Your employees are your biggest asset—and your sales people in particular allow your business to grow and profit. Without your sales team, your company would crumble. Your reps are the ones bringing in your revenue, prospecting, engaging customers, building and maintaining relationships, and generating more business. They’re absolutely critical to your business strategy.

So it’s a wonder why so many business owners still aren’t prioritizing sales recruitment and retention. Getting the best sales talent working for you and then taking the steps required to retain these superstars can offer your sales organization, and your bottom line, great advantages.

Here are just some of the reasons why sales recruitment and retention must become your top priority.

Building the Best Sales Team

You rely on your employees to help you meet your business objectives. Building the best sales team that can help you to meet your goals starts with sales recruitment. If you’re only recruiting sales professionals at the last minute, if you’re using outdated techniques, and if you’re rushing through your hiring decisions, then you’re going to make some bad hiring decisions. And this will lead to a poor sales team.

You need to fill your team with sales superstars, not mediocre and underperforming sales people. But since recruiting and hiring great sales people is a tough feat, you need to make sure it’s a priority so you can get it right and get the best people on your team. It’ll take time and effort to recruit and hire effectively, but it’ll be worth it.

Managing Employee Turnover

Maintaining employee satisfaction to retain your best reps is critical to managing employee turnover.

Proper sales compensation, employee recognition and support, benefits, and employee assistance programs are all strategies that can be used to retain employees. As you know, turnover in sales is huge. There are many reasons why sales people quit—bad pay, lack of opportunities, boredom, or lack of effective management are all common reasons for turnover in sales.

And the higher your turnover, the higher your recruiting and hiring costs, your advertising costs, and your training costs. And the more time and resources you waste. Prioritizing retention can help you beat the never-ending employee turnover cycle, so you can reduce your costs. The retention strategies that you use to keep your top-performing sales reps can offset your employee replacement costs and reduce your indirect costs of turnover.

Maintaining Performance and Productivity

When you’re not hiring the right people for your company and you’re not putting in effort to keep your employees happy in your employ, you end up with a revolving door of sales people. Every time a rep leaves, you face reduced productivity while work is left undone and a new employee has to overcome the learning before becoming profitable. Every time a rep quits, he takes his knowledge with him. Every time a rep leaves, you lose out on the training you invested in. And you have to start all over again.

Prioritizing sales recruitment and retention can ensure that your productivity is not interrupted, so you don’t lose out on sales opportunities or profits.

Increasing Morale

Recruiting sales people whose views match your company’s values, beliefs, and goals will lead to higher morale. These reps will feel more fulfilled and happy at your company because they’ll feel a sense of pride in what they do.

And using retention strategies to maintain employee satisfaction can also improve morale—your reps will feel valued and cared for. Creating a positive work environment, offering support and improvement opportunities, and engaging your sales people will strengthen their commitment to your organization. After all, happy employees equal healthy profits.