What to Do When You Have High Turnover in Sales

Sales is a demanding job. Some sales representatives are stellar performers who seem to excel in the face of every challenge. Other members of your team are less motivated to be star performers, and most people shake out somewhere in the middle. Nonetheless, most sales departments have high turnover.

How can you reduce turnover in sales?

The key to reducing turnover in your sales department often hinges on sales enablement activities. Sales professionals who have the right tools to close deals, who are presented with ongoing training opportunities, and who have a great compensation plan will be less likely to leave.

Examining Turnover in Sales

Before you can solve the problem of high turnover in the sales department, you need to understand why the issue exists in the first place. In most cases, high turnover is a phenomenon with multiple causes behind it.

Most people will say salespeople leave because of compensation. They may be offered another job with better benefits, or another company promises to pay a higher salary or give better commissions. Money is the root of the issue here.

There are other factors as well. Many salespeople leave because they’re not feeling challenged enough. Others may leave because they don’t feel management offers them the right tools or training to support them. They may be frustrated and demotivated by this perceived lack of support and understanding.

Still other members of your sales team may leave because they see no opportunities to continue growing and learning new skills.

The Effects of High Turnover

As you probably know, high turnover has several negative effects on a business. It increases the amount spent on hiring, onboarding, and initial training. If your sales team has high turnover, you may be constantly hiring or training people, which uses up resources you could have allocated to other activities.

Another issue is a loss of productivity. If it takes you some time to hire or you’re constantly trying to get new salespeople up to speed, your sales team may be less productive than it could be otherwise.

High turnover can also damage your employer brand. It may become harder to hire as you gain a reputation among job seekers.

Sales Enablement Can Help Solve the Issue

It should be obvious why you want to lower turnover in the sales department. The question is how do you get there?

The answer is sales enablement. Sales enablement focuses not just on training, but on truly enabling your salespeople with the tools, development opportunities, and other forms of support they need to truly perform.

Taken individually, any one of these activities could help lower turnover in the sales department. Altogether, they will not only lower turnover but also help your salespeople become more motivated, engaged, and productive.

Creating Sales Success

When people discuss sales enablement, they often talk about the ways these measures create success in the sales department. Sales enablement gives sales professionals the tools and training they need to close more deals and increase sales.

Enabling your salespeople has other benefits. One of the most important is increasing employee engagement. When your salespeople feel you’re taking strides to help them achieve more, they’ll want to do the same in turn. As they become more engaged, they’ll be more motivated and determined to hit their quotas.

Your efforts at providing the right tools and training then support them as they engage more deeply and become more productive.

Engaged Employees Are Less Likely to Leave

Employee engagement is an important outcome when it comes to lowering turnover because engaged employees are less likely to leave. The right compensation plan also helps here, since employees who are satisfied with their benefits are also less likely to leave.

If high turnover is the problem in the sales department, sales enablement is the solution. If you’ve been wondering how to lower turnover, turn to your sales enablement strategy.