Did you know that only a mere 19 percent of employees are actually satisfied with their jobs? If only 19 percent of your sales people are happy to stay put and remain productive at your company, you’re going to have a huge workforce issue on your hands. Another retention fact that will keep you up at night: 44 percent of millennials want to leave their current companies in the next two years. Scary, isn’t it?

Improving morale and ensuring that your sales reps will stay with you for the long term is critical to your business’s success. Employee retention should be a top priority. Just look at what will happen if your sales people continue to leave, creating a revolving door of reps at your organization.

High Turnover Costs

There is undoubtedly a high turnover in sales, and unfortunately, this can cost you more than you think. The recruiting and hiring process alone can eat up your profits in advertising fees, background checking costs, recruiter fees, drug testing and skills testing expenses and more. Then there’s the money spent on training manuals and a trainer to get the new hires up to speed. Only when the new sales reps are fully ramped up will they start to close deals and you can start to see a return on that investment. If you can’t retain your employees up until this point, you’ll just keep wasting money.

Reduced Productivity

When employee retention is low your sales team’s productivity will be reduced. Every time a sales rep leaves, work is left undone. And every time a new sales rep is hired and being trained, productivity isn’t at its maximum. Reduced productivity can impact your profitability. And prioritizing employee retention can ensure that you don’t face any interruptions.

Low Employee Morale

An organization that doesn’t prioritize employee retention will experience substantial sales rep turnover and this can have a snowball effect among the rest of the team members. Once your sales people start to leave for greener pastures, the friends and colleagues they’ve left behind in your office might start to feel envious and start thinking about all of the reasons they’re unhappy and why they should leave, too.

Plus, when you’re short staffed, your existing sales team will feel the pressures and the stresses of the extra work while you find a replacement, leading to employee dissatisfaction.

Reduced Customer Service and Satisfaction

If you can’t retain your sales people, you might lose their clients as well. These clients might not have faith or trust your organization if they’re constantly being introduced to new account managers. They won’t know who to go to with questions or concerns and they won’t have time to build relationships if the sales reps assigned to their accounts are always changing. They might start searching for another company to deal with—one that offers more consistency. They might also start wondering why your company can’t seem to keep employees around for long.

In addition, if your dwindling sales team then has to manage more accounts than usual to make up for being short staffed, your risk of errors increase. Overworked and overstressed sales people can end up making mistakes that will leave your customers unhappy with your service. Furthermore, they might not be able to give your customers the timely attention they need.

It Pays to Keep Employees Happy

When you make employee retention a priority, you can avoid all of these consequences of a high turnover rate in your sales department. You can reduce your hiring costs, keep productivity high, improve employee morale, and improve customer service and satisfaction. Employee turnover can occur for many reasons, but no matter why your sales reps are leaving, it will no doubt have a negative effect on many aspects of your business, so it pays to prioritize employee retention.

Use employee retention strategies, like offering proper compensation, providing recognition, and focusing on professional development, in order to ensure that your employees are happy in your employ and want to stay with your company for a long time.