Resignation Threats?  How To Keep Your Good Sales People

One of the biggest problems facing the field sales department is a high turnover rate. There is a disturbing upward trend of sales staff changing jobs more regularly. If good sales people leave the company, you then have to deal with financial losses as a result of breaks in turnover, coupled with the cost of training a replacement sales person. Staff retention is consequently often a hot topic for people attending a management course.

The recruiting, placing and training costs of the average sales person, including paying them whilst they are learning the ropes before they start bringing in any revenue, is around £9,000. There is the additional cost of the diversion of the sales managers time taken up in the recruitment process. This is a time consuming task, which most managers could do without.

As a result many businesses have investigated the various steps that can be adopted in order to lessen sales staff turnover. The following guidelines should be put in place for dealing with sales people who want to leave:

1.    Immediately react! This means within the first five minutes. A valuable sales person who has just tendered his resignation instantly becomes your number one priority. Excuses, such as “We will discuss this later, after the meeting this afternoon” are not acceptable. Whatever you are doing interrupt or postpone it and speak with the sales person immediately. This is your only chance of changing their mind.

2.    Keep the resignation confidential! This is extremely important for both sides. The sales person concerned must have the opportunity to revise their decision without losing face in front of their colleagues. Silence is also the best policy from the point of view of the company: if you are able to persuade a top sales person to remain and their resignation was common knowledge, wild rumours of massive pay rises in order to keep them would abound. In principle, using more money as a bargaining chip in order to keep top sales people is not the right way to negotiate.

3.    Listen attentively to what the sales person has to say! Try and find out the precise reason for the sales person’s resignation. All attempts to try and persuade the sales person to stay will fail if you have been unable to ascertain and accept the real reason(s) for this. As soon as is possible give an unvarnished report of the reason(s) to your immediate superior, even if this is uncomfortable. Effective communication is a core skill of a manager and is consequently a major topic on any management course.   

4.    Finding out what opportunities are open to the sales representative in another company may be your only chance of convincing the sales representative to stay with your company: e.g. a more interesting area to work in, more money, less stress, more stress or a bigger career step?

5.    Think out your arguments! Check which arguments you can use to try and convince the sales representative to stay. Those that give the reasons outlining why it is in the sales representative’s interests not to go are the safest ones.

6.    Remember there are predominantly two reasons for tendering a resignation: One is, the sales representative may have been feeling frustrated for a long time now and it has taken just one last thing to convince him to leave. On the other hand, another company may have made a more attractive offer.

7.    Solve the sales representative’s problems! Most sales representatives who have declared their intention to resign like the company, their work and their colleagues and would like to stay.

8.    Prevent further resignations! Think about the rest of your sales representatives and try and recognise problems early on and deal with them before they become too big!

By implementing these points you retain good salespeople and as a result make a positive impact on business’s performance. Attending a management course can develop your skills further.

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