Is your company one resignation away from losing multiple customers, seeing a precipitous drop in revenue—even having a mass exodus of employees?
Losing key members of your sales team will wreak havoc on your company if you are unprepared. And the damage will be even more severe if your sales goals depended on the work of one or two high-performing reps.
Read on to learn why sales team turnover is such a precarious problem, and what you can do to prevent it from decimating your sales goals—and business.
The Challenge of Sales Team Turnover
Turnover among salespeople is a fact of life, or death, depending on how you look at it. And it’s a problem that just about every company in every industry has to deal with - especially these days!. Last time we checked, average sales rep turnover in the U.S. was 35%. In other words, if your organization is typical, you lose more than a third of your salespeople each year. Ouch. 😬
Sales team turnover is a problem because it harms your business in many ways. For one, it gives your competitors an immediate advantage. While you are training your new rep, they are talking to your customers. Then there’s the problem you have recruiting new reps and holding onto the ones you have. High turnover lowers employee morale and loyalty to your company, and that hinders recruiting and retention.
But the greatest problem with sales team turnover is that it threatens the very foundation of many businesses, particularly the companies that have only one sales rep. The danger is compounded if that rep has been with the company a long time, and holds all institutional knowledge in his or her head. When the rep quits and walks out the door, all of the product knowledge, selling techniques, marketplace knowledge and other vital information leaves the company, never to return.
When a single salesperson responsible for $1 million or more in annual sales walks out of your business, you have a problem. Recruiting, screening, onboarding, training and coaching a replacement rep to reach that same level of performance will take six months or longer.
Maintaining your monthly and quarterly sales goals is a challenge when you have what seems like a revolving door of salespeople entering and leaving your company. Here’s a solution.
How Sales Enablement Tools Reduce the Damage of Sales Team Turnover
One way to reduce the harm caused by high sales team turnover is to deploy a simplified sales enablement platform that takes institutional knowledge out of the heads of your best salespeople and stores it in a central repository for everyone to access. This way, when a rep leaves, the information stays.
Onboarding
A good sales enablement platform helps with sales rep onboarding. You don’t have to rely on one or two veterans to teach new hires all they know about your markets, customers and products. Instead, you point new reps to the onboarding videos, lessons, product sheets, quizzes and other resources in your sales enablement platform.
Ongoing Training
Traditional training loses 80% effectiveness after 30 days without reinforcement. But an effective sales enablement platform improves seller competency with just-in-time learning. You create skills development and product knowledge modules, and store them in a central tool that your reps access from anywhere on any device. This quickly translates into faster time to revenue.
Seller Resources
To get up to speed quickly, your new reps need easy access to your product literature, case studies, use cases, competitor comparisons, pricing calculators, sales presentations and other sales content. In some organizations, this collateral is commonly found in dusty briefcases, filing cabinets, car front seats, office desks, stored on laptops or in some notebook across the country. And let’s not even get started on the content that is outdated or noncompliant.
With a sales enablement platform, you consolidate this content and these seller resources in one place - and the latest and greatest versions update across the platform. This reduces sales pitch prep, and improves sales conversations and increases win rates.
Coaching
If your best sales rep(s) quit tomorrow, who in your organization is going to coach their replacement in your sales process? With a sales enablement software platform, you create digital playbooks that put sales motions within easy reach. And daily workflows to help your reps use selling tools and information as intended. This way, your sales don’t have to suffer when a top seller leaves, because the rep leaves your sales playbooks behind.
Keep Reaching Those Goals Without Any Team Roadblocks
Sales is the growth engine of your organization. Does that growth have to be endangered by sales team turnover? No. With simplified access to content, tools, and just-in-time learning, your reps can create meaningful engagements with buyers—and advance and close deals.
Modus is a simple sales enablement tool that can help. Let us show you how.
