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When it comes to building a successful sales team, finding and hiring top-performing salespeople is only half the battle. The other half is retaining those salespeople over the long term, which can be a significant challenge in a competitive job market.
Sales staff turnover can be costly for organizations, not only in terms of the time and resources required to replace outgoing staff but also in terms of lost revenue due to the disruption in sales activity.
The Center for American Progress estimates that the cost of replacing a highly skilled employee can be up to 213% of their annual salary.
To address this challenge, organizations need to implement effective sales team retention strategies that can help keep their sales staff engaged, motivated, and committed to their roles.
Moreover, According to a study by the Sales Management Association, the average annual sales force turnover rate is 20%, compared to an average turnover rate of 15% for all industries.
To reduce sales team turnover rates, you should invest time in exploring strategies to retain top and middle performers. Here, we have listed 12 points that can help you in this process.
Top 12 sales retention strategies to retain key sales performers
The following are some important tips that you can follow:
1. Understand the motivating factor
What is it that motivates your top and middle performers? Apart from money, there are several motivating factors that they might be interested in.
While some may look for better incentives, some may be interested in more paid vacations. Since expectations vary, you should try to understand and personalize your approach to retaining these people in your organization.
Employees feel included when they are rewarded the way they prefer. This makes them contribute more toward the success of the organization.
2. Maintain a transparent work culture
Transparent work culture will build a motivating work environment. Employees should be made aware of goals that relate to them, levels of promotions, commission calculations, etc.
They should be involved in all processes so as to maintain a harmonious workplace. Transparency builds trust and thus leads the employees to stay longer in your organization.
3. Cultivate a strong sales culture
Maintaining a strong sales culture is essential to build good relationships with team members. When everyone is working toward a common goal, they should be working in harmony.
Promoting healthy competition, fixing accountability, transparent policies, fairness in incentives, etc., are factors that contribute to a strong sales culture.
4. Maintain good compensation plans
Top performers are valuable assets to your organization. There should be good compensation plans to retain them.
They have huge demand and are easy to be wooed away by your competitors. You should devise a compensation plan commensurate with their contribution.
This will boost their morale to be committed to your organization.
5. Offer growth opportunities
Top talents look for career growth and when you do not provide scope for the same, may think of moving to another organization.
You should offer enough growth opportunities at streamlined intervals. This will keep them happy and encourage them to contribute more.
Over the years, top and middle performers will have more focus on advancements in their roles rather than on monetary rewards alone. They are more interested to widen their skillsets as the hierarchy narrows down.
6. Invest in coaching and training facilities
This factor is in continuation to the previous point wherein we spoke about growth opportunities. Organizations can support career growth through investment in training facilities.
There are several training sessions for career advancement where you can enrol your top sales talents. Many universities also offer programs for executives that help them scale greater heights in their careers.
This will help them stay updated on the latest developments in their field.
7. Provide new challenges to satisfy their hunger for growth
Highly talented sales personnel in the top and middle order are always hungry to gain more knowledge. They are attracted to challenging tasks and are happy to accomplish them.
As an organization concerned about your employees, you should make them part of new challenges. This is a win-win for the staff as well as the business.
For example, if you are planning an expansion in a new geographical location, entrust top talents with securing prospects by mentioning a time frame. This kindles their interest and also helps the business grow in a new location.
8. Conduct meetings regularly
Feedback is the most vital thing that helps organizations explore and steer better. Regular meetings with top and middle sales talents help your business know their mindset through their feedback.
These meetings ensure to clear the air in case these performers have any unaddressed issues. They also build a great rapport between the higher-level management and the sales performers.
9. Provide support with sales tools
Automation is driving sales in the present times. Sales performers should be supplemented with necessary sales tools to assist in their performance.
This will help them save time and be more productive. Setting high expectations without providing necessary support may result in discontentment among top talents.
Organizations should discuss and find out tools that can bring more efficiency to the sales team’s work.
10. Encourage innovation
Top and middle performers have a great inclination toward learning. They try to develop innovative ways that make work less daunting and more productive.
In some organizations, a rigid set of rules are followed and any deviation from the system is not allowed. This remains a hurdle for the top performers and stimulates them to move out.
If you want to retain top talents, it is essential to encourage innovation and be flexible to changes in the interests of the organization. This can make them more involved in the processes and help in the growth of the organization.
11. Automation of incentives
One thing that irks employees is following-up on incentives and commissions after sealing a good deal. This in due course of time will lead to top performers dropping out of your organization.
To prevent this, you should invest in tools that help in the automation of incentives. It ensures consistent and timely delivery of incentives without having to send any reminders.
Also, there is improved transparency when the incentive system is automated. The criteria for payment of incentives is already fixed, and the system delivers incentives as soon as they are accomplished. Automation thus builds the morale of top and middle performers in your organization.
12. Use gamification techniques
Sales is a stressful activity with lots of KPIs and targets. Introducing gamification techniques enables the sales team to remain focused on goals. The incentive system that uses gamification is more transparent and creates more engagement.
Performance-driven leaderboards help in encouraging healthy competition and enable real-time tracking of performance.
Gamification helps in relieving stress and reinforces positive behavior among top talents. It makes sales fun and enjoyable activity.
Conclusion
A healthy work culture combined with incentive automation can help a great deal in retaining top talent. While it is difficult to identify talents, it is even more difficult to retain them.
So, follow the strategies mentioned in this blog to keep the top and middle sales performers engaged with your brand.
