If you have been in a position of leadership you would know that retaining talent that might have just helped you grow your business from the ground up is very difficult to retain. You have to give equal attention to the individuals as you do to your business.
It does hurt when the people you relied on or saw working with in the future decide that it is not the place for them, the consoling bit is that you are not alone, the bad thing is that like you not a lot of people know exactly why sales representatives leave and how to make them feel satisfied working for you.
Here are the top three ways you can retain your sales talent.
1. Always Have an Opportunity of Growth
Give the people something to aspire to, but make it realistic. The top performers perform to grow, do not disappoint them and strip them of this motivation. The moment they realize that there is no longer any room to grow or that it would not be possible for them to climb up the corporate ladder in your corporation they will feel they are wasting their time working in your business and will start looking for a place that gives them something to work towards.
The way you offer this growth can be in various forms. For example provide a compensation, or a title to responsibilities which will allow you to focus on other things after you have delegated. The trick is to keep raising the stakes at just the right frequency to keep your people engaged.
2. Create a Culture They Don’t Want to Leave
Most people think of a ping pong table or a free beverage bar. This is not necessary something people will miss when they decide to leave your employment. Sales culture takes a while to build and it definitely requires the right mind sets to make it happen. You want to be a workplace that is dedicated towards helping your customers and are always advocating a compelling mission.
To do this you should start by empowering all of your employees. Every encounter must encompass this, every meeting must make them feel like an essential cog in the project as they rightly are. They will believe in your vision and they will believe in their roles more than they did before. A good sales person is one who is excited to come to work every day. This is important for employees but also for freelancers who you have found through outsourcing platforms.
3. Always Set Clear Expectations
It is very important that your sales rep understands what you expect of them and what their targets are translated by the milestones you see for your company. A neat way to do this is to make a frame work which lists these expectations. After this you must list measurable milestones and then also provide a tool that will measure progress of all the reps in a fair manner. When everyone understands what their role is it is easier to cut through the noise and perform your best.
There is a very different feeling and motivation behind working with a clear target in your head. It makes it easier to achieve them, and gives the employee autonomy over managing their efforts to achieve it, something which many business do not do. Many times an employee leaves because objectives are too cluttered or not communicated well for them to understand exactly what they are supposed to do to excel. The most disappointing of them all is when management forgets to communicate these expectations at all and only decide to reveal them during a year-end review or an appraisal at which point the sales rep feels they could have done better if they knew.