Why hiring more salespeople may no longer be a viable growth plan in Buffalo

A few times a month I sit across from a business owner whose growth plan for next year is to hire three more salespeople.

It's a good plan. It was a good plan in 2015. In this region, it now depends on people who aren't there.

The regional labor force is roughly 566,000, and total employment across the metro grew by one-tenth of one percent last year. About 15,000 workers left the pool after the pandemic and never came back, many to early retirement. Seven of every ten technology graduates we train here take a job somewhere else. Canisius economist Julie Anna Golebiewski said it plainly: we don't have enough available workers.

There is no bench. This region is not going to produce 50,000 additional workers this decade, and a plan that assumes otherwise isn't a plan. It's a hope.

That leaves one lever: getting more revenue out of the team already on your payroll. They don’t need more work. They need less of the work that keeps them from selling.

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