Sales Staff Retention: Getting it Right
Your sales team is a crucial strength behind your company profit and the loss of a sales rep can harm the company’s finances through recruitment and training costs as well as loss of revenue. In short, you don't want to lose your best salespeople.
The sales industry is known for its fast turnover rate, but what can hiring managers do to prevent this and to retain top sales employees?
Based on the conversations we have with clients and from working within the industry every day, here, some guidance on retaining your top sales team members.
Regular catch-ups
Highlight the strengths of each person and work through weaknesses together - this will show your people that you are investing in them.
Regular reviews with senior staff will help your reps learn and develop, which will lead to increased productivity, as they will understand themselves and the way they work better. Those catchups are all about identifying the potential of each individual and working on the skill sets that will improve their abilities.
Challenge people
Set consistent objectives that push the comfort zones of your salespeople. If employees participate in regular activities that keep them learning, the chances are, they won't become bored within their role.
Play as a team
It's not all about individuality. Teamwork is a huge part of building and retaining a successful salesforce. Optimising individual strengths should always be a priority, but things should come together to create team success. Your salespeople need to keep up with market trends and customer demands - get people across different levels of the business working together, helping each other, so that things are honest and transparent.
Provide career development
There are many types of sales role. From account managers and sales development executives through to directors and regional BD managers - you should determine from the get-go where your sales staff see themselves and how they'd like to progress. You can then set objectives and mentor accordingly. If a salesperson feels that they're on a growth journey within your company, they'll be more likely to stay.
Offer the right perks
Unfortunately, a weekly free beer probably isn’t going to retain your employees forever. Perks and benefits are all about establishing a positive culture and encouraging people to join and want to stay (for more reasons than looking good on Instagram.) We recently wrote about employee perks here.
Reward good performance
Nobody wants to feel undervalued for their hard work. Forms of praise and encouragement go a long way, and recognition can come in many forms, it doesn't need to be extravagant, but if your staff know that their efforts for the business are acknowledged, they'll continue to strive for further success.
If you need support with finding the right salespeople for your sector, get in touch with the enable team. You can learn more about our expertise here.