High turnover in your sales department can create many several negative effects, including the following:

• Lowered employee morale
• Loss of expertise and experience
• Loss of company culture
• Poor performance
• Manager frustration
• Distractions

To avoid having to deal with these frustrating consequences of high turnover in your sales department, be proactive and continually take steps to avoid turnover. Reducing high turnover in your sales department actually begins during the hiring process.

Hire to Retain

The best thing you can do during the hiring process to lower turnover in your sales department is to ensure that each sales rep you hire is a good fit for your company. How do you do that? Look for candidates who will fit into the company culture without too much adjustment. What is the personality of your department? If it’s laid back and friendly, it won’t be a good fit for a highly competitive loner, even if you think a highly competitive person would be a good influence on your other sales reps. 

If you generally use phone interviews, try using video for your interviews instead. It’s much easier to get a sense of someone’s personality in video interviews than it is during phone interviews. Additionally, look at all aspects of a candidate, not just the person’s work history. What are the candidate’s values and views about personal time? Will these traits conflict with your company’s culture? In short, make cultural fit a top priority in your hiring process.

Invest in Your Reps

Not only is it important to fairly compensate your sales reps if you want to retain them, but it’s also important to invest time and other resources in them. Career coaching, training, and mentoring are all key to retaining your current sales reps.  When people feel they’re in a dead-end job, they lose motivation and feel that they have to switch to a different company if they want to advance their careers.

Provide opportunities for advancement for them within your own company so you can avoid turnover and benefit from their experience with your company and its products and services. Provide opportunities for your sales reps to share their new ideas, and reward them for stretching themselves and taking on new responsibilities and roles.

Provide Useful and Regular Feedback

What happens when you neglect to give your sales reps meaningful feedback? They feel that they’re taken for granted. People need feedback about their work so they can reach their goals and feel valued and heard. Set regular times to provide feedback for your sales reps. In many companies, you can do this weekly without overwhelming anyone. Providing useful, regular feedback is good for both the sales reps and for the company as a whole because it motivates and provides a forum for the sales reps to share their good ideas that could make a real difference in the way your company operates.

Create Meaningful Employee Experiences

Most sales reps spend the majority of their waking hours at their jobs, so it’s imperative that they find meaning and satisfaction if they’re going to stick around with your company. People want more than a paycheck from their jobs. They want to feel that they’re progressing and making a difference somehow. Encourage sales reps to think about what makes them great as people and to apply these traits to their work. They’ll feel more satisfied and confident in their work, and they’ll enjoy their time on the job.

By doing these things, you can help to avoid costly and demoralizing turnover in your sales department. In addition, you’ll find that your sales department is stronger and more productive than ever before.