share their values, offer a better work environment for their employees and want tolerance and fair treatment for everyone.

It is wise always to consider how company initiatives affect reputation and client perceptions regarding diversity.

While growth and the bottom line are important, every directive will positively or negatively affect anyone who perceives it. Opinions are never neutral. Diversity allows your organisation to maintain multiple perspectives that reflect the viewpoints of your customers and society as a whole.

It is easy to get tunnel vision and continue business traditions that have led to past successes.

Many large brands have been criticised for their resistance to change. While they may feel that they have done no harm, they have also come under scrutiny by the media and suffered profit losses as a result.

Neutrality, maintaining the status quo, and tradition can all impact businesses negatively. Exploring how diversity can address these issues can help grow your brand, reputation, and, ultimately, your legacy.

Diversity problems

Diversity in the workplace can come with many challenges. Sometimes, adapting to change can be difficult, both for customers and employees.

Diversity problems might include:

• Stereotypes that occur in the workplace or within your customer base
• Hiring within a specific network
• Defining functional diversity criteria
• Removing bias in your interview process

It is not enough to assume your organisation is diverse. Instead, you must proactively implement policies and changes to reflect diversity and achieve specific organisational goals.

Conclusion

Diversity competes against neutrality, stagnation, and tradition in established organisations. Despite challenges, diversity is how we identify with customers, attract top-notch talent, and overcome methodology that might hinder organisations from moving forward into a legacy of profitability, innovation, and inclusion. Diverse teams create diverse business outcomes, leading to innovative new ideas, products, and solutions.