What’s interesting to me is that the average turnover for all employees around the world is around 15%. Sales turnover rates are 25% on average, so it’s almost double the average turnover rates. Now I know you’re thinking that in some cases, we want some of that turnover, but do you really want up to 25% turnover on your sales team? I don’t think so. Salespeople leave for a number of reasons, mostly because of poor management or not being able to hit their goals. I think that you can dramatically improve your sales turnover rate by employing five simple things to improve your culture.
First, have a clear and transparent compensation plan that is easy to understand. Next, have coaching in place. It is true that people leave managers and people leave sales managers who don’t act in the best interest of their staff. When a seller feels like a manager has their best interests at heart, they stay and perform better. One of the ways you can show that is through coaching. That has the added benefit of driving results up, which causes salespeople to stay.
Celebrating successes is another way that we can ensure salespeople stay because we’ve all worked for companies where successes are tossed aside and only mistakes are brought up. Finally, have a low tolerance for poor performers. We want poor performers out quickly because A players don’t like hanging around B players. If left to fester on the team, both sets of players will end up quitting, so getting rid of those poor performers is one of the best ways to improve the culture on the team and to prevent top performers from leaving.
So let’s work together to improve your sales turnover rates because the lower your turnover rate, the higher your performance, and the easier it will be to start a non-stop sales boom.
