Losing a top-performing employee can be a big blow to your sales team. It not only creates a hiring need, but it will negatively affect your company in many ways. You’ll see a dip in sales, and performance, remaining employees may have to pick up the slack, and it will take some time to hire and onboard a new sales professional and get them up to speed. Losing an employee is much more than finding a replacement.
So rather than relying on information you can get from an employee when they choose to exit the company, you should be focused on getting information from current employees to identify ways to prevent them from leaving. You can do this by conducting a stay interview. Below we’ll talk about the difference between stay and exit interviews and outline some questions employers can ask.
What’s the difference between a stay interview and an exit interview?
An exit interview is conducted when an employee is leaving the company. It usually covers the reasons why the employee is leaving. It’s meant to get a sense of the overall experience the employee had and what the company can do to improve.
A stay interview is a one-on-one conversation between an employee and manager. It’s meant to uncover any issues an employee may have and to understand the things that motivate an employee to stay with the company and remain engaged. Stay interviews are a proactive way for companies to focus on retention and employee satisfaction.
Here are some questions you can ask to better understand what your sales employees value about your company. These will help you uncover reasons why they would want to stay rather than exit the organization:
Asking these types of questions to your employees will give you a good sense of how they feel and what they value. You can use this information to improve their experience and level of engagement.
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Claire has 4+ years of experience in sales and recruitment. As a Director of Client Services, her main objective is to connect great people to great companies by building strong relationships with both top clients and candidates in the sales industry. She specializes in sales roles of all seniority levels for both enterprise and start-up clients North American wide. When Claire isn't networking with top talent, she enjoys being outdoors, traveling and spending time with friends & family.