Employee turnover is one of the biggest challenges in the sales industry, and it costs companies of all sizes significant amounts of money and time every year.
In order to cultivate relationships with existing clients and expand the influence of your brand, you need talented, dedicated salespeople out there generating excitement about the work you’re doing. But sales is a high-pressure industry, and most departments see a significant rate of attrition and new hiring every year.
Reducing turnover rates is essential if you want to get the most out of your team and foster the kinds of deep relationships that drive long-term success, so if this is an issue for your sales department, here is a 4-point plan that can help you build a resilient, tight-knit team that will deliver results.
1. Hire Intelligently
Turnover is often a vicious circle: when you regularly find yourself having to replace employees, you often need to fill the position as quickly as possible, even with someone who doesn’t have the ideal background. If this person doesn’t have what it takes to get up to speed quickly, they can quickly become burnt out and discouraged, moving on to another position and leaving you scrambling to plug the hole once again.
One of the best ways to improve hiring without having to sink more time into the process is to work with a recruitment agency that can connect you to sales professionals with the right skills and experience.
Sales recruitment agencies use their extensive databases to rapidly identify personnel who have the acumen, drive, and relevant background that will help them flourish in your company and much more likely to stick around.
2. Onboard Comprehensively
Time and time again, onboarding has been shown to have a significant impact on turnover. As soon as they are brought on, new hires should be:
- Trained thoroughly about the products/services they are selling
- Introduced to their colleagues
- Directed toward systems of support that can answer questions/provide resources
- Invited into the team and made to feel they are valued members
Taking a little more time to ensure that new hires are integrated into the team will reduce the learning curve and save a lot of energy and confusion in the long run.
3. Incentivize Competitively
Every professional salesperson takes pleasure in the thrill of closing a big client or increasing a buy. But at the end of the day, salespeople work because they want to make a living.
If your company is not offering adequate compensation, ambitious new hires are going to move on to businesses that value their talents more highly. In some cases, the only way to really deal with turnover is by increasing the incentives for sticking around, either through more appealing commission rates, better benefits, or a higher salary.
4. Check In Regularly
No one wants to feel like they aren’t appreciated, or that they have no say in their workplace. Checking in with your team on a monthly or weekly basis is a great way to ensure that complaints and concerns are expressed, and achievements celebrated.
It will also help to identify team members who are struggling, and ensure they have the resources they need to turn things around. In many businesses, turnover is one of the great unseen expenses — a drain on time and resources that yields no return and depresses productivity. If you really want to fight turnover in your sales team, though, you need a comprehensive plan, so use these four points to start charting a course toward a more stable future for your team and company.
