Did you know that on average, 8% of salespeople are responsible for 80% of the sales at your company?

Obviously, those salespeople are your top performers – the ones who consistently generate the most revenue and help the business thrive.

Since top performers can be difficult to find and hire, it is easy to understand how losing even one of them from your sales team could have a significant effect on your sales department and the company as a whole.

Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to keep your top performers around. Check out the following list of 6 tips to learn how to retain top sales talent and continue to achieve excellent results.

How to Retain Your Top Salespeople

1. Always set proper expectations during interviews

When you are hiring a new salesperson be sure to, set the right expectations while interviewing them. This way they know what kind of work environment they will be a part of if hired.

To do this successfully, you must avoid exaggerating the benefits of working at your company and downplaying the negatives during the interview. Instead, be honest with the potential new hire, even if you have to talk about some of the challenging aspects of being a salesperson at your company. A Driven salesperson will not be scared off – they will understand that each sales job opportunity has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Managing salespeople can be difficult and if you fail to set the right expectations about the job during the interview, you will likely find that your salespeople end up frustrated and unhappy on the job because they did not know what they were getting themselves into. This will likely lead to a high turnover rate in your department, which will cost you time and money.

2. Develop realistic goals and monitor progress

Top salespeople are competitive, so they are often curious about the results they are achieving at work. That is why it is important for you to develop goals for your salespeople that are realistic (but challenging) and provide them with the resources necessary to achieve those goals every month.

Make sure you also monitor the progress of your salespeople regularly and communicate with them so they know where they stand and can learn how to perform better when needed. This kind of open communication will keep salespeople updated on their performance and will help to build a healthy relationship between you and your team.

3. Offer incentives

You can often motivate high-performing sales reps by simply rewarding them for their hard work. Here are a few ways to do this:

• Reward the top performer each week with a gift card or cash prize. Money is a great motivator, so you can use this method to reward top performers while pushing your entire team to improve their sales results.
• Offer extra time off work to top performers. Everybody loves extra vacation time, so consider offering an extra day off work to the salesperson who sells the most by the end of each month.
• Buy a high-quality office chair, and designate it as the top performer’s chair. The salesperson who sells the most each week gets to sit in the special chair instead of their regular office chair.

You can also motivate your team and encourage healthy competition by developing a creative sales contest where the winner receives a reward.

4. Invest in coaching and training

If you fail to offer coaching and training to your top performers, they will be more likely to leave your company due to a lack of professional development opportunities.

Why?

Because high-achieving salespeople are ambitious and want to learn how to sell even more effectively than they already are. So, have one-on-one sessions with your top salespeople to talk about any areas that they could improve in, and make sure you are providing feedback on a regular basis. That way, they will feel like they are growing at work instead of stagnating.

5. Offer an attractive compensation package

If you are a seasoned sales manager, you know that money is one of the main motivators of many top-performing salespeople. That is why those salespeople will often leave a company if their commission structure and/or compensation package changes for the worse.

While offering an attractive compensation package will cost your company money, it is worth it if it means you will keep top-performing salespeople around. Chances are that the revenue that those salespeople generate for the business will more than make up for the money spent on offering a good salary and commission structure.

6. Regularly conduct exit interviews

If you really want to learn why your top salespeople are leaving your company, one of the best things you can do is simply ask them. While this seems like a no-brainer, it is a step that many companies do not take. As a result, those companies continue operating the same way and losing salespeople for the same reasons.

To prevent this problem at your company, keep these tips in mind when conducting exit interviews:

• Explain that the interview is confidential. That way, the salesperson who is resigning will feel comfortable being honest about her experience at your company.
• Conduct the interview as a one-on-one conversation in private. Doing this will help ensure that the salesperson does not hold back due to being intimidated by a gang of superiors.
• Choose the right person to conduct the interview. If possible, select an employee from the HR department to interview the salesperson. Whatever you do, do not allow the salesperson’s immediate supervisor to conduct the interview – the relationship she has with her supervisor could affect her answers.
• Ask the right questions. For example, you may want to ask about the culture/morale in the sales department, the salesperson’s relationship with her co-workers and supervisors and the general pros and cons of working at the company.

When your resigning salesperson is answering your questions, listen attentively and take good notes. Then, you can look for similarities in the answers of top performers who resign and make positive changes based on those answers. By doing so, you will be taking steps to reduce costly employee turnover.

If you are still not sure about putting in the time/effort required to retain your top salespeople, consider the fact that your high-performing salespeople are the ones who are generating the most revenue for the company. Without them, your business will be in much poorer shape financially, so prioritizing retention is critical.

Avoid These 11 Common Onboarding Mistakes

Employee turnover in sales is overwhelmingly common and expensive. For your company to be successful, it is critical to invest time and money in acquiring and keeping the right people.

Giving new hires a strong start at your company with a well-conceived onboarding plan will help you hang on to the great salespeople you fight so hard to attract.

The first few months of a new salesperson’s time at a new company are inherently overwhelming, but it is also when employees are at their most malleable.

Set your new hires up for success with structured onboarding and training to help them develop good habits and connections from the beginning.

Avoid these common onboarding sales management mistakes to help your company hang on to new hires, and give your salespeople the best chance of becoming successful fixtures within your company.

Top Onboarding Mistakes in Sales

1. Letting Basics Slide

Most companies have some form of employee orientation that usually covers legal requirements, reviewing the benefits package with HR and setting up a workstation. All these things are certainly important, but they represent the bare minimum of what is required to bring on a new hire.

It may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how often these basics are left insufficiently covered. Of course, if you do not have a protocol in place to handle these basic items, sort it out as soon as possible.

2. Neglecting Purpose

Beyond basic job requirements, your new hire needs to know how their role fits into the larger company picture.

Managers sometimes assume that broad company information is unimportant to a new salesperson, but understanding how their job contributes to the company’s mission gives them a sense of purpose and scope, both of which are critical when they are overwhelmed with the details of a new job.

3. Being Unclear About Performance Requirements

Your new sales hire should assume that they will be expected to bring in new business, but you need to be explicitly clear about how much they will need to bring in, especially in their first few months on the job.

New salespeople will certainly need time to orient themselves and get into a good workflow, so set your expectations and theirs accordingly.

4. Failing to Provide Sufficient Resources

Your new salesperson will have a lot of questions during the first few months on the job. If you cannot make yourself available to answer all of their questions in person, you should collect a few resources that they can turn to while they learn.

Google is the resourceful employee’s friend, but it will not help them understand company culture or protocol, so try to anticipate questions and provide appropriate tools for new hires so you can minimize interruptions to your already busy day.

5. Not Managing Progress Expectations

Good salespeople are inherently results-oriented and competitive, so the learning-intensive onboarding and training phases of employment can be frustrating for them, particularly when they see colleagues making impressive numbers and commissions to go with them.

Make sure your new hire knows how much time it will take to hit their stride and let them know that not only is it ok, it is important for them to focus on learning at the beginning so they can flourish long term.

6. Stepping Back Too Soon

Nobody likes being micro-managed, but at the beginning of a new salesperson’s time at your company, it is better to provide too much guidance than too little. It is dangerous to assume anything about your new hire’s skills until you see her work.

If you can sense they bristling at the idea of so much structure, remind them that it is only temporary. Check in frequently and relax the structure of the onboarding phase as they show their understanding.

7. Discouraging Socialization

Employees spend half their waking hours at work, so it is important for them to have opportunities to form friendships and social support within the company.

As a sales manager with numbers to hit, it might be hard to appreciate the importance of socializing when there is so much work to be done, but keeping good salespeople at your company is easier when they feel connected to more than their paycheck.

Socializing is especially important for new hires who could otherwise be overwhelmed by the new information, new faces and new culture to figure out.

8. Failing to Make Important Introductions

Nobody wants to commit the faux pas of saying the wrong thing to the wrong department head at a new company, so take time at the beginning of your new salesperson’s onboarding to introduce them to key players. If you have a company photo you can label with names and titles for last minute refreshing before important meetings, even better.

9. Glossing Over Perks

There are probably lots of advantages to working as a salesperson at your company, so play them up and help new hires take advantage of them.

Landing talented salespeople is tricky. It is up to you to help them see the benefits of staying with your team for the long haul.

10. Forgetting to Assign a Mentor

Hard resources are great for teaching best practices and protocols, but nothing is more valuable for practical learning than candid advice and encouragement from a knowledgeable peer. Assign one of your strong salespeople to work with your new hire and teach them the daily tasks and cultural quirks of your company.

You should consider giving your assigned mentor a lower numbers requirement during training to emphasize the importance of being a good teacher. A few months of slow sales for the assigned mentor are more than worth it to create a robust onboarding experience for new hires and lower your turnover.

11. Sticking to the Script Too Rigidly

The necessary length of the onboarding process can vary from salesperson to salesperson based on prior experience, the position being filled and their aptitude for the job.

Establish a guideline for what you feel is an appropriate length of time for most new hires to meet training benchmarks and adjust it as you see progress.

Just as anemic onboarding can set a new salesperson up for failure, overbearing onboarding can drive capable salespeople away.

Getting Driven salespeople on your team is critical to your success as a sales manager.

After interviewing promising candidates and testing their aptitude for sales, you should have a clear idea of who has the potential to be a great.

If you can then avoid common sales management mistakes during onboarding, you will increase your chances of keeping those great people around long term and build an unstoppable sales team.

Does Your Sales Team Need More Structure?

According to a survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review in 2015, there are five things that set top-performing sales teams apart from average and low-performing sales teams.

Of those five things, the two that are most actionable are that high performing sales teams tend to “employ a more structured sales process” and “hold their team members to a higher level of accountability.”

As a manager of a sales team, a well-structured process can help you set and meet sales planning objectives more consistently, identify problems within your team, motivate your salespeople to achieve greater success and hold them accountable for their performance.

What Is a Structured Sales Process?

Most sales experts agree that there is a process that every sale goes through whether the salesperson and the client are aware of it or not. The process tends to follow the same format every time. Identifying the process and learning to understand it is valuable to anyone who wants to be good at sales or teach others to sell.

The sales process itself generally follows this cycle:

1. Generating leads/prospecting – this encompasses everything from cold calls to web contacts — any activity that your sales team does to find potential clients.
2. Qualifying leads – this is the process your company uses to determine whether a lead is actually a potential client, including researching the lead, running credit checks or learning their budget.
3. Recognizing needs – the stage of the process when a salesperson asks questions and develops a relationship with the prospect, tailoring your product to fit the prospect’s needs.
4. Providing a solution – this is the offer/pitch stage of the process, probably the one to which your company currently pays the most attention.
5. Managing objections/negotiation – the prospective client will almost likely always have a concern or want to negotiate, so it is best to plan for it.
6. Closing – when your salesperson has reached an agreement with a prospect, they have to fill out paperwork and make a record of the deal.
7. Supporting – depending on your company’s process, this may be out of the hands of the salesperson, but tracking it is important for understanding customers’ behavior and needs post-sale.

A structured sales process will break down the steps of selling and identify best practices for each stage of the cycle.

Salespeople should be required to track their leads using whatever method works best for your company. There are many sales tracking software solutions available, but a well-organized analog method (binders, dividers, markers and files) can work for smaller sales teams if necessary.

Why Structure?

Data – The first thing most good diet plans recommend is keeping a food journal for a few weeks, because data can be very powerful and motivating.

If your sales team is not performing to your expectations, your first reaction should be to collect data.

With thorough records of leads, prospects and closed deals, it will be much easier for you to identify where your sales team’s weaknesses are and work to correct them. Data makes sales planning much more accurate and makes goal attainment more likely.

Motivation – Driven salespeople are extremely goal-oriented and competitive. A highly structured sales process makes it even more satisfying for your team to check off requirements and see leads progress through the cycle in a concrete way.

Additionally, having benchmarks for every step of the sales process gives you as a manager more opportunities to incentivize and encourage competition, most of which are just as motivating as (and not to mention cheaper than) those closing commissions.

Clear Expectations – Salespeople perform best when they are given some measure of independence and ownership over their career. As a manager, that can be a scary thought, but when you take the time to build a well-structured sales process, you will feel less of a need to micromanage your team.

With a structured process, tracking sales then becomes the only thing you need to keep your salespeople on task. It is a bit counterintuitive, but more structure means more freedom for you, and when you step back and give your team breathing room, they will feel empowered to own their success.

Easier Training – Having the sales process laid out in detailed steps makes training new hires very simple for managers and much less overwhelming for new salespeople. Even experienced salespeople can benefit from reviewing the basics that they might have forgotten.

Your Company is Unique

Understanding the sales process as it applies to sales in general is not enough to make your team excel. To make the examination of the sales process worthwhile, you need to think about the practicalities of each step of the process as it applies to your specific company, your specific location, even your specific team. There might be aspects of the process that go very quickly for your team and others that require much more effort.

As a sales manager, you should work to refine your process constantly, based on the data and feedback that your sales team collects. Developing a structured sales process means becoming an expert on your product, your client, your salespeople, and the nitty-gritty logistics of your sales. It is a big task, but laying good groundwork will make your job much easier in the long run.

Hold Salespeople Accountable

As you put the work in to create a structured sales process for your team, you should ask your team to meet you in the middle by adhering to the process, by keeping good records of their leads and owning both their successes and their failures.

With thorough records of past sales and failures it will be easy to turn disappointments into learning experiences for you and your team.

Highly-structured sales processes enable managers to step back from the day-to-day whip cracking, which will motivate salespeople to take ownership of their own performance.

Tap into the natural competitiveness of your Driven salespeople by making the proper tracking of sales into a contest with prizes or a group reward if everyone completes their tracking perfectly. Once you have accurate data from your sales team, accountability comes naturally because they can sit down with you to look at a record of their efforts.

With the right sales team, a structured sales process will work like a dream to keep your people motivated. The success of a structured process, however, is dependent on building a team that has Drive. Salespeople with Drive have the Need for Achievement, Competitiveness and Optimism required for success in sales.

Driven salespeople are motivated by structure, but if your team lacks Drive, no amount of structure will make up for it. Sales aptitude testing used at the beginning of the hiring process is the best way to build a team that has what it takes to thrive in a structured sales environment. A sales team with Drive combined with a structured sales process is a recipe for record-smashing success.