Are your sales people at risk of leaving?

How many of your sales people are thinking about a career move right now?

How many of them have come back from their holiday break wondering if they are in the right role or company?

Sales people are one of the highest “at risk” groups in terms of turnover (average of 26% compared to the national average of 14%). Some industries have sales staff turnover up into the 70-80% range, ie. high churn call centres.

Some of the reasons sales people give in their notice is because:

they have not had the success they had hoped to achieve and have not attained their financial goals,
their capabilities did not match the job,
they are not getting adequate support by way of clear goals and direction, adequate product training and/or sales management support,
they feel discontented, and what was promised by the company was not the reality they came to know,
they are burnt out through not having enough holidays (especially true for high performers),
poor leadership and poorly executed strategy have left them feeling disengaged and frustrated, or;
they do not feel suited to a sales career.

High sales staff turnover is a costly problem. Having sales staff on a company conveyor belt can lead to poor customer perceptions, poor service and the erosion of your brand. This can further impair your recruitment of good staff and make it even more difficult to find good sales people. Therefore, it makes good sense to manage this risk, maximise alignment and legitimise and protect an investment in sales performance improvement.

So how do we reduce high sales staff turnover?

One significant way is to improve Job Match. Job Match is about clearly understanding what the job requires and what type of person best matches that job, then matching the job and the person as accurately and closely as possible. This means not putting ‘just anyone’ into the job. However, many people do so out of desperation, but that desperation has costly consequences, as you will see.

A significant study reported by Harvard Business Review showed how Job Match significantly affects staff turnover in sales teams. The study looked at traditional ‘high turnover’ industries as well as traditional ‘low turnover’ industries. They compared sales staff turnover when Job Match was used and when it was not used. Here are the findings:

HIGH Turnover Industry – Sample Size: 13,102

People with Job Match:

% who quit or were fired after six months = 24%
% who quit or were fired after 14 months = 28%

People without Job Match:

% who quit or were fired after six months = 46%
% who quit or were fired after 14 months = 57%

LOW Turnover Industry – Sample Size: 5,941

People with Job Match:

% who quit or were fired after six months = 5%
% who quit or were fired after 14 months = 8%

People without Job Match:

% who quit or were fired after six months = 25%
% who quit or were fired after 14 months = 34%

You can see quite clearly that using Job Match has a significant impact on sales staff turnover. Job Match also affects job satisfaction and engagement. For instance, job satisfaction and engagement (ie. workforce alignment) can account for up to 23% difference in productivity.

Besides Job Match, what else can you do to ensure healthy sales staff retention?

Effective induction with clear goals, milestones and performance expectations supported by ongoing training and coaching.
Sales management support including regular coaching.
A supportive environment that encourages growth, teamwork and a lead team approach.
Fair performance pay system.
Resilience and effective self management training.
Encourage a healthy life and work practices to negate burnout.

Sales is a particularly challenging career. In practically, in no other profession are mistakes or a lack of aptitude punished so mercilessly as in sales. A deal is either concluded or not – there is no such thing as partial success.

In short, select wisely and help your people lead healthy sales careers. This way you may reduce unnecessary sales staff turnover, have a healthier sales business and much happier sales people.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett practices as a coach, advisor, speaker, facilitator, consultant and writer and works across all market segments with her skilful team at BARRETT. Sue and her team take the guess work out of selling and help people from many different careers become aware of their sales capabilities and enable them to take the steps to becoming effective and productive when it comes to selling, sales coaching or sales leadership.To hone your sales skills or learn how to sell go to www.barrett.com.au.